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Elon Musk has $800 billion and 14 kids. He's still not happy. Harvard's 85-year study explains why.
“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness really knew what they were talking about.”
--Elon Musk on X, February 5, 2026
When the richest person in the world declares that money does not buy happiness, all of us should respond: Then what does? Elon Musk, with his 809 billion dollars, can do anything, go anywhere, and enjoy anything he wants. He has 14 children, 237 million followers on X, and robust good health.
Why isn’t he happy?
The one thing he doesn’t have is a happy marriage.
Is there a causal relationship between marriage and happiness?
In 2023, the head of the Harvard Study of Adult Development reported on Harvard’s 85-year longitudenal study to determine what really makes people healthy and happy. For 85 years Harvard researchers tracked an original group of 724 men and more than 1,300 of their male and female descendants over three generations, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements.
Their conclusions?
Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter. But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: good relationships.
In fact, close personal connections are significant enough that if we had to take all 85 years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.1
One surprising finding of the study was the correlation among older married couples simply between time spent together and happiness. As the report notes: “On days when these men and women spent more time in the company of others, they were happier. In particular, the more time they spent with their partners, the more happiness they reported.”
Yet marriage in America is becoming increasingly unpopular. Pew surveys reveal that the the U.S. marriage rate hit a 140-year low in 2019 and has never fully rebounded. In 1975, 66% of U.S. households were married couples. By 2025, it had dropped to 47%.
A recent New York Times article, “Why Marriage, for So Many, Is Less Appealing Than Ever,” quoted Pew researcher Richard Fry, “I think the evidence is pretty clear now. It’s not just that adults are delaying marriage. Increasingly they are dismissing it.”
Judaism is the most pro-marriage religion in the world. Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism consider the highest path to God to be celibacy, and therefore marriage to be a second-rate concession to irrepressible human sexual drives. (Confer St. Paul: “It’s better to marry than to burn.”) Judaism, on the other hand, considers marriage the highest path to God.
Marriage is a mitzvah of the Torah, and all the great saints and sages of Jewish history were married, with few exceptions. According to Jewish tradition, Yonaton ben Uziel, the rare Talmudic sage who never married, is spending his afterlife making matches as a rectification for his neglect of the mitzvah of marriage. His grave, at Amuka in northern Israel, is a popular pilgrimage site for singles seeking a marriage partner.
Marriage is a 24/7 opportunity for giving. And for giving in.
Judaism is so pro-marriage because it recognizes that the true goal of life is to sanctify the world and rectify oneself through personal and spiritual development, and marriage is the ultimate breeding ground for such growth. Marriage does not automatically bring happiness. But marriage does bring personal growth and fulfillment of one’s highest inner potential. And such personal growth and fulfillment automatically do bring happiness.
As the 20th century Jewish sage Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler pointed out, the Hebrew word for “love” is “ahava,” which is related linguistically to “ahav,” I will give. Says Rabbi Dessler: “The more you give, the more you love.”
He points out as proof that parents love their children more than children love their parents.
Marriage, of course, is a 24/7 opportunity for giving. And for giving in. Both are politically incorrect values. The NYT article quotes single individuals from different age groups. Chloe Bow, 33, was in an 8-year relationship that broke off. Now her goal is to live alone: “I’ve done it before and prefer focusing on me and my own needs.”
Dr. Peter McGraw, 55, hosts the podcast “Solo: The Single Person’s Guide to a Remarkable Life.” He declared: “In 1960, when you married your husband or wife, you were not looking for that person to be everything for you. Now, however, the person is also supposed to be your best friend, your personal and professional confidant.” In other words, he’s not able or not willing to give that much emotionally.
Many single people are willing to give, but not more than their share. The modern marriage ethos is that both partners work outside the home and share equally the work in the home. Shani Silver, 43, is the host of “A Single Serving Podcast” and the author of “What If We Never Get Married? A Happily Ever Answer.” Shani, who is Jewish, said her followers tend to be, like her, single, straight women “who were brought up believing the milestones of marriage and raising a family would arrive as punctually as the phone bill.”
It didn’t happen for them. Shani blames the lack of personal growth among men. “We worked on ourselves throughout our lives to become the desirable partners we were told to become. But the men didn’t rise along with us. They’ve stagnated. There are imbalances in domestic labor responsibilities, emotional labor responsibilities, in running a household.”
