Maybe blood really is thicker than water. A recent study from the University of Chicago found that people who had close relationships with family members lived longer than those who had close relationships with friends.
Researchers with the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, which surveyed around 3,000 people born between 1920 and 1974, asked participants who were between the ages of 57 and 85 to list up to five people they are close with. Five years later, when the researchers followed up, they found that people who included more family members in their list, as opposed to, say, friendships, were less likely to have died in the interim.
It has been a kind of mantra of young adults for decades now that your friends really are your extended family. You move to a big city, get apartments near each other, hang out at the same coffee shop, support each other through your highs and lows, and even have Friendsgiving together. From “Friends” to “Sex and the City” to “How I Met Your Mother” to “Girls,” it’s easy to see how this new modern approach to your 20s and 30s is so much easier and cooler than the old plan of leaving your parents’ home to get married and start a family of your own.
But there are plenty of cracks in this happy facade. The urban tribe is not the same as an extended family after all. These ties often do not last. And sooner or later, 20- and 30-somethings figure that out. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist and author of “Why 30 Is Not the New 20,” tells the story of a 25-year-old woman named Emma who came to her office for help: “She sobbed for most of the hour. She’d just bought a new address book, and she’d spent the morning filling in her many contacts, but then she’d been left staring at that empty blank that comes after the words ‘In case of emergency, please call . . .’ She was nearly hysterical when she looked at me and said, ‘Who’s going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck? Who’s going to take care of me if I have cancer?’ ”
Many emerging adults go for a decade or more without an “in case of emergency.” It’s an odd way to live, this kind of wandering through life with ever-loosening ties. These friends can pick up and move at any point. You may be more important to them than they are to you. It starts out as a freeing experience, but for many young adults, it can be unsettling. Whom can you depend on?
Friendship, almost by definition, is much more dependent on the time and place we are at in our lives.
In an op-ed in the New York Times this year, Rebecca Traister, author of “All the Single Ladies,” describes her close friendship with another woman, Sara, whom she met early in her career. “In each other, we found respite, recognition, a shared eagerness to relax, take stock and talk about it all.” Writes Traister, “Friendships provided the core of what I wanted from adulthood — connection, shared sensibilities, enjoyment.” But then Sara met the man of her dreams and left town. Even after she returned a few years later, things were never the same.
It is not that there are never rifts between family members, but friendship, almost by definition, is much more dependent on the time and place we are at in our lives. Our old friends have not abandoned us per se, but when they leave to follow career opportunities or a significant other across the country, they simply can’t be counted on to be our emergency contact. They will not be checking up on us regularly, helping us in the ways that lead to longer, healthier lives. They are not taking walks with us or encouraging us to go to the doctor when we’re sick or giving us an outlet to vent our frustrations on a regular basis.
Even when we get older and the likelihood that our friends will pick up and move for a boyfriend or a promotion is less, their responsibilities to their own families have expanded. They may have sick family members or children who need help caring for their own children.
“Because you can choose your friends,” said James Iveniuk, lead author of the study, people might assume that they would help you live longer. “You might be better able to customize your friend network to meet your specific needs.” But “it is the people who in some sense you cannot choose, and who also have little choice about choosing you, who seem to provide the greatest benefit.”
In other words, the key to longevity may be less “Sex and the City” and more “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Whether it’s the key to happiness is a whole other story.