Good relationships as predictors of health and happiness
Ask a group of Taoseños how they feel about Valentine’s Day and you are likely to get a wide range of responses. In an informal, unscientific poll — asking people in person and on Facebook how they feel about Valentine’s Day this year — the responses ranged from those who like it as a time to celebrate romantic love to those who dislike it because it reminds them of a painful loss of a spouse or partner.
There are those who enjoy making Valentine’s Day cards with their children and see Valentine’s Day as a time to celebrate their wider network of family and friends. In Taos, many people are fortunate to have supportive extended families that they connect with on this day. For those who rely on their friends as their support network, there are variations, like “Galentine’s Day.”
But whatever type of relationship Valentine’s Day brings to mind, it is a time to reflect on why being close to other people is so important for one’s overall wellbeing.
What predicts health and happiness?
While romantic love with a partner — the type most-commonly celebrated on Valentine’s Day — can contribute to our health and well-being, it turns out that there is something else just as important: having a network of warm and healthy relationships.
In the Harvard Study of Adult Development begun in 1938, an original group of 724 men were tracked for 85 years, with 456 of them coming from inner-city Boston and 268 from Harvard. At a recent count, 60 of those participants were still alive and almost 2,000 of their children — both men and women — were providing a second generation of data. The information has been collected by questionnaires every two years, with physical measurements of levels of stress and other indicators, gathered every five years.
Dr. Robert Waldinger is the fourth director of the study. When he appeared on the show “CBS This Morning” in 2016, he said “Our men found that good close relationships predicted not just that they would stay happier but that they would stay physically healthier and that’s the amazing thing.” Benefits of such good relationships include staving off memory decline, while the downsides include earlier mental and physical decline and shorter lives. One predictor of happiness was having at least one good relationship with a sibling, Waldinger reported.
When asked if healthy supportive relationships are more important than measures like giving up smoking or drinking less alcohol, he replied that close relationships are “As important, because the chronic stress of being lonely gets into the body and breaks it down over time.”
Waldinger, who is also a Zen priest, offered the following advice on cultivating healthy relationships, “Simply watch what you are doing each day and who you are with and see if you can pay more and more attention each day to the people you are with.”
In January of this year, Waldinger released a book with Marc Schulz summarizing the study. The book is called, “The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study and Happiness,” which explores the connection between good relationships and health in depth. In an interview at the release of the book, Waldinger said, “Good relationships really help us manage stress and, as we know, stress is a big driver of health problems. Connections of all kinds matter.”
Some of the keystones to healthy relationships were found to include being able to be yourself, having security such as knowing you have someone to call in the middle of the night if you are scared or sick, sharing experiences, being able to grow with each other, and sharing fun.
Dr. Roxanne George (Dr. Rox) is a Taos licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in New Mexico and Oregon. When asked about how to build a network of support, she said, “I encourage clients to cultivate connections both in their families-of-origin, but also in their families-of-choice, as these latter connections can help to tether individuals who either don’t have a lot of bio family left, or whose bio families are not healthy due to addictions and dysfunction. I often have clients develop a Relationship
Circle to help them shift from black/white, all/nothing thinking with regards to relationships, toward a stratified approach that includes very close friends to acquaintances; personal to community.”
As an introvert herself, she encourages her clients to volunteer at events so they will be less likely not to go at the last minute and also so they have a role to play, rather than feeling awkward and alone. She encourages them to focus on meeting and getting to know one person at a deeper level, rather than making small talk, which might leave them feeling more disconnected and lonely.
Lacking a relationship, or navigating a difficult one
Dr. Rox has seen the downsides of not having a support system of family and friends. She said people often lack relationships, “especially as folks get older, and lose their primary partners, their children launch, and they start to lose parents and family members who came before them. The social restrictions due to COVID really hindered people’s abilities to connect socially and emotionally.”
Just as positive relationships can lead to health benefits, high levels of stress in relationships correlate with poor health.
A study that appeared in the Journal of the American Heart Association in 2021 reported that women who have high levels of social stress were more likely to have a heart attack or die of cardiovascular disease during the almost-15 years that followed than women who did not. To determine levels of social strain, women were asked how many people irritated them, were too demanding of them, or tried to coerce them in their daily lives.
In the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in 2019, women who reported high levels of social stress had lower bone density levels when measured six years later, data that was reported by Harvard Medical School.
‘Good relationships really help us manage stress and, as we know, stress is a big driver of health problems. Connections of all kinds matter.’ — Dr. Robert Waldinger
‘Galentine’s Day’
The Merriam-Webster dictionary identified Galentine’s Day as a one of the “words we’re watching” and added it to the dictionary in the fall of last year.
A description of the word’s background captures some of the ambivalence we feel about this holiday.
“Many people have a kind of love-hate relationship with Valentine’s Day: The holiday is disparaged as a manufactured holiday foisted upon us by greeting card companies, and there’s often a sense that it’s only for people who are romantically paired, making it feel rooted in exclusion. All of which sets the stage perfectly for Galentine’s Day. That’s right: Galentine’s Day — a day for women to celebrate their friendships with their lady friends. It’s Valentine’s Day with your gals.”
The article explained that the word is a blend of Valentine’s Day and gal that was introduced in the comedy series “Parks and Recreation” by Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, the fictional director of the Parks and Recreation Department in the also-fictional city of Pawnee, Ind. It was envisioned as a day (Feb. 13) that women leave their significant others at home and come out to celebrate with their female friends. According to Merriam-Webster, there is a move afoot to make the holiday more gender-inclusive.
The Galentine’s tradition continues in Taos with some women interviewed in the poll saying they are planning to celebrate with their girlfriends and others picking out Valentine’s Day cards for them.
Self-love
At least one local business, Reneux Consignment, is celebrating February as a month of selfcare.
Reneux is inviting everyone to participate and celebrate the “SelfCare Revolution,” noting that the better we care for ourselves, the better we can care for others.
In a sign posted at the store, there is the note, “Let February become the month we keep this in mind and begin new habits or rededicate to old ones that help us feel good about ourselves and the healthy balanced lives that we are leading and constantly redefining.”