“You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” – Harper Lee
The eternal debate between whether your blood relations are more important than your friends seems to have come to an end.
According to a study, your pals may be more important than family relationships when it comes to your health and happiness.
The study examined the impact of family and friendships on our physical and mental well-being and concluded that friendship was linked to good health and more happiness.
The research published in Personal Relationships, looked at data from nearly 2,80,000 people from almost 100 countries.
While it is important to have friends, the quality of friendships you maintain also matter a lot.
The study also analysed 7,500 adults separately, and revealed that people who had positive friendships were found to be healthier than those who were in a stressed or strained relationship with their friends. But the impact of good or bad family relationships was reported to be negligible.
This means that your relations with your family do not matter much when compared to those with your friends.
The benefits of having close pals increase as the respondents turn older, reinforcing the fact that long-lasting friendships provide the best support. Those friendships have stood the test of time.
Friends can provide much needed support when things get tough with relatives. While most of the things we do for our relatives may be out of some obligation, the same is not true for friends.
Friends are anytime better than family.