If your standard for a happy marriage is that each spouse gives 50-50, then you will be endlessly measuring and comparing (and probably complaining). But if you just give without measuring, won’t you end up as a shmatta? Is too much giving dangerous to your health and well-being?
It is a mitzvah of the Torah to take very good care of your health [Deut. 4:15]. Giving to one’s spouse should not be at the expense of one’s own physical and psychological health. As the sage Hillel said 2,000 years ago: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” We don’t achieve the proper balance of giving by weighing who gives what. We achieve it by realizing that in giving to my spouse, I am getting a relationship that builds me.
For eleven years, I’ve taught a weekly marriage webinar for Jewish women, based on spiritual rather than psychological principles. The webinar assumes that the purpose of marriage is personal and spiritual growth. Although all the women join because they want to change their husbands, one of our mottos is: “The only person you can change is yourself. But when you change yourself, you change your marriage.”
When you change yourself, you change your marriage.
As one member testified: “I no longer view my husband, and consequently my marriage, as a disappointment, but rather as a wonderful opportunity for growth. I have become more loving and much less complaining than I ever was in our 28+ years of marriage.”
If you focus on growth, then every problem, as vexing as it is, becomes an opportunity to achieve your goal of becoming a better, more developed person. As the famous Hasidic Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught: “If you aren’t a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for a tomorrow?”
If you want to have a bigger bank account, invest in stocks. If you want to be a bigger person, invest in marriage.
Women built themselves into the men they want to marry by trying to fill their shoes
Now that the wheels are falling off the wagon the girlbosses will need to step up more since we men lack any kind of meaningful workplace experience
I once read an article Elon wrote himself about marriage. He clearly was missing the point of it all and not seeing marriage as an opportunity to give and focus on the other person. From what he wrote it was clear that he was only looking for his own personal happiness. Its no wonder at all that his marriages haven't been working for him so well. And its incredible how such a successful person could still not be getting the point!
Wonderful article. Perhaps we are nearing the End of Days, that marriage/procreation are less necessary for new souls to arrive and learn lessons of life, because there are fewer arriving here. Instead, we are nearing the day of judgement. You are either a believer, or you are not. Any in faith and relationship with Him see and appreciate what is happening globally today.
So glad that Judaism is setting the example in being pro-marriage! However, I take issue with your statement that "Christianity...consider(s) the highest path to God to be celibacy." The doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka "LDS"--a major Christian religion) is very pro-marriage. It teaches that to return to live again with God you must be married. Sealing couples (and families) to be together in the next life is a major function of their temples.
Despite Paul’s admonition, Jesus of Nazareth apparently opposed divorce in most cases. The monastic communities are much like communes, with all members living as brothers or sisters and having only a small amount of personal property. Some sects, especially Mormons, actively encourage marriage.
I think most people today who reject marriage do so for secular reasons, such as the difficulty in taking enough time to get to know another person, financial concerns, deciding to wait until finishing graduate education and starting a career, etc.
All that being said, I love this article.
Marriage, like parenthood, is not 50/50. It’s each person ideally giving 100%.
Mrs. Rigler always, and I emphasize always, writes brilliantly. Y’shar kocheych!
Mrs. Rigler, marriage can be a disaster and destroy lives. Divorce has been destroying men for 50 years now. So what's missing from your discussion is that for marriage to be the big benefit you are claiming, it has to be with a healthy and compatible person. I was married to an Ashkenazi woman for 9 years, we had 5 children and she walked away from all 5 of us and I raised hem on my own. She dragged me through the longest divorce in NJ history and took all my money. She had borderline personality disorder. My second Sephardic wife had narcissistic personality disorder and I was with this abusive and destructive person for 9 years. I've spent the last 9 years working on myself and why I get involved with such people. I wrote a #1 best selling book about all of this, Leader of the Pack.
Author responds: Matt, you are fantastic! I'm sorry to hear about all you've suffered from two mentally ill wives. In your case, it was not marriage that built you, but divorce and having to raise 5 children alone. Your story still proves my point: that we are here in this world to work on ourselves and grow (personally and spiritually), and that the best laboratory for that is family life.
I’m sorry you went through that. There are also women whose lives have been destroyed, whether by domestic violence or abandonment with no child support.
These things happen to women too, as well as men.
Marriage is a crap shoot.
People are not predictable.
People today are unknowable, unreliable.
Thank you Mrs Rigler for another article that opens our eyes and rings true in our hearts.
Judaism gets it right, yet again!