Participants who ended up happy all had “warm adult relationships” with numerous people. They had good marriages, were close to their children, and had invested in strong friendships. The people “who flourished found love,” one researcher observed, “and that was why they flourished.” On the other hand, people who had not invested in relationships—who had prioritized their careers over families and friends or had struggled to connect for other reasons—were mostly miserable. Take John Marsden, for example. When he was forty-three years old—with almost half his life in front of him—this is what
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