Welcome to Life Noggin!

Hearts!

Hearts everywhere!

Wow!

You know what's really cool about you humans?

No matter how wacky the world gets, you still somehow find the time to form these wonderful connections with one another.

Sometimes it's with family, other times with friends, but every so often people find themselves having a super special connection with someone else, leading to a romantic relationship!

These types of relationships tend to be monogamous, at least in one form or another.

Monogamy is all about only pairing up with one other person, and it's mainly broken down into two forms.

You can have social monogamy, which pretty much means you live together but might still have romantic flings, or sexual monogamy, where you only mate with your partner.

Either way, monogamy is actually pretty rare among mammals.

That's because out of all the species of mammals out there, only about 3 percent of them are known to practice some sort of monogamy.

My favorites are wolves and beavers.

Aww, they're just so darn cute together!

Couple of the year in my opinion!

Now, beyond just being downright adorable, there are actually quite a few potential benefits of being in a long-term, monogamous type of relationship for you humans!

For one, people in healthy relationships — whether it's long term or not — typically have lower rates of harmful stress, which can contribute to a whole bunch of problems.

Beyond that, it's generally thought that longer-term relationships are good for your mental health by helping you combat depression—assuming it's a healthy, non-toxic pairing of course.

A recent study that just came out last year has added a bit of fuel to these claims.

After looking at the interviews of 3,617 US adults between the ages of 24 to 89, researchers found that coupled-up people had relatively fewer symptoms of depression, but only in some economic scenarios.

Married people with a total household income of less than $60,000 per year had fewer symptoms of depression than unmarried people with comparable earnings.

These effects seemed to be related to an increased sense of financial security and self-efficacy in the married folk.

That said, couples with higher incomes didn't seem to get the same mental benefits.

Long term relationships may also be better for your physical health too!

More specifically, it could be good for your heart.

No, I'm not talking about the lovey dovey way — marriage might actually help you stay alive in the event of a heart attack.

A study done a couple of years ago on over 25,000 people who had had a diagnosed heart attack found that those who were married were around 14% more likely to survive than single people.

On average, the people that had gotten hitched also spent about two less days in hospital.

Adding all this up, it surely seems like there are a bunch of real benefits to having a lifelong partner!

But hey, don't fret if you're not in a romantic relationship right now, or even if you never want to be in one. You don't have to choose the monogamous realm.

While a lot of this was talking about the romantic kind of relationships, you can still have strong, positive relationships with other people too.

Friends, family… really anyone that you care about and that cares about you back!

So, where do you land on all of these?

Do you think two people should be together forever?

Lemme know in the comment section below, or tell me what should I talk about next?

Curious to know why breakups hurt so much?

Check out this video.

Each person had experienced an unwanted romantic breakup within the 6 months prior to the study, and while hooked up to and fMRI, were made to look at a photo of their ex to try and gauge the pain that it put them through.

As always, my name is Blocko, this has been Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking.