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Comment by throw48e7 | Hacker News Reader

> Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline

I call bs, selection bias. If something bad happens, the "close relationship" ends faster than you can say "divorce".

If you manage to maintain close relationship way into retirement, yiu are very lucky. Of course you will be in great shape.

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I'm not so sure.. I'm an introvert and a loner, so I often feel a bias against these kind of assertions. I want to be able to continue being a loner, feel good about it, exhibit resilience and self-reliance in a way that leaves me satisfied with my days, and invested in my intentions.

I don't have a lot of friends, but I have a few. I'm divorced, but I have a great kid and am still actively intertwined, familial-y speaking, with my ex-.

I wouldn't be able to say how all this affects my EOL quality and vitality, but I'm almost 50 and I don't feel diminished or negatively impacted by my life decisions or lifestyle yet.

I'm not "lonely" but I work to make sure I'm "alone" a good amount. I feel the urge to get social about once every 3 months and I can usually make it happen. I have a few places in the world where I travel, have friends, and can be super-social for a few weeks at a time.

If not determined by a lower bound, I wonder if they meant it qualitatively as we all quantitatively.

You sound like you have enough close relationships to sustain you.

I dont want to speak for OP, but I am at similar situation. I maintain close relationship with family to help people, not to "recharge".

Close relationship are energy suckers. For relaxation there are casual friends and flinks. But I would not call that close relationships.

When these studies talk about the value of "close" relationships, they tend to point to properties like respect, trust, and emotional intimacy. Basically the relationship characteristics that someone with a secure attachment style tends to develop. (Which raises an interesting question, are they really finding that attachment style is the biggest contributor to happiness?)

It's not necessarily a function of how much time you spend with the counterparties, or exactly how many relationships you have.

If you have strong, healthy relationships with your kid, ex, and a friend or two you're probably already in the "good" column.

I'm not sure why this was down-voted. Poster is right about the correlation-causation. When I'm stress-free and stable, I have an easy time maintaining friendships. When I'm stressed out and overloaded, I don't have time for friends, and when I do, I sometimes drive people away.

I find having friends makes burdens lighter. Having a conversation with someone during a stressful time is a great way to gain perspective, get helpful advice, just talk though it, or at minimum, escape for a bit.

Maintaining relationships has nearly nothing to do with luck and everything to do with doing those things that are required to maintain relationships. Those come naturally to some people but for others they are learned skills that require some focus and effort. But if you fail it's almost certainly not because of bad luck, but rather because you decided that it was too much bother.

"Luck" in the meaning of statistics. Chances are not favorable.

And please stop victim blaming. Not everyone can manage two jobs, while doing third shift at home.

Even people who work long hours can build close relationships with co-workers. The point of the article is not about working a lot versus less. It's about where you seek fulfillment and rewards within your life.

Yes, this is an aspect of secure attachment. Securely attached people prioritize relationships; relationships take time and effort and require reliability.

Insecurely attached people are usually not satisfied with relationships, and consequently don't prioritize them. The (possibly unconscious) expectation of a bad relationship is self-fulfilling.

https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-style...

The book "Aging Well" goes into detail about the men themselves, the study perimeters, and the interviews they conducted:

https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Well-Surprising-Guideposts-Deve...

None of these guys led perfect lives. Alcoholism, abuse, death, divorce. But as they grew older the things they most often cited in hours of interviews as objectively making them happier, were the relationships they forged and kept along the way.

> If something bad happens, the "close relationship" ends faster than you can say "divorce".

I think it's important to note, close relationships can take forms other than marriage. I think even for those of us who are married, having your spouse being your only close relationship probably isn't the healthiest.

> If you manage to maintain close relationship way into retirement, yiu are very lucky. Of course you will be in great shape.

If you think both relationships and physical health are factors of luck, there's no reason to believe that those who have good luck in relationships would also have good health.

A link in this study does, in fact, suggest they aren't independent variables.

The suggestion isn't that they are independent variables, it's that the causality goes in the opposite direction. If you have poor health and/or fortune, your relationships will deteriorate as a result. It's a deeply uncomfortable hypothesis but seems quite plausible.

I'm pretty introverted and generally dislike (in a passive this person will probably not be a new close friend type of way) most people I meet. I've still managed to develop a handful of close relationships over the years. Even the ones I fucked up I can still reach out to and get a response if I need it.

Will everyone of them always be able to be there for me? No. But I'm not always there for all of them. My brothers about the only one I assume I could talk to about anything anytime. But just because other are not available to me during tough times doesnt mean I don't have a close relationship with them.

That’s kind of a pessimistic take, but you raise a good point.

Maintaining a close relationship can be difficult when faced with many hardships. It’s not unusual for a couple to divorce if a child dies or a partner has an addiction problem (for example).

So is it the close relationship that brings happiness, or does the fact you’ve maintained a close relationship reflect a life with fewer hardships and that’s what’s driving the happiness?

This isn’t a blanket statement by any means, many relationships are strengthened by hardships.

I'd love for more data on this. Is ability to maintain a close relationship also a predictor of ability to overcome bad things that happen? That is, is there some overarching skill or ability that those people have whose close relationships survive to 80 to withstand such difficulties, or is it luck?

I'm thinking those weren't close relationships? :)

Just in the shitty western paradigm of what a marriage has turned into. A marriage never works with equal partners. One person needs to be dominant.

If you are going to downvote this comment, provide evidence. It's an empirical claim and the direction of causality OP is proposing is totally plausible. Did the authors of the original study control for this?

I mean the quote is literally "relationships at 50" and "outcome at 80." It's not "relationships at 80." Causality is inherent in the 30 year gap between factor and effect.

Only a partial control. Some bad effect @50 can cause both the divorce and the problems at @80

"Good dental hygiene at 50 correlates with cardiac health at 80, therefore brushing your teeth is good for your heart."

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