A shared universe › Blog › What really makes a good life · Español
According to the longest study ever carried out on adult life, what matters most for a happy, healthy life is good relationships, more than money or fame. We know this because Harvard University has been following the same people since 1938, from their youth into old age.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 268 of the university’s students. Over time another group joined, from the Glueck study: 456 men who had grown up in the poorest neighbourhoods of Boston. Year after year they were asked about their work, their health and their lives, and later the research was extended to their wives and children, who now number more than 1,300. It is directed by the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, its fourth director, according to Harvard University’s official news publication.
One detail helps to read it properly: as the study’s own website explains, both original groups were made up only of men. That is why its conclusions carry more weight when they match what has been found in research with women and in other countries.
The conclusion, says Waldinger, is clear: what counts most in a happy and healthy life is not money, or fame, or success. It is good relationships. The people who were most satisfied with their relationships at fifty were the ones who reached eighty in the best health. In other words, the way someone lived their relationships in midlife said more about how they would grow old than their cholesterol level did.
Waldinger also talks about loneliness, and compares it with risks as well known as smoking or alcohol. Other bodies have reached similar conclusions. In 2025, the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection estimated that one in six people worldwide is affected by loneliness, and noted that loneliness and isolation increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline and early death.
What the study highlights is not how many people you have around you. What matters is the quality: feeling that there is someone you can count on. And relationships do not have to be perfect.
According to Harvard, among the older couples in the study who argued often, memory did not suffer as long as each felt they could really count on the other when the going got tough. What protected them was knowing that, when the moment came, the other would be there. Waldinger sums it up in one sentence: good relationships protect the body and the brain too.
The fact that relationships look after our health does not mean that people who live alone are doomed to anything, or that their loneliness is their fault. Some loneliness arrives with a move, being widowed, an illness or a change of job, and nobody chooses it. If that is your situation, this article on unwanted loneliness looks at what really helps.
Nor does it mean you need a big family or a huge group of friends. Sometimes a neighbour to chat with every morning is enough, or a brother to ring, or someone to go walking with. What counts is that the bond is one of trust.
Relationships do not ask for grand gestures; they ask for steadiness. A few simple ideas:
If you find it hard to put your thanks into words, here are some ideas for saying thank you in a way that lands.
In A shared universe you can light a star with “What I’m grateful for” for that person you count on. You write why in a few lines, without your name or theirs, and the star shines for seven days. Other people can keep it company with a tap or a few words.
And if you can, tell them too.