I have always been a profoundly generous person. I give people the opportunity to listen to my unsolicited advice, I allow my subordinates the privilege of executing my vision at all hours of the night, and I occasionally let my adult children speak in my presence, provided they have prepared a tight, compelling slide deck. Yet, despite my boundless magnanimity and my tireless commitment to holding everyone around me to an impossibly high standard, I frequently find myself exhausted.
For decades, one of the most repeated truisms in social-science research has been that the number one best thing for your well-being is your relationships. I have parroted this line myself, usually while giving the keynote address at a corporate wellness retreat in Big Sur or while explaining to my third wife why she needed to be more emotionally available to my venture capital partners. But recently, I began to question its universality. How could my relationships be the best thing for my well-being when my phone is constantly buzzing with people asking me to “please stop cc’ing the entire board on your complaints about the barista” or “pay the court-ordered alimony”?
My suspicions have finally been validated. An emerging body of research confirms what I have long known in my bones: surely not all social ties are beneficial. In fact, relationships with people who are draining, critical, or otherwise difficult can severely compromise our mental and physical health.
“Critical” is exactly the word I would use to describe my former co-founder. Last month, he launched a highly publicized, entirely bad-faith lawsuit claiming I had embezzled company funds to purchase a dressage horse for my personal amusement. The sheer toll this relentless negativity has taken on my cortisol levels is staggering. Every time I receive a subpoena, my smartwatch warns me of an elevated heart rate. Why should my cardiovascular health be sacrificed on the altar of his petty insistence on fiduciary duty? It is a textbook toxic dynamic, and I am bravely choosing to step away from it by ignoring all federal court summons.
The internet is teeming with evidence of this phenomenon. The Subreddit r/FriendshipAdvice would be a ghost town if everyone’s relationships were truly enhancing their quality of life. I know this firsthand. I recently posted on that very forum under a discreet pseudonym, asking the community how to deal with a selfish friend who inconsiderately got diagnosed with a chronic illness right before we were supposed to take my yacht to Mykonos. The responses I received were shockingly hostile, laced with accusations of narcissism and entitlement, which only further proved my thesis: the general public is an energy vampire, and listening to their feedback is a hazard to my health.
Over a three-hour omakase lunch with Larry Summers last week—during which we both agreed that empathy is largely a macroeconomic drag and that the middle class’s obsession with “feelings” is inflating the currency—I realized that my staff’s insistence on work-life balance is a form of emotional abuse. Take my executive assistant, for example. Last Tuesday, she became incredibly “difficult” simply because I asked her to cancel her tenth anniversary dinner to re-alphabetize my collection of mid-century modern paperweights. Her sigh—barely audible, yet violently aggressive—was deeply draining. I could physically feel my immune system weakening as she quietly wept at her desk.
For a long time, social scientists have focused on the positive aspects of relationships. And finally, we’re also seriously dealing with the negative ones.
Offer’s research is a revelation, finally giving a voice to the voiceless: high-net-worth individuals who are tired of being badgered about their tone. This brings me to another crucial point from the sociological data: the profound danger of the “narcissistic relative” who makes everything about himself.
My younger brother is a tragic, textbook case of this archetype. At his own wedding last month, he spent the entire evening making the event about his marriage, his vows, and his new wife. When I attempted to course-correct the rehearsal dinner during my toast by pivoting to a forty-five-minute reflection on my recent promotion and my nuanced thoughts on the capital gains tax, he actually asked me to sit down. The sheer narcissism of demanding the spotlight on a day that I had paid a premium to fly first-class to attend was breathtaking. The resulting family friction caused me minor indigestion, which Offer’s research clearly links to the physiological damage wrought by negative social ties.
As someone who sits on multiple advisory boards and regularly golfs with senators, I simply do not have the metabolic bandwidth to process other people's emotional realities. I am a busy man. The sheer caloric cost of acknowledging another human being's subjective experience is a tax I am no longer willing to pay. My time is better spent cultivating high-leverage relationships with people who understand that friendship is essentially a series of unreciprocated favors done for my benefit.
Therefore, in accordance with the latest peer-reviewed science, I am initiating a comprehensive purge of my social circle. I am doing the hard work of setting boundaries.
If you are someone who asks me to “be reasonable,” you are toxic, and I am cutting you out. If you expect me to “listen to your side of the story,” you are draining my life force, and you are gone. If you are a federal labor regulator inquiring about the temperature on my warehouse floors, you are deeply critical, and I will no longer be taking your calls. I am radically prioritizing my peace.
It is incredibly liberating to finally have the empirical data to support my long-held belief that hell is other people—specifically, the people who expect a basic modicum of respect from me. As I sit here alone in my sprawling, cavernous six-bedroom estate, having successfully alienated everyone who has ever loved, trusted, or worked for me, I can honestly say I have never felt healthier. My smartwatch confirms it: my heart rate is perfectly steady, entirely unbothered by the lives of anyone else on earth.