The Difficult People We Cannot Escape

One of the most repeated truisms in social-science research is: “The No. 1 best thing for your well-being is your relationships.” Despite using this line myself many times, I’ve nevertheless questioned its universality. Who hasn’t nodded along in recognition while listening to a story about a nightmare roommate, or had a narcissistic relative who makes everything about himself? The Subreddit r/Friendship Advice would be a ghost town if everyone’s relationships were truly enhancing their quality of life.An emerging body of research validates my sense that surely not all social ties are beneficial. Relationships with people who are draining, critical, or otherwise difficult can compromise our mental and physical health. Shira Offer, a sociologist at Bar-Ilan University, in Israel, who has studied these so-called negative social ties, told me, “For a long time, social scientists have focused on the positive aspects of relationships. And finally, we’re also seriously dealing with the negative aspects.”Researchers have even come up with a term for the people who wear us down: hasslers. For a study published this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of sociologists analyzed data from thousands of people about individuals who often “caused them problems” or “made life difficult.” About a third of the sample knew at least one hassler, and on average, 8 percent of the people this group knew were hasslers. Women were more likely than men to have hasslers in their lives, and they knew more hasslers than men did.Hasslers, the researchers found, tended to be people who irritated the study respondents but whom the respondents could not escape. Co-workers and roommates were frequent hasslers, as were relatives. “Family members were among the most common sources of hassling in people’s networks,” Brea Perry, an Indiana University at Bloomington sociologist and a co-author of the study, told me. “We think that’s because family relationships are emotionally