The Hidden Cost of Being ‘Too Independent’ (and How to Fix It)

All right, welcome, everybody, to Today's episode. I'm Dr. Gary Lewandowski, Chief love scientist here at Love Strategies, and I'm flying solo today to talk to you about you can do life alone, but here's why you should want to. Today's episode starts off, I guess the idea from this came from some common advice that we know is out there, right? And it's this advice that you don't need to depend on anyone else, especially not a romantic partner, to succeed or be happy. Now, that's super enticing. It's empowering sounding, but it's a myth that's actually making people more miserable than they should be. There's even. There's a it. Well, this is the less cynical version of. You hear these other things that people will say, like, being single is cheaper than getting a divorce lawyer. And like, okay, that's terrible, right? We know that that's. That's bad advice. But I also think that this general idea is sometimes wrapped up in girl power or girl boss mentality, where it's a, you know, we don't need men to make us happy. And you know what I'd say to that? I'd say you're right, but you're also wrong. And I think it comes from this mistaken idea that you can be perfectly happy and healthy going it alone. Now, that's not 100% incorrect, but this is the false premise that independence and self sufficiency is the ultimate goal, which I would argue it's not. That's not the ultimate goal. Because there's a difference between something being okay, viable, acceptable, enjoyable, fulfilling in many ways, right? It can be all those things. Being single and not being in a relationship can be all those things. But I would also argue it's still not the most ideal outcome. And so in today's episode, gonna share what I mean. A lot of support, a lot of science, some stories, maybe a little soul wrapped up in there. Because I've spent my entire life studying relationships because I have a fundamental belief that relationships are the best way to help people thrive. It's why we do what we do at Love Strategies. And it's something I, you've heard me probably say on previous podcasts that, you know, your relationship decision, who you decide to spend your life with, it's the most important decision because it's the one decision you make that impacts every other facet of your entire life. And so it's. It's literally why I've spent the last 20 plus years of my life researching and Teaching about relationships. And so, speaking of which, I like to share kind of a. A story, something that happened as I was researching this. Every podcast, I research these topics like it's a research paper, right? Dive into the science, make sure everything we're saying is backed up by science. And I've been teaching about relationships for a very long time. And one of the things I do is I teach a college course on relationships, and it's very much like the courses I teach with Love Strategies, right? In fact, some of it's the exact same stuff. Now, while I was doing the research for this podcast, I had two of my students, within a day or two, both reach out to me on LinkedIn because I must, I must have posted something about relationships on, on LinkedIn, Psychology of relationships or something. And I'm just, I just want to read you the feedback because I think it really speaks to the importance of some of the things I'm going to talk about in today's episode. And, and so the first student, she said, one of the. It's one of the best courses I've taken, even after 10 years. And this is speaking of the relationships course that, that I teach at a college level, but to take that, you need to be enrolled in at the university, and there's tests and things which you probably don't want to take, but it's, it's literally the same material that I teach with Love Strategies, right? And so another student, a guy, says, I. And this is a direct quote. I'm not. This is direct quote. I've been happily married seven years, due in large part to what I learned and applied from your class. It's wild just how impactful it can be to have basic awareness of potential issues and how to mitigate them. Like, yes, I would. I want to put this on a billboard because this is the importance of learning about relationships, right? You can make relationships better. And relationships are the single most important thing that you can decide to do. And if you're going to decide to do them, you want to do them well. And that's why you want to learn as much as you possibly can about relationships. And so this learning about them is critical, right? I mean, it's, this is going to be decades of your life spent with this person. So, you know, like, we want to, we want to get this right, and we want to get it right because we don't want to go it alone, right? And it's. We are wired. For us, we are wired. We have an evolutionarily, an evolutionary need to belong. We're not just social creatures, we're social survivors. Because evolution has shaped humans to bond, belong, build community, to get along. Because our advantage as a species is in our cooperation. You by yourself. Okay, maybe not. You think of a random human by themselves out in the wild, you are not faster, you are not quicker, you are not more capable. You are basically a walking meal for predators, right? But as soon as there's one more human there and the two of you can communicate, coordinate, you have a major advantage. All of a sudden you go from some other creatures meal to apex predator just like that. And it's. I know that sounds ridiculous. Like, oh, you know, what am I going to be in that situation? But just think about yourself in a brand new city, brand new city, no idea where you're at and you're by yourself like that. That sounds intimidating. Scary, terrible in many ways. But now imagine yourself, brand new city, with a partner in crime, someone else by your side to help navigate, help figure things out immediately. This is better. And so you know, this, this episode is going to be very research heavy. But because I do want to make it clear that this is not just an opinion, right? It's one of the great things that we do is like, we don't just spout off opinions, it's