Human beings need to feel close to other people. We build relationships, we spend time together. The relationships can be diverse, friendship, family, or romantic dating.
All of them not only make us feel happier but also give real health benefits, which we’ll speak about in detail below. Unfortunately, sometimes relationships can be stressful and harmful as well. If you want to know more about how to keep your mental health in a relationship, check our previous blog post.
Benefit 1: We feel less stressed
It is scientifically proved that people who engage in a committed and long-term relationship have lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. So, people who have a constant partner combat stress easier than singles. They can get emotional support when they feel down or stressed. The research also proved that couples who live together are in general happier than those who date and still live separately. Doctors comment on that just the fact of having somebody to support you all the day makes people healthier and happier.
Benefit 2: We heal faster
The partner motivates a person to take remedies on time or can even help to stop focusing on particular symptoms and feel better. People who have partners are three times more likely to recover after a heart attack and heart surgery. Patients who have long-term partners feel support and are more confident about the results of the surgery. They recover faster and feel less anxious about possible negative effects.
Benefit 3: We develop healthy habits
Healthy relationships encourage us to lead a healthy lifestyle. We feel responsible not only for ourselves but for our partners and tend to become more cautious over time. Your spouse or partner can also lead a healthy lifestyle and motivate you to try a saner diet, start exercising, drop smoking and overeating. It’s much easier to start living a healthy life if people around you care about their health as well.
Benefit 4: Sense of purpose can make our life longer
Psychologists proved that finding a purpose in life lowers the risk of mortality. Setting a goal and striving for it throughout life helps people stop wandering in vain and start behaving in a more reasonable way. A purposeful relationship can give exactly this level of belonging and responsibility for many people. Being a loving partner, people feel that they can make someone else happy or take care of someone. Even this fact alone can give a sense of life. Add a lower level of stress and a healthier lifestyle and you will get a sound grounding for living longer.
Benefit 5: We have lower blood pressure
A healthy relationship makes our heart healthier as well. However, researchers found out that this is not the marital status, but the quality of a relationship that makes us both happier and healthier. Couples who live in a happy marriage usually have very good blood pressure. While people who are not satisfied with their marriage or quarrel a lot with a spouse usually have even worse results than singles. Single people with a large network of acquaintances scored almost the same heart health level as happily married people.
Benefit 6: We feel less pain
Scientists carried out an experiment and found out that people in love can feel less pain. They showed photos to people experiencing pain. The photos of their partners were able to reduce pain a lot, while the photos of other handsome and beautiful people were useless.
Benefit 7. We feel less anxiety
The study by the State University of New York at Stony Brook compared the brain activity of people in long-term relationships with people yet at a romantic stage. Though both types of respondents had activation in the dopamine-reward area, people engaged in long-term relationships also displayed activity in the areas associated with bonding and decreased activity in the parts of the brain responsible for feeling anxiety. So, a long-term relationship may not seem that exciting but it is less stressful at the same time.
Benefit 8. We have a stronger immune system
A better immunity is a logical consequence of having a lower level of stress hormones and a higher level of oxytocin. A stable relationship helps us feel less stress and hence avoid its negative results. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University said that positive emotions can protect people from flu and cold. In addition, the immune systems of people who cohabit for a long time also change and become very similar. This fact is explained not only by a shared lifestyle, positive and negative factors but also shared viruses and bacteria, though it can be not very nice to think about it.
Conclusion
Though the social support we get with relationships is crucial for us, make sure that you don’t focus on particular people. Instead, create a wide circle of friends and acquaintances and engage in different relationships. Focusing on only one person can be dangerous if this person disappears from our circle for some reason.