Are we happier when we spend more time with others?

I think this is common. In small/tribal communities, this is often mitigated by group events on a regular basis, as well as smaller circles that all check on each other.

I think the key to attain ever-lasting happiness is to commit ourselves to doing kind or selfless deeds as a habit [0]. Scientifically it's been observed that when we make someone happy the same region lights up in our brain [1] when we do something to make ourselves happy.

Coupled with meditation that makes you more mindful so you can be more kind (kindfullness), you can attain a state of mind in which you can remain happy most of the time. The problems of the world will continue to be there but those will decreasingly have lesser impact on your inner state of happiness.

0: I track and share my random act of kindness (RAKs) on Black Lotus along with logging/measuring my meditation/chanting sessions (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rt.pinpric... )

1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/want-to-be-happier-give-m_b_6...

nah..social connections frequency is not the only factor for long living. if a person goes out every day and meets friends and stuff but drinks a bunch of alcohol and smokes and does not care about sleeping properly then he/she is doomed more than a loner who is trying to keep healthy lifestyle.

A lot of my socialization is done through my job (not coworkers), that's one solution.

I started doing grubhub just because it forces me out of the house a few times a day. It really shakes things since I work from home on my career work.

What helps is building awareness of your attention/desire traps and consciously manipulating the system that is you to optimize it. That can take the form of depriving yourself of things you "want" (looking at screens is real common) to let yourself get bored to seek out that attention fix somewhere else, it could take the form of creating a regular reminder with a calendar app, it could take the form of convincing someone else to keep you social... you don't have to be a slave to your built-in drives, they're often really stupid and too easily satisfied.

The trick is pre-planning. When you commit to events with groups, the desire to not let anyone down overrules all else. Then you realize you have fun anyway!

Most of my weekends are already assigned and I purposely allow for some rest days. And I usually allow for some spontaneous requests to hang out.

I'm happier than I've ever been and I know more people now than I've ever known.

You still need time to yourself so you should respect that but knowing that these people care about me is nice :)

>I seem doomed

If you think you are doomed you will be doomed.

>I'm not really antisocial

If you think you are not really antisocial you will be not really antisocial.

>I can become overtalkative at times

If you think you can become overtalkative you will be able to become overtalkative.

>I never seem to want to 'get out'

If you think you never seem to want - you will never seem to want

>when I force myself

If you think you force yourself - you will force yourself.

>I am in such a better mood

If you think you are in a better mood - you will be in a better mood.

>back to normal

If you think you are back to normal - you will be back to normal.

Once you reach a place beyond thinking you will gain control over these things.

I’m the same way, so I built in a fix to my lifestyle. When I was single I always lived with a roommate. Most times I preferred meeting friends than going home after work. And I chose to marry someone who loves social interaction so now we kind of balance each other out.

Worst period of my life was single and living alone. Way too easy to go home after work and never meet or talk to anyone outside of work.

Sounds like you have an introvert trait (in the Myers Briggs sense), which does not mean despising human interaction but that even though you enjoy it, it’s taxing at some level (but you get some benefit at another level). If this is the case, the rejection comes from energy being exhausted (no one enjoys being exhausted) and you have to recharge your social interactions batteries.

At some point you may have intuitively associated meeting with people with that exhaustion and balanced your NN towards “not meeting” by default, hence the doominess feeling.

Active, conscious steps I took to get me out of that:

1. Recognise that being social brings you something internal (mood improvements)

2. Recognise that being social costs you some energy (depletes a battery)

3. Stop self-bashing for “not being social” at times (battery needs topping up)

4. Create a positive feedback loop instead of a negative one, by having less long/intense social interactions but more frequent, so that the battery never truly runs out and has time to recharge quickly

This takes time as the NN has to be retrained to break the default fight or flight reaction of staying in the safe zone at home.

It’s a bit like enjoying running a marathon and have a happy and relaxed mind following that, but the body is exhausted and certainly doesn’t want to run again back to back as it needs time to recover.

The introvert trait will not go away but the battery can be trained and improved in capacity, and end up looking forward to meeting people as long as it’s properly managed.

