2/16/2024 0 Comments Draw my lifeIn this sense, having healthy, fulfilling relationships is its own kind of fitness-social fitness-and like physical fitness, it takes work to maintain. All you have to do is notice the invigoration you feel when you believe that someone has really understood you during a good conversation, or the tension and distress you feel after an argument, or how little sleep you get during a period of romantic strife. Y ou don’t have to examine scientific findings to recognize that relationships affect you physically. And, enriching these relationships can in turn nourish our minds and bodies. Are you spending time with the people you most care about? Is there a relationship in your life that would benefit both of you if you could spend more time together? Many of these are untapped resources, waiting for us to put them to use. But nearly all of us have people in our lives whom we’d like to see more. We don’t have to spend every hour with our friends, and some relationships work because they’re exercised sparingly. Try figuring out how much time you spend with a good friend or family member. Thinking about these numbers can help us put our own relationships in perspective. Spending 58 days over 29 years with a friend is infinitesimal compared with the 4,851 days that Americans will spend interacting with media during that same time period. Consider the fact that the average American in 2018 spent 11 hours every day on solitary activities such as watching television and listening to the radio. We don’t always put our relationships first. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.įrom the June 2009 issue: What makes us happy? It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness. As the study’s director (Bob) and associate director (Marc), we’ve been able to watch participants fall in and out of relationships, find success and failure at their jobs, become mothers and fathers. Researchers periodically interview participants, ask them to fill out questionnaires, and collect information about their physical health. After starting with 724 participants-boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates-the study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. Of course, this is assuming a lot of good fortune, and the real number is almost certainly going to be lower. At two days a year for 29 years, that’s 58 days that we have left to spend together in our lifetimes. Let’s be (very) generous and say we will both be around to celebrate Bob’s 100th birthday. How does this add up for the coming years? Bob is 71 years old. This article is adapted from Waldinger and Schulz’s new book.įor us, Bob and Marc, though we work closely together and meet every week by phone or video call, we see each other in person for only a total of about two days (48 hours) every year.
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