Ben Rine

There's so many ways that we found to divide ourselves from others.

And I think what we've become especially good at, unfortunately, is if we detect one of those, then we kind of push the person away and say, well, you're not like me.

I'm not going to be your friend.

That is a very like tribalistic ancient instinct of the brain.

and so what i advise people to do is try to look for other commonalities that aren't the sort of top of mind things like those i just mentioned but for instance you know go to a gathering of people who share something that you like to do for instance you like to mountain bike okay we'll find a group that's meeting up to mountain bike together you walk in the door or

You know, having a spouse and living together inherently, you are experiencing more social contact, which is a good thing.

But I think what's really interesting is some of the most compelling data on that specifically and the benefit of a long term partnership is actually in the face of adversity.

There's some studies looking at cancer patients, and they found that in several forms of cancer,

When they looked at just pure survival rates, being married was a stronger predictor of survival than doing chemotherapy.

And of course, I should quickly asterisk that and note that part of that was because being married, when you are married, your partner is encouraging you to get the top of the line therapies, which includes chemotherapy.

It's not that chemotherapy is not helpful, but also just the social support of coming home every day to a person who cares so deeply about you.

is there for you in the face of stress i mean that i think is is kind of irreplaceable and um it's pretty amazing that if you try to think about you know what would be if you looked at a list of like 100 000 people diagnosed with cancer and you try to figure out is it their exercise is their diet you know what's going to be the strongest predictor it's actually their their marriage status and that's quite remarkable