Are you spending enough time with those you love?

When talking to people who are unfamiliar with positive psychology, I often start by describing it as ‘the science of what makes life worth living’, reflecting the MSc in Applied Positive Psychology I’ve just completed.

But one of my favourite descriptions of the field is Christopher Peterson’s wonderfully succinct summation: “Other people matter”.

This message is at the heart of a new book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Study on Happiness by the current directors of the 80-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz.

As someone who regularly reads about and experiences both social isolation and loneliness (the two are often conflated, but different), reading a book on how necessary social connection is for health and well-being might sound like spending hours reading the health warnings on a packet of cigarettes: you know what you’re doing isn’t good for you, and now you have graphic details of exactly how bad for you it really is. Gee, thanks.

But it’s an accessible and enjoyable read, full of anecdotes and life stories springing from the participants, with a couple of exercises for the reader to explore, too.

One of them suggests calculating how many days in total you may have left to share with someone, simply by multiplying the amount of time you spend together each year multiplied by the number of years you can (reasonably) expect to do so.

It’s hardly rocket science, but it’s sobering stuff: as the authors point out, we talk about having no time to nurture our relationships in the present, but assume we’ll have lots of time in the future.

It’s a dangerous assumption to make. In the last month alone, two acquaintances have passed away in their mid-thirties. Together with the specter of Covid’s legacy, including increased incidence of heart attacks, strokes and cancer, I fear it may be more prudent than ever to spend time with those we love sooner rather than later.

Because Waldinger and Schultz clearly state from their research that “the frequency and the quality of our contact with other people are two major predictors of happiness.” Not the only ones, by any means, but predictors we can ignore at our peril.

I have been through some intensely challenging times myself so far this year, and over the last couple of years generally. My anecdata bears out their research, and I’m sure yours can too, for better and for worse.

But how conscious are we of the frequency of our contact with others? And how do we start to discern the quality of those relationships, without becoming needlessly judgmental?

A helpful excerpt from the book places this in greater context, but a simple first step is to write down a list of your closest friends and relatives:

As I no longer have any close relatives it’s incredibly useful for me to actively list my friends, ready for the times when I’m feeling at my most desolate - which is when I struggle the most to remember that I have people in my life who give a crap about me.

But the second half really brings those relationships into focus. Which do you find energising, which do you find depleting .. and how frequently do you see the people who energise you?

From The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Study on Happiness

“What do we mean by energizing and depleting?

These are subjective terms, and that’s intentional; this is about recognizing how you feel when you are with these individuals. Sometimes we don’t really know how we feel about a relationship until we stop to think about it.

In general, an energizing relationship enlivens and invigorates you, and it gives you a sense of connection and belonging that remains after the two of you part ways. It makes you feel better than you would feel if you were alone.

A depleting relationship induces tension, frustration, or anxiety, and makes you feel worried, or even demoralized. In some ways, it makes you feel lesser or more disconnected than you would feel if you were alone.

This doesn’t mean that an energizing relationship will make you feel good all the time or that a depleting relationship will make you feel bad all the time. Even our most vital relationships have their challenges, and many, of course, are a mixed bag. Your general intuition about each person on your list is the thing you want to capture: When you spend time with this person, how do you feel?

Take a look at the chart and think about where each of the people on your list might land.

Do they energize or deplete you? Do you see them a lot, or only a little?

That cherished person you don’t see enough of can act as your starting point. Set them on the map with a small dot—like a star in your social universe.”

I haven’t completed this exercise yet, I admit. I am already aware that the majority of my relationships above the line have less contact than I would like, and I can’t think of any which are particularly depleting, let alone depleting and frequent.

But now that we have this data, what do we do with it? More from Waldinger and Schultz:

“As you set your relationships in their place, think about each one. Why is this person in this particular place? What is it about the relationship that compelled you to put them there?

Is this relationship where you want it to be? If a relationship is particularly difficult and has been giving you a depleted feeling, do any reasons for this come to mind?

Checking in with each relationship like this can help us appreciate and be thankful for people who enrich our lives, and it can help us see which relationships we want to work on improving.

Your answers to these questions will (and should) reflect your own preferences about the amount and kind of social connections that suit you. You might realize that you’d like to see this person more often, but that person is in just the right spot. Maybe this other relationship is depleting but important and needs some special attention.

If you have a sense of which direction you’d like a relationship to move, draw an arrow from where they are to the spot you’d like them to be.”

Both self-compassion and psychological flexibility involve mindfulness: directing our attention to our present moment experience. It’s hugely a important starting point for anything, given that the majority of us live on autopilot for the majority of our time.

I wonder, how many of us are on autopilot when it comes to our relationships? How often do our words of love and care translate into actions aligned with our heart’s desire for who we want to be in the world?

For me, I told a friend yesterday afternoon that I was phoning him that evening unless he said otherwise (a slightly bolshy move, but one which was received well). I did it because I know how hard it is to reach out to others when I’m going through challenges (and, ironically, need the contact the most); it was my way of saying, “You are important to me, mate, and I am taking clear action on that”.

Of course, it was a potentially vulnerable thing to do. Fear of rejection looms large for most of us, and I can’t help but look at the above matrix and think, “But what if I want to move someone towards more frequency, and they don’t feel the same way/don’t have the capacity?” (not that I’m speaking from experience of course [cough]).

But I’d like to think that if other people matter to me and I want them to “feel my love”, I can find the courage to take that chance when I’m feeling resourced enough.

And from these small actions, these loving interactions, a good life can be woven, thread by gossamer thread.

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Photo by Anna Tarazevich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/couple-in-floral-shirts-holding-hands-on-green-grass-5080680/