Abstract
While family and friendship relationship qualities are associated with life satisfaction,
evidence on how these types of relationships interact to contribute to older adults’ life satisfaction is
sparse. This study examined how family and friendship relationship qualities may be supportive
of (compensatory) or conflict with (competing) older adults’ life satisfaction. We adopted a crosssectional
design to analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 1178, females = 54.8%,
mean age = 67.9 years, SD = 9.3 years) to examine compensatory (as in social support) and competing
(as in social strain) qualities of family and friendship social relationships and their association with
life satisfaction in older adults. For greater explanatory power, we also controlled for life satisfaction
by sociodemographic variables of age, gender, education, self-reported general health, physical health
and activity, depression, and personality traits. Our findings indicate that the spouse/partner support
relationship contributes to older adults’ life satisfaction overall and is associated with greater social
support and less social strain. Friendship support is associated with improved life satisfaction for
older adults reporting spouse/partner strain. Relationship support for the life satisfaction of older
adults should consider their need for social support from their social network while minimizing the
risk of social strain from adversarial relationships in life situations.