Listening to NPR yesterday, I heard this interesting discussion on Talk of Nation on what makes us happy. One of the guests was journalist, Joshua Wolf Shenk whose article “What Makes Us Happy” appears in the June issue of Atlantic magazine. Shenk writes about a Harvard study that has followed 268 men for 72 years. The study’s director, George Valliant makes these points:
- The take home lesson is to always enjoy where you are now.
- It isn’t conforming or keeping up with the Joneses. It is playing and working and loving and probably the most important is loving.
- Good sibling relationships are especially important.
- Social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class leads to successful aging.
- The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people.
The NPR show was a call-in show and at one point they were discussing how we have to experience life traumas to experience happiness. They didn’t get to talk about divorce but that’s definitely one of life’s traumas. A number of the women I’ve spoken with experienced their divorces as the depths of unhappiness and yet they have gone on to reinvent themselves and create lives richer in ways that were unimaginable before. That can be true regardless of who initiated the divorce. For some women who initiated their divorces, the release from the marriage was a relief but the realization that the marriage had failed nonetheless brought grief and pain. The divorce process for these women forced them to evaluate their lives (and sometimes the lives of their children) and decide what it would take for them to be happy.
My mother instilled in me the tenet that what goes on in a marriage is between hsuband and wife and not to be discussed outside. I think that, in part, was responsible for the enormous sense of relief I felt when we were separating – I no longer had to keep up the facade of a happy marriage. It also meant I could be much more honest and open in my relationships with my friends and I think that’s one the main reasons why I am happier now than before. I’m more true to myself. Are you happier after your divorce or separation? What do you credit with making you happier?