Relationship Healthspan: Why Longevity Isn't What You Think

“They’ve been married for 50 years.”

Five decades spent together is an accomplishment that only 6 percent of marriages attain (U.S. Census Bureau). It’s impressive. We celebrate these milestone marriages and aspire to find that for ourselves.

Maybe we shouldn’t.

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Longevity may not tell us what we think. We may know that a marriage existed for 50 years, but we don’t know what those years were like. There’s a better way to judge relationship quality. But, before we get to that, let me ask you a question: How long do you want to live?

What most people say would be something like, “I want to live until I’m 100,” or “I hope I make it past 80.” Both answers describe lifespan, or how long you live. Lifespan is your longevity: the total number of years, months, and days you live from birth until death.

However, the number of years you have left isn’t what really matters. Instead, you’re much better off focusing on how well you live during those years. This is your healthspan. It’s a concept popularized by David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School and Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as personalities such as Peter Attia and Bryan Johnson, via his “Blueprint Protocol.”

Healthspan prioritizes quality of life over quantity. It recognizes that adding years to life has limited value if those additional years aren't lived with vitality, mobility, and mental acuity intact. Importantly, to achieve that, the healthspan perspective encourages lifestyle choices that promote activity, fulfillment, and wellness as the key goals. Longevity is the natural byproduct.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: How many years do you want to live in good health and be able to do the things you love? When you think about it, you may not actually want to live to 100 if you spend the last 20 years bedridden and chronically ill. Healthspan matters more than lifespan.

It’s the same with relationships.

Too many people stay in long-term marriages feeling stagnant and stuck.

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Invisible Pain: Quiet Suffering in Long-Term Relationships

Just as we celebrate long lives, we also celebrate long marriages. But 50 years of marriage isn't a success story if 35 of those years were miserable. Too often, couples languish in long-term relationships feeling “adrift in love,” suffering through invisible chronic low-grade dissatisfaction, much like a lingering low-grade illness. They’re stagnant and stuck but hold on for years.

Too many couples remain committed to relationships that aren’t sufficiently nurturing, supportive, or enjoyable. There’s nothing worse than being stuck in a relationship that should have ended many months or years before. Yet, people still stay out of fear of being alone, habit, or simple inertia. It’s always sad to hear someone say something like, “We’ve been together this long, we might as well keep going.”

All of this suggests that longevity and commitment to a relationship are not the best ways to gauge its success. Relationship longevity, or its lifespan, just happens to be the easiest way to measure quality. Counting the years is simpler than quantifying a relationship’s quality. And nothing sounds less romantic than “quantify.” Nothing on a calendar can tell us how happy and healthy a partnership is.

Relationship Vitality Is a Relationship’s Healthspan

What really matters in your relationship isn’t the number of months you can count but the quality of the moments you spend together. Some people are happily married; others are just married. Recognizing this, relationship scientists have traditionally focused on satisfaction as a key quality indicator. That’s better than commitment or longevity but still doesn’t go far enough.

Happiness and satisfaction are fleeting. You deserve more.

For true relationship healthspan, you need to optimize for relationship vitality, or feeling strong, active, and energized. It’s a synergistic relationship that fosters connection, improvement, resilience, support, and reciprocity. Just as a person’s healthspan focuses on activity and energy, relationships full of vitality should be vibrant, meaningful, dynamic, strong, energized, and focused on rejuvenation and growth. That sounds like a healthy relationship worth staying in.

Forever Partners and the Law of Longevity

Most people want an everlasting relationship with their forever partner. Be careful because prioritizing longevity makes commitment seem like the solution to relationship problems. When trouble arises, too many people address it by escalating commitment (e.g., moving in together, getting engaged, getting married, having a kid). They don’t realize that commitment magnifies existing problems and creates new ones. Greater commitment to a relationship lacking vitality may keep you together, but it will likely keep you miserable.

The “law of longevity” suggests a backward solution. It’s the idea that the best way to keep a relationship going strong is to make commitment the byproduct, not the goal. Most people know that quality is more important than quantity. A relationship full of vitality, satisfaction, fulfillment, and meaning is the quality you’re seeking. By prioritizing quality, the quantity takes care of itself. In other words, when you emphasize your relationship’s healthspan and vitality, you will ultimately celebrate many more happy anniversaries.