How's Your Social Life?

I had a baby shower at my house a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a big event, but it was a lot of fun. We were honoring two "mommies-to-be" from our staff who are due within five weeks of each other--one with a girl and the other with a boy. Can you guess which is which from the photos?

Why am I mentioning the baby shower? I guess because it depicts the friendship of several women and co-workers who came together to celebrate the wonder of new life with two people they like and enjoy--the kind of relationships that add to the measure of one's days.

If you've been following the blog the past two weeks you know I've been writing about "9 Lessons for Living Longer" from The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. According to Buettner and the researchers he chronicles, there are nine "power principles" shared by the people who live the longest, happiest lives. I've already written about the four related to diet and exercise. Last week I talked about purpose. This week I'd like to say a few words about how important relationships, our social life, is to our overall health and well-being.

According to a Gallup-Healthways poll on well-being, the happiest Americans socialize six or seven hours a day--especially with family and friends. Another study by Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist from Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California in San Diego, among 12,000 people living in a small Massachusetts town, the happiest people were also the most connected. Additionally, the happier one's friends became in this study, the happier their closest associates became. At the same time, other studies have suggested that having a depressed friend increases the likelihood of becoming depressed one's self.

The connection between having a close network of friends and one's personal happiness didn't surprise me. Years ago our family lived in a community of about 25,000 in northern Illinois. We were situated right off the I-90 tollway about 50 miles from the northwest suburbs of Chicago. While we lived there, we witnessed 700-800 new housing starts within two miles of my office. We were an attractive location for people who wanted to get out of the Chicago metropolitan area to a different life in a small city.

Trouble was, our newest residents didn't actually leave the city. Every day they awoke to one or one and one-half hour commute one way, spending a minimum of two to three hours in traffic five days out of seven. This meant that for much of the year they left before dawn and returned after dark. They lived in comfortable homes in pleasant neighborhoods, but they didn't know their neighbors. They didn't have time to connect with people in their new community or to visit regularly with friends and family they left behind in Chicago.

What was the impact? One day I started calculating how many of my clients with marriage, family and mental health problems had moved to the area within the past two years. More than 50%. It occurred to me that the stress of moving and the lack of a good support system might be creating a lot of stress in their family.

According to findings quoted by Buettner, "Recent research has ... shown that we're likely to get more satisfaction from friends with whom we can have a deep conversation. . . Since friends are long-term adventures, surrounding ourselves with the right people, and engineering our lives so we spend more time with those people, should have a profound, long-term impact on our happiness."

There's more I could say, but I think this post is getting long enough. Besides, you might want to consider reading calling a friend or starting a group to discuss the book. There you'll find all kinds of ideas for encouraging friendship and community, thereby enriching and potentially lengthening your life in a very enjoyable way.

Thinking friendly thoughts,

Dr. Jennifer Baker