backed by science. And so the research shows we naturally form alliances with people we think we can trust. Okay? We don't need research to tell us that we can, we can figure that out by watching any reality TV show, right? Alliances form, people find a pal. It's like, you know, it's, it's a look. It's like, hey, we're on the same side. We've, we've got this together. And that's important because research shows too that 70, 70% of our happiness comes from relationships. Specific. And there's a few specific things. Here are the core factors of a happy life. The number of friends you have, the closeness of the friends you have, the closeness of your family members. Relationships with co workers and neighbors. All key qualities. But what relationship supersedes all of those? It's your romantic relationship. You spend more time with your romantic partner than in any of those other relationships. But it just speaks to the importance of relationships in general. They matter, right? Relationships are important. Time is short. We gotta get this right. And so, you know, I was speaking before about the evolutionary implications of a lot of this. And we are wired in such a way that isolation, being left out hurts, literally hurts, because we have a fundamental need to belong as humans. We need to be affiliated with others, when we are left out, it hurts. And this is, this is a fame famous, at least in social psychology, kind of research paradigm that just shows how important isolation is or how much it hurts. It's called cyberball. And cyberball is, it's actually kind of like what it sounds. It's a bunch of cartoon characters on a screen where a research participant comes in and you get assigned to one of the characters, like, oh, that's you. And you're told that the other two characters are other people in other rooms, other participants. And your job as a group is just pass this ball back and forth to each other. It's all, it's all digital. And so you pass and you pass. And you're all supposed to just kind of pass around in a circle, like sharing. And so that goes on for a little bit. But then at some point in the experiment, as researchers do, they throw a wrench into the system to kind of mess with people, just to kind of see what they do. And so you're the participant, you're passing, you're doing your things, like, okay, whatever. Then all of a sudden something switches and you don't necessarily realize it right away, but the other two participants just stop passing to you. They just pass back and forth between themselves. And you're just like sitting there. Like, imagine yourself on a playground, like, hey guys, hey, I'm open. Hey guys, I'm open. And no one passes you the ball. And so what they find, and this is research from Kip Williams and colleagues out at Purdue University, what they find is that you be, you start to feel socially isolated, you're feeling left out, it violates your need to belong. And so that ostracism, that sense of being left out, triggers the pain centers in your brain. Just like a physical injury, social injury is like physical injury. Your brain doesn't necessarily know the difference. You get excluded, you feel sad. And we know, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about this later, is, you know, being left out, it can compromise your mental and physical health. It's that important. And so we see this in our clients a lot. They won't necessarily have these words. They're not, of course not talking about cyberball, but they'll come into our program and they'll talk about, you know, ask, you know, what, what's been difficult for you lately, you know, what challenges. And you hear a very common story of just the deflating experience that they have on a day to day basis. Just looking around at all their married, partnered friends, you know, maybe it's at work, you know, talking about the trips they go on, doing all these things together and just simply realizing on a day to day basis that, you know, these other people have someone eat dinner with, right? They're not eating dinner alone every night. And I think you start having some of those experiences if, if you're in a relationship, you take so much of this for granted, but if you're single, it just can't, you can't evade it. Like it's smacking you in the face every single day. And it's, it's something again, it physically hurts. And I don't know where I heard, I heard this on a podcast somewhere, but it was this idea. If you're listening to this, you probably love psychology, and so you're probably familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so Maslow's hierarchy of needs basically starts off, says you need shelter and then you need food. And then belonging and esteem, and then you become self actualized. But the point that this person was making is that in many ways that's wrong. Like shelter and food are nice. And then I guess if you're out in the wild, maybe that makes sense. But like for everyday modern humans, here's the fact is like no one, people don't become suicidal or at least not as much suicidal or depressed from lack of shelter and food, right? They actually become suicidal and depressed more from things like lack of belonging, lack of esteem, lack of frankly connection with other people. And so the point that this person was making on this, and I wish I could remember who it was, I'm, I'm sorry, but point they're making is like we don't give enough credit to how much, how important it is to persuade, you know, address this need to belong. It's, it's a major, major component of our happiness, which again is, is the whole point of this podcast is just, you know, you might be able to do life alone, but maybe you shouldn't, maybe you shouldn't want to because there's a lot of really big benefits to having somebody by your side. And so, you know, I talked a little bit about these next two studies in, in my book, but there's research that basically just shows having somebody by your side makes life feel better and easier. So there was a study where they looked at, participants looked at pictures and they were asked to judge like how amazing these pictures were, how realistic they were, how much they enjoyed looking