You may be like me. I discovered when I did a teaching gig that I love being at the centre of attention. If you have an opportunity to try giving some talks, you may find that you really enjoy it. Having a schedule where you have to show up and do that kind of thing helps (or at least it does for me). Speaking of which, I really need to find some place to give talks around here...

Sounds like an exact description of me, except one major difference:

> I am in such a better mood for a few days

I get incredible anxiety after meeting people that disappears after a few days. It's not worth it at all and I'm extremely happy if I just avoid people.

you are not doomed. you are just fine.

you can be talkative or you can go in to deep meditation in the middle of a crowd. whatever be it do it consciously. remove all guilt and all negativity from it. experience everything deeply - silence or noise.

That's how most people feel about working out. The hardest part is getting the running shoes on, but once you're doing it, it feels really good.

I don't think it is unusual for people to have an averse reaction to investing in themselves, although it does look illogical from the outside.

You raise some good points.

I also believe personality types play a large part, for example I'm an introvert, and while spending time with others makes me happy - that can easily be negated if I spend too much time with others or don't have a chance to come up for air (e.g. some alone time).

Not to mention the personality types of others as well. I have introverted friends whom I can quite happily spend weeks at a time with (low energy, deep conversations, no awkwardness with silence), and on the other end of the scale there are friends who are extremely extroverted whom I cannot spend more than several hours with (high energy, shallow and constant changing of topics being discussed, a feeling of awkwardness when there is silence).

> the search for happiness can become a source of unhappiness

It can become maladaptive reward seeking behaviour, similar to addiction.

> Young people has way more options to enjoy life such as traveling, playing video games, watching youtube by themselves

This is killing time not enjoying life.

> Young people has way more options to enjoy life alone such as...

I've never quite bought this argument. Yes, the choices are different. 100 years ago travel might be by train. Or hitch-hiking. Instead of video games you had a deck of cards and played solitaire. Today we have MMORPGs, back then it was again cards, sitting around a table. They didn't watch YouTube, but absolutely read books and newspapers.

There are proximate causes, and ultimate causes. You have identified an ultimate cause for social behavior. A proximate cause would be that we do it because it makes us feel better.

All of man’s problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. -Blaise Pascal

It is irregular I agree, and it is common. Depending how you slice it though; does communicating daily over the net count as surrogate of interaction? At what rate?

This is just how it is when you get older. You’ll see friends maybe once a month for an average of 4 hours or so, basically 0.5% of your year. The rest of the time you spend sleeping, eating, working, occupying yourself with other activities that make up life. One day you might just wake up and realize all your friends are dead and buried, and if you are the last one left then you know you’re next. It’s over. Where did life go?

Daily was common when I was a teenager. Every other day was common in college. Weekly was common right after college. Now with a full time job, family, house maintenance, etc. I probably average once every 2 months or so and I'm amazed I even have that much time to spend with friends. I'm looking forward to retirement.

I'd spend entire years seeing friends almost daily. In school, during the summer, and then when living together.

Now we see each other, at max, once every few months. That's just adulthood, and tbh it seems natural.

An active Whatsapp group and a quarterly weekend away together is enough to keep the bonds strong.

Once a month seems about right, and for me it's not the same group of friends necessarily.

My wife and I have some couple friends and our schedules are hardest to align. (Kids, work, family time). And then we both have some single friends without kids, with which we can just choose any time and it will probably work to meet up.

That's just part of getting older and starting a family I suppose. Priorities shift a bit :)

> I doesn't matter if it's quality time

Does it matter with whom?

How about people openly disrespecting you under the guise of friendship? (I've seen this happen thousands of times, never understood why people tolerate it)

How about backstabbers? How about people envious of you?

My point is - does it really have the same effect on you, regardless of the quality of relationship?

I'm pretty much the opposite. I can get along with people and I never have problems with others, but I just can't stand being with people. It completely drains me, and I tend to become depressed for a few days afterwards. It doesn't matter if the interaction is "pleasant" or not.

I am not sure but this may work for me.

If loneliness causes poor health habits, a machine that cures poor health habits would be an exquisite device for psychological torture - removing the possibility of death while preserving all the yearning for it. Asimov wrote a story once about that -- a selfish and suffering God who tortured brilliant souls by giving them eternal life so they would help God in God's quest for a method of suicide that would kill an immortal.

