Let’s Talk About Your Relationships
If that title made you feel anxious, please read on.
Does the quality of our relationships affect our health?
Any of us, who has ever gone through struggles with our partners, children, parents, or colleagues know the answer is an obvious “Yes.”
How many of us today alone have tuned out to what someone was saying — distracted by thoughts about an argument, a misunderstanding or a hunch that something might not be right with someone we work with, live with or depend on. I often find myself in meetings not listening to a thing the presenter is saying with a pit in my stomach ruminating about the way I yelled at my kids or snapped at my husband while trying to get out of the door that morning, worried that I’m not being a good sister or daughter or wondering if my friends are going to be annoyed when I suggest we change our dinner plans again!
We are all familiar with the sleepless nights, racing hearts, and poor health habits that result from the stress that come when our relationships are strained.
Conversely, we find that in times when our relationships are humming along, we sleep more, make healthier choices and are more productive at work.
Of Course Our Relationships Affect Our Health!
Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and bestselling author who is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. I first learned about Esther’s work when Alexandra Drane recommended I watch Esther’s celebrated TED talks — which have garnered more than 25 million views.
Recently I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with Esther in preparation for her visit to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in September as a speaker in our “What’s Next Health?” speaker series. When I asked her what she wanted to achieve with her visit, she set the bar high saying: “I want your colleagues to never again think that they can talk about health without including relational health.”
In fact, her credo is that the quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships.
Our Broken Relationship with Relational Health
To achieve this goal, we have to understand: Why doesn’t relational health garner the same attention as physical or mental health? Why is it that we rarely consider this health input (and outcome) for those we are trying to help live more healthy lives?
Personally, I wonder if it’s because it’s awkward or uncomfortable to talk about relationships, sex, desire or our feelings, at work. I know that when I hosted a discussion about how a healthy sex life relates to overall health at the Foundation a couple of years ago, my face was red the entire time.
Professionally, I suspect that few at my evidence-based organization have even encountered the term “relational health,” let alone the science to place the connection between the health of relationships and wellness front and center. It’s not that this research doesn’t exist. Esther would point to this research suggesting the myriad ways that relationships impact our health. But the Journal of Marriage and Family doesn’t show up often on public health syllabi.
As a Foundation that looks to build a Culture of Health, we often talk about the need to impact health where people live, learn, work, play and pray. As such, we must focus on what happens in these places; these collections of interactions between people.
Perhaps we should consider the idea of addressing health, “with whom you live, learn, work, play and pray?”
What Does a Healthy Relationship with Relational Health Look Like?
I don’t mean to suggest that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doesn’t do work to support healthy relationships. When we look at our work through a relational health lens we see many bright spots within our work.
Four that come to mind are:
- Our investment in Atlas Caremaps, which help families understand the different roles and responsibilities people have when coordinating care for a family member.
- Our current inquiry with the Center on Advanced Hindsight into better understanding questions of trust and expertise for provider/patient relationships when determining treatment plans.
- The seminal work conducted by our grantee, Nicholas Christakis, which explored how our social network impacts our health.
- Our long-time support for the Green House Project, which created a new vision for skilled nursing care by flipping the institutional model and creating small homes staffed by “Shahbazim” that put dignity at the center of the relationship between elders and caregivers.
But I am aware of few examples in the U.S. that compare to these programs Esther described from other countries, where relational health is systematically supported:
- In the Netherlands, comprehensive sex education starts in Kindergarten. Over a week, four-year-olds are taught love and relationships. After elementary school, students experience a curriculum unit called “Long Live Love” which covers relational health in all its forms, from how to understand your emotions, to sex education, to communicating your feelings to those in your life.
- In some cultures, there is no need for parents to have “the talk” about sex because by the time they reach the age when parents think their children may be considering becoming sexually active, they have had a lifetime of healthy conversations about relationships.
Where Should We Begin? Let’s Talk About SEX!
During her visit, I couldn’t help but ask for advice about how to talk with my kids about sex. Esther answered by talking about the importance of parents welcoming and acknowledging the boyfriend or girlfriend of their children who are teenagers and young adults. She believes that it is much healthier for young people and their partners to feel supported in their relational explorations than feeling they have to sneak around, embarrassed or ashamed at getting caught having sex. As Esther points out, sex is natural — being irresponsible is the risk factor. Parents can do a lot to help their children learn what they want in a relationship, and experiment with intimacy on their path towards a healthy future.
Listen to Esther tell a personal story about how she approached the developing relational health of her own children.
It’s not just parents who need to shift their perspective. The way we talk (and don’t talk) about relational health is also affected by policy. As just one example, Esther told us that after much debate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to strike recommended language in its sexual health resources that made any reference to pleasure.
It would seem to me that a healthy relationship with relational health starts with the same basic tenet in all relationships: good communications. There should be, to use the term popularized by Alexandra Drane, no “unmentionables” when it comes to our relationships, and all facets of relationships should speak to both the benefits and potential harm that comes with the territory. We can all help normalize these discussions by having these discussions at work, in our social circles and with our parents and grandparents. We can ask routinely, what might be the impact of this grant on the relationships of the people we are trying to help?
How is Your Relational Health?
What do you do to build healthy relationships at home and at work? What’s your relational health equivalent to working out or eating well? How do you support colleagues’ and friends’ efforts to strengthen their relationships? How do you address relational health in your work?
Alexandra suggests that HR departments may have an important role to play — offering support for workers going through challenging relational health crises. Esther shared that increasingly business organizations are recognizing the importance of healthy work relationships and bringing her in to address it.
What do you think we could all do to leverage relational health to build a Culture of Health? Please share your hunches, ideas or programs that reflect Esther’s goal that “people never again think that you can talk about health without including relational health.” Feel free to share anything. No need for embarrassed red faces here :)
If you’re looking for more inspiration and nuance in this discussion, please listen to my 30 minute one-on-one chat with Esther. It was a highlight for me this year, and I hope it is every bit as valuable to you as it was to me.