at these pictures. So that was one condition, but then there was another condition where they got to look at the exact same pictures, though, with somebody by their side. And so in that condition, just simply having somebody there with them, people started describing these pictures as more enjoyable, better, more realistic. It's just kind of brought the pictures to life in a way that it's not that they didn't enjoy them alone, it's just that they enjoyed them even more with somebody else. And I think they're just kind of a beautiful metaphor in that, I think. Can we enjoy life, Life by ourselves? Sure, absolutely. Can you enjoy it perhaps more if you have somebody to share it with? Yes, absolutely. You can, right? And I think so. Here's. You know, that was a. That was a lab study. This next one, these researchers went out in the world, and sometimes researchers do their studies out in the real world. And that's, like, fun. And so this one, I think this was done in Michigan. It was like, on a walkway, actually. I might. I might be. I. I take that back. I think I might be mixing that up with something else. This one was in a park because there was a hill. Right? That's the major component of this. And so researchers standing by this hill in a park as people came walking by, they asked them, how high do you think that hill is? And people would give an estimate. And so what they looked at was the people who gave an estimate while they were by themselves versus people who gave an estimate while they were with somebody else. Now, the whole point of this was. Was just to ask, you know, like, is that 20ft high? Is it 50ft high? And they were. They wanted to be accurate. That was the whole point. It's like, I'm going to see if you can get this exactly right. Here's the this, and I find this wild. People who were by themselves thought the hill was steeper than it was. When people were with somebody else, they perceive that hill as being less steep. There was something about having somebody by your side. And of course, I'm not saying they're consciously processing any of this. They probably had no idea. But when they were with somebody else, they looked at that same exact hill and said, huh? It just seemed less menacing in some way. It was, like, less intimidating. And I think. Let's just, like, pause. Like, just pause for a second and think of the implication of this. Think of all the life challenges that we all face. Can we face them alone? Sure. Could those people walk up that hill alone? Absolutely. I'm not saying they couldn't, but there's something about having somebody else that makes it just seem a lot more manageable. And I do think that that's how relationships impact our lives. I think it's one of those things. So another one. If you're also a fan of the marshmallow of psychology, you probably know about the marshmallow test. Marshmallow test is, um, back in the day, brought kids into a lab, put a marshmallow in front of them, and you have to imagine the. The kids all love marshmallows. This was something they really wanted. So I don't know. To me, I don't like marshmallows. It'd be. Have to be like a Reese's cup or something, peanut butter cup. But, you know, they put a marshmallow in front of the kids and said, you can have this marshmallow, but if you wait, when I come back, I'll give you two. And so this was all about, you know, could they hold out? Could they, you know, regulate their emotions well enough to kind of hold back the temptation of eating one marshmallow? Could they delay gratification? Essentially. And so, you know, that study, of course, found that the. The students or the kids who were able to delay gratification and wait for their second marshmallow, they followed those kids for a long, long time, and they had better outcomes. It's a really important skill to be able to delay gratification. So what I thought was. So that. That's. That's the classic study. What I found really interesting is there's a recently published study where they did the exact same setup, but this time they let the kids wait with somebody else. Like, they basically gave him a buddy. And so what happened was when they added a second child, it helped them resist the marshmallows temptation even more. Again, simply having somebody by their side made the whole thing a lot easier. And so, you know, it's like, okay, you're not gonna have a lot of marshmallow test kinds of. You're not going to encounter a lot of marshmallows out in the wild, I suppose, where you have to say, no, no, I will withhold no marshmallow for me. But I. I think there's a lot of other temptations out there, a lot of other things. You know, it's like, I look at it as, can you stick to your goals? Right? And we all have goals. If you're successful, you have goals every day, like personal career, fitness, healthy eating. We all have goals. When you have somebody else, achieving those goals becomes easier. And so all that, I mean, those are like, kind of like, I start off with some of like, the quirky psychology ones, because I'm not gonna lie, I like those. I'm a huge fan of those. That kind of research is why I love psychology. But there's some other, like, really compelling data about the power of love and relationships. This next piece is a little bit about the physical power of connection. And so essentially my takeaway from this is your relationships might be better for you than even running on a treadmill, which. Which I think is fantastic news, because personally, I. I hate the Dreadmill. Not. Not a fan. We. Our relationships help us in our times of need. And so, you know, here's just a few kind of like, quick highlights. I'm not going to go into each of these studies because the. The details, frankly, don't matter that much. It's. It's kind of the end result, which is people who have better relationships have fewer heart problems, including less heart disease. They have stronger immune systems, they have stronger nervous systems, they have better stress responses, and they're better at managing chronic pain. That all sounds pretty darn good. And again, I think it does. Does dovetail nicely from the. Having somebody with you is super helpful. Right. I think