The BBC ran a phenomenal article here [1] detailing a wide array of data on the longevity of people through the ages. How long did higher class Ancient Greeks live? Ancient Greece dates back to starting around 3,300 years ago. In spite of their remarkable technological achievements they remained almost entirely ignorant of medicine. They relied on a system based around the 'four humors' - blood, phlegm, yellow/black bile. They had no clue about germs or any other basic fundamentals of modern medicine. Vaccines? You need to wait about 3,000 years. And their hygenic habits are the sort we'd find pretty questionable. For instance they obviously did not have rolls of 2 ply at their toilets. Instead what they had were sponges - butt brushes. One guy'd do his business. You'd come in, and give the well used sponge a swirl about in some water. For the fancy toilets, you might give it a swirl in some vinegar. And then you'd have your go.

So how long did they live? The BBC article mentioned a 'census' of the longevity of individuals we now are familiar with. The median life expectancy was 72 years. Pythagorus - 75, Hippocrates - 90, Plato - 80, etc. Of course there's some some selection bias there, but there is also other evidence of their longevity as well. For instance in Ancient Rome one could not hold the office of Consul until reaching the age of 43, first office was not available until age 30. Another mildly intriguing part anecdote there is that the life expectancy declined pretty substantially for those born in the latter part of the civilization (after 100BC) to only 66 years. The likely culprit there is the installation of significant public piping systems... made out of lead. They inadvertently poisoned themselves for centuries.

The article also goes on to analyze numerous other sources than tend to paint a recurring picture: there was high infant and youth mortality, but people who made it to adulthood tended to have a life expectancy not all that different than we do today. It seems to suggest that a large part of our increased life expectancy is not from the trillions of dollars we've spent on trying to find a [profit making] pill for everything, but instead from very simple things like access to clean water and food.

[1] - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancien...

I guess a big part of the benefits come from being able to feel part of something. Even if you don't interact directly with others, you can still feel like you belong, like you are part of something. Just being there might work in many cases.

If you are unable to achieve that, you can easily feel like shit no matter the amount of interaction you have with others.

Happiness is exactly the same in every human being - is just a certain type of chemistry. In which ways people find access to it depends on person, environment, society and your background - this is what is unique.

But all these things are indirect and involve (unreliable) mediums. There are ways to access this directly and be happy and ecstatic every single moment without literally anything.

> I think maybe being with others is most pleasant when one has a healthy relationship with one's self.

I don't agree with the rest of your points, but the quoted one is key.

No studies to back this up, but I would say that you are decidedly better off being alone than being with (for lack of better word) evil people.

These are degrees of evil that seem to be tolerated but that's another topic.

In the end, it's literally all in our minds. It's technically in our control (balance of chemicals). Maybe we should devise a way to control them sentiently.

>In my experience no human is ok with being socially isolated for a long period of time

Citation needed.

There was an article on HN a couple of weeks back about a guy who spent 20+ years alone in the woods and was perfectly happy for it.

I prefer my own company than others. Most days I was isolated, until I found my wife. But now we just isolate ourselves.

I haven't seen friends or family in months. There was a 5 year period where I didn't see anyone.

Time just goes by, and I'm so wrapped up in my own life that I don't notice.

FWIW, I bet that there’s a lot of hormone replacement therapy going on in that cohort.

>because we innately want freedom from self

Ironically Self is the freedom. The problem is people haven't found what Self is and calling it all kinds of things.

One simple thing to look at - does it give you absolute freedom unconditioned by time and space? If not - this is not yet true Freedom.

I can't relate to that and I think that a measurably large portion of the population can't as well.

I like being with myself. So much so that I deliberately drive instead of flying so that I can have more "me time".

The mark of an intellectual is curious mind is to investigate even things that seem obvious, to understand their nature.

This is not obvious at all, especially the effects on health.

Mental health - ok, that might be something that you can deduce based on examples (grumpy old solo grandpa that yells in the air - mental issues).

But can you really conclude just from common sense that human relationships have effect on your _physical health_?