This Is Why Relationships With Dogs Are More Satisfying Than With Friends, Study Says

I am completely hooked on Amy Poehler’s new podcast, Good Hang. Sure, it arrived a decade late on the podcast wave, but it’s 50 minutes of a one-on-one friend hang, featuring, among other gems, Kathryn Hahn nervous-burping and Tina Fey fan-girling over her local newscasters. It fills the void for all the hangs I don’t get to regularly have with my best friends, many of whom live in different cities.

But if I’m being honest, I get a good hang every day with my two 40-pound, goofy pups, who demand my complete attention as soon as my laptop closes at 6 p.m. We snuggle, play fetch (again and again and again), and fall asleep next to each other on the couch while catching up on episodes of Abbott Elementary. And as much as I wish my besties and I could cheers extra-dirty martinis more often, I do have to say: Hanging out with my dogs is pretty great. In fact, they give me what my human friends often can’t: the ability to feel loved and fulfilled without expending my social battery whatsoever.

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Turns out I’m onto something here. A new study from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and published in Scientific Reports found that dog parents rated their relationships with their pups as more satisfying than that with any other human in their life (except their child). More specifically, though, they found that people just get something different out of the human-dog relationship than they do out of most of their human-to-human relationships.

“Our results showed that it [the bond] does not replace human relationships but offers something different, a unique combination of characteristics to complement what we receive from the human side of our social network,” Borbála Turcsán, first author of the study, told The Guardian. “Dogs offer a highly positive relationship with minimal conflict, strong social support, and the unique opportunity to have full control over another living being’s life.”

In the study, researchers asked participants to rate their relationship with their dog and their four closest human partners. The pet parents in the study said they received more support from their dogs “than they did any human partner except their child.” In addition, the study found that dogs provided their humans “high companionship” as well as opportunities for them to be nurturing. Plus, relationships with dogs don’t come with the kind of drama that happens in human friendships. Because pet parents are in charge of their pups’ lives, there isn’t a lot of push and pull there, the study says: “the dog-human relationship features a more asymmetric power dynamic than human relationships.”

That makes sense, right? Humans are complicated. We might love the people in our lives unconditionally, but rarely do our bonds with them come without blemishes. Dogs are just... simpler. I may be able to let my guard down around my friends and take off my social mask to a degree, but there’s still some level of work happening in the background: Did I ask them about their life enough? Is there something else I can do to help them feel more comfortable? But if my dogs’ body language points to “happy,” I don’t really have much to worry about.

My friends should be happy to hear my dogs aren’t exactly replacing martini night in my heart. There’s still enough love to go around for everyone; it’s just different, OK?

I don’t have a kid yet, but for now, my dogs are my kids — and we have an uncomplicated relationship.