it's also important to acknowledge the opposite. Toxic relationships. Being with somebody who's not good for you can be just as damaging as being single, if not more damaging, because toxic relationships are. Have been found to promote chronic illness. Your bad relationship partner impacts your health in a negative way, which I think in many ways sounds obvious, but it's also. There's something to it. I think that when it's backed by science, like, oh, yeah, wow, being with somebody who's miserable all the time, that's not nice to me, that is impacting how I feel about myself and my physical health. Wow. I think that's a helpful perspective to keep in mind. Right. It's really. This stuff really is that important. Um, and so, you know, I will also say those were examples of the physical health implications. I could have spent 20 minutes, 30 minutes on a podcast just talking about all the physical health benefits of relationships. I just thought that would get boring. But just suffice it to say, there's tons. There's tons and tons of benefits to having a relationship partner. But it's not just your physical health, it's also your mental health in particular for your mental health. The thing that helps about relationships is support having somewhere, someone there explicitly by your side. Social support boosts mental health, so the more quality of support somebody feels socially, right, they experience less anxiety, depression, hostility, and loneliness. So tons and tons of Negative emotions. They experience less when they feel like they have somebody by their, by their side. Lots of different versions of studies that show this. And so I'm just going to give you like a little sampling here. Mothers were better at caring for newborn infants who were suffering from congenital heart disease. So ma major, major issue if they felt secure in their adult intimate relationship. So essentially, if mothers felt like they had a good relationship with the father of the child, like their romantic relationship, that bond was strong. They were better at caring for their sick child. I find that just like mind blowingly important in terms of it's not just for ourselves, but being in a good relationship helps us support others. Research also shows that healthy love can literally change your biology. It changes the way your genes express themselves. And that's important in terms of, you know, genes repairing each other. And you know, something that's kind of a buzzword lately is just this idea of reducing inflammation. Relationships help reduce inflammation on the flip side of that relationship to stress. And having less support, research shows, is correlated with a lot of psychological struggles. Thing like in major psychological struggle, things like personality disorders, dissociative disorders, eating disorders, and schizophrenia. So major mental health issues, if you don't have relationship support or you're in a relationship that's distressing, it has psychological implications. And so I, I don't often do this. I, I kind of tell my students never to do what I'm about to do, which is, I always feel like it's a little lazy to quote other people like, you should be able to paraph and explain it yourself. But I, I want to quote something that I came across because frankly, they said it so well and I think there's something powerful about this being a quote. So this is from a 2023 study. And so what they state about relationships and mental health is this quote. A distressed and unsatisfying romantic relationship may be one of the most important social, environmental triggers for the expression of psychopathology. So being in a distressed and unsatisfying relationship is one of the biggest triggers of psychopathology. Psychopathology is all disorders, mental health issues, all that. Yes. And if you've ever seen a friend, a family member in a terrible romantic relationship, you've seen firsthand the impact that that has on their mental health. It's, it's not good. And so, you know, I've been talking a lot about support. I want to give you just a sense of what support means, because support, you can have support in a couple different ways and the more ways, the better. And so what does support really mean? There's four types of support and this, this again is from, from research. One, emotional support. That's feeling seen, heard and understood. Having someone who helps you feel seen, heard and understood, hugely important. This is one, the one we probably think of the most when we think about romantic relationships. Number two, companionship support. That's just sharing time together, like positive activities, having fun, laughter, just enjoying each other's company. That's companionship support. Three is practical support. Help with the hard stuff. In my house, this is killing spiders. I'm the practical support staff for, for killing spiders. Opening jars, lots of things. But it like all joking aside, but it's, it's nice to have somebody around to do certain things, right? It's the honey do list. Having somebody to help with stuff, lifting heavy things, killing scary bugs, whatever it happens to be. Number four is informational support. This is just having somebody in your life to give a little clarity, a little guidance, a little mentorship, wise words, you know, a different perspective, an honest, genuine, different perspective. Like that's the. You'll also notice these are all qualities of a good friend. Your best friend has all these qualities. Your relationship partner should be your best friend because your best friend is one of the best social support people out there. They help you emotionally. Companionship, practical and informational. They do it all. Your best friend. And that's, that's what we want from our partner too. Here's the thing, the more social support you have, research shows those with higher social Support have a 2 to 4 time lower risk of death. Death, like there, there's no grander implication than when we're talking about death. So social support, it's just another way for me to say what I think is obvious. Hopefully at this point feeling supported is really important and so you want to look for somebody who supports you. Now this is a very different message than how a lot of people date, right? I'm going to go a little bit on a tangent here. But you know, a lot of people date looking for excitement and like fun and mystery and intrigue and chemistry and bubbly sparks and all that, all that kind of stuff. All that's great, fine, okay. But it should not be your primary concern. Primary concern should be something like support, right? We, we, we talk to our clients all the time and in the coaching that we do about really prioritizing long term fulfilling relationships and finding someone who can support you emotionally, informationally, practically and with companionship, super important. I think sometimes people put the companionship stuff first and Almost put all of their emphasis on do we have fun together. And don't get me wrong, that is important, but it's, it's not the most important. It's in there. It's important. It's just not the most important. Emotional support, feeling seen, heard, understood that that stuff matters. You want to, you want to make it to your 50th wedding anniversary, find someone who provides emotional support. A couple of things. You know, I think one of the things that people always like learning about with relationship stuff is some of the brain chemistry that's involved. And so, you know, there is something to this idea of cuddles and chemistry and connection. Your brain and its uptake of dopamine, oxytocin, those two neurotransmitters are our brain's reward for being close, for feeling close. Even things non sexual touching, right. Cuddling, little cuddling releases these pleasure chemicals. You know, you probably heard about oxytocin being the cuddle hormone. And that's true, right? I mean, like that, that does help. There's lots of other stuff going on. Dopamine and oxytocin in the brain are two natural chemicals that are associated with feeling pleasure, relaxation, recalling positive memories, and feeling attachment to other people. And so you know, why, what's going on in your brain that does it lead you to bond with others? Yeah, absolutely. This is why you want to be careful about prioritizing physical intimacy over emotional intimacy. That physical intimacy impacts how you feel about people. The other thing that we know is these chemicals, you know, help people heal. They help people heal from physical ailments. And so to kind of, kind of bring this episode to a close, to wrap this up, you know, why you shouldn't do life alone, why you shouldn't want to do life alone. And I think a client on a recent Mastermind was sharing something that I want to share with you, which is not going to lie. Gave me goosebumps. And like this kind of stuff always does. And so we do these regular Mastermind. They're basically like little courses. They're almost like office hours. You get to ask questions, we learn a little bit and we just talk a lot about relationships. At the beginning of the month, I always do a, hey, let's, let's take a moment to appreciate our progress. And so one of our clients said, I, I've made a major breakthrough in my progress. And I was like, okay, great, you know, let's share. She said her progress was that she's realized that she does not want to get married. I Was like, wait, what? Like, you don't want to get married? And I even said, I was like, wait a second. Does that. Does that sound. That doesn't sound good necessarily. You don't want to get married? She's like, no, no, wait, let me explain. And she said she used to really, really care about the marriage. Like, she needed to get married. Needed. Had to have those ceremony, had to have all the things that go with it. And that was her goal. And what she had realized from being in our program was that's not the goal. It's the byproduct that the goal was finding someone special to share your life with. And she specifically said, what I realized that I really wanted was someone to share my morning coffee with, that I enjoyed talking to, that I enjoyed spending time with. There it is. There's the goosebump moment. Right? And like, yes, that is. That's the goal. That's what we're looking for. Someone to. You have an amazing life. Can you do it alone? Yes. Should you? Maybe not. But will your life be amplified? Will it be better by having someone to share it with? Yeah. And that's what she realized. And she found that. She found that through our program. And I think that's amazing. Now, will she get married? I kind of think she probably will. But the thing was, she decided that that wasn't the real goal. The real goal was about that support, that companionship, someone to make her feel seen, heard, and understood. And so can you survive on your own drinking your coffee alone every day? Yeah, of course you can. Thriving, though? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's thriving in the best possible way. I think to thrive, it takes. It takes. We. It's not just me. And I think, you know, for some people that are hesitant about connection, I think it's important to just hear somebody say. So I'm going to say it. Connection isn't weakness. Connection is wellness. And all the research that I shared today is really about wellness. It's about how your relationships help you. And so I think choosing love, trust, and togetherness is. Is choosing health. It's choosing mental health and physical health in every sense. So I just want to leave you with the thought, you know, what relationship can you nurture today? What's a relationship in your life? And it could be a romantic one. It could be any. Any relationship, really. But what's something you can nurture today? So, thanks. Thanks for sticking with us for this episode. If you made it all the way here to the end, hopefully. Please share this podcast with other folks. You know, so much of our mission is. Is empowering people to thrive in healthy relationships, and so we can accomplish that better when we have your help and sharing this. And so if you're at all interested in what we do or want to learn from us, take one of our courses, be in one of our masterminds. Get. Get some coaching from myself and Adam. You can head over to loveapply.com okay. All right, thanks, everybody. Take care.