We postpone pleasure for sensible reasons all the time. But intriguing new research suggests that our willingness to sacrifice happiness today may depend partly on how optimistic we are about tomorrow — and even on the social world around us.

I'll be happy when...

The children are older.

The mortgage is paid.

I've lost ten pounds.

I've finished this project.

I've retired.

I've met someone.

I've left someone.

I've finally reorganized that cupboard that has apparently been standing between me and human fulfillment since 2017.

Most of us recognize the sentence.

We accept a little inconvenience today because we expect something better tomorrow.

Often, this is perfectly sensible.

We study instead of going out. Save instead of spending. Exercise when the sofa is making an unusually persuasive counteroffer. Work through difficult years to build a career. Care for children knowing that life may eventually become less exhausting.

Human beings could accomplish very little if every decision were based entirely upon maximizing happiness this afternoon.

But there is an intriguing question hidden inside all this sensible postponement.

Why are some people more willing than others to sacrifice happiness now because they believe greater happiness awaits them later?

A new study published in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion offers a surprising possibility.

Part of the answer may lie in our relationships.

First, Meet “Relational Mobility”

Relational mobility sounds like something involving moving companies.

It isn't.

Psychologists use the term to describe the degree to which a social environment gives people opportunities to choose, form and leave relationships.

In a high-relational-mobility environment, friendships, romantic relationships and social groups are relatively flexible. People have more opportunities to meet new people and greater freedom to leave relationships that no longer work.

In a low-relational-mobility environment, relationships tend to be more fixed. Family, community, school or workplace networks may overlap considerably, and replacing an unsatisfactory relationship can be more difficult.

This is not the same as being sociable.

Nor is it the same as social mobility—moving upward or downward economically.

It describes something more fundamental:

How much choice does the social world around you seem to offer about the people in your life?

Large international research has previously found substantial differences in relational mobility between societies, with lower levels generally observed in parts of East Asia and higher levels in North and South America.

And those differences appear to influence how people approach relationships.

In places where relationships are easier to choose—and easier to lose—people may invest more effort in attracting friends and maintaining relationships.

Where relationships are harder to replace, maintaining harmony within existing networks may become especially important.

But psychologist Kuan-Ju Huang of Kyoto University wondered whether relational mobility might influence something apparently unrelated.

Our willingness to postpone happiness.

More Than 200,000 People, Across 22 Countries

Huang's first study analyzed nationally representative data involving more than 200,000 people across 22 countries.

Participants differed in whether they believed sacrificing some happiness in the present could be worthwhile if it produced greater happiness in the future.

The pattern was striking.

People in countries characterized by higher relational mobility—including countries in North and Latin America—were generally more willing to delay happiness than people in lower-mobility countries, including parts of East Asia.

Huang then examined some obvious alternative explanations.

National wealth didn't account for the relationship.

Neither did income inequality.

Nor did the familiar cultural distinction between individualism and collectivism.

That left a fascinating question.

What might greater freedom in relationships have to do with believing tomorrow will be better?

Perhaps Choice Changes How the Future Feels

Huang proposed two possible psychological links:

control and optimism.

Imagine living in a social environment where you believe you have choices.

If a friendship ends, other friendships are possible.

If you enter a new workplace, new relationships can form.

If your social circumstances change, your social world can change with them.

That may encourage a broader feeling that circumstances are not completely fixed.

The future contains alternatives.

And if we believe we have some influence over our future, sacrificing something today may feel less risky.

Huang tested this idea in a second study involving 785 participants in the United States and Japan.

This time, relational mobility was measured in people's immediate social environments rather than simply assigned according to their country.

Again, greater relational mobility was associated with a greater willingness to delay happiness.

And both optimism and perceived control statistically helped explain the relationship.

The proposed chain looks something like this:

More perceived relational freedom → greater sense of control and optimism → greater willingness to sacrifice some happiness today for happiness tomorrow.

It is an elegant idea.

But there is an important word missing from that sentence.

“Causes.”

Association Is Not Destiny

Huang's research does not demonstrate that giving people more relationship choices will cause them to become optimistic.

Nor does it prove that optimism causes people to postpone happiness.

These studies identify relationships between variables and test plausible statistical pathways between them.

That is valuable.

But it isn't the same thing as randomly assigning thousands of people to different social environments and watching what happens—which would be rather difficult to arrange.

Culture is also extraordinarily complicated.

Countries differ in economic security, family structures, institutions, employment, religion, history and countless other ways.

Huang controlled for several important national characteristics, but no statistical model can make 22 societies identical except for one psychological variable.

So this research gives us an intriguing explanation to investigate further.

Not a formula for happiness.

Is Delaying Happiness Actually Good for Us?

Here the story becomes even more interesting.

Our instinct may be to regard postponing happiness as unhealthy.

After all, popular culture is filled with warnings about people who spend their entire lives waiting to live.

Yet Huang found that delaying happiness was associated with several dimensions of wellbeing—including measures involving happiness and satisfaction, meaning and purpose, and balance and harmony.

That makes intuitive sense.

Consider a woman studying for a qualification at night after work.

She may sacrifice evenings she could have spent relaxing.

But she isn't necessarily sacrificing wellbeing.

The difficulty may contribute meaning, accomplishment and hope precisely because she believes the sacrifice is taking her somewhere.

Saving money can work similarly.

So can caring for children.

Training for something difficult.

Building a business.

Learning a language.

Supporting someone we love.

Immediate pleasure and a good life are not necessarily the same thing.

Sometimes postponing one creates the other.

But Happiness Has a Peculiar Problem

There is another body of psychological research that prevents us from turning this into:

Sacrifice now. Be happy later.

Researchers Iris Mauss and colleagues discovered a curious paradox.

People who place an extremely high value on feeling happy can sometimes end up feeling less happy.

In one experiment, participants induced to place greater importance on happiness subsequently responded less positively to an enjoyable experience.

Why?

One explanation is expectation.

If I believe:

“I should be happy right now,”

I begin monitoring myself.

Am I happy enough?

Why don't I feel happier?

Everyone else seems happy.

What's wrong with me?

The pursuit has created its own performance review.

And happiness is a particularly uncooperative employee when subjected to quarterly targets.

A 2026 review by Mauss and Brett Ford concludes that pursuing happiness is neither inherently helpful nor inherently self-defeating. Outcomes depend considerably on how people pursue it, how they regulate and monitor their emotions, and the context in which the pursuit occurs.

That distinction matters enormously.

Perhaps There Are Two Ways of Waiting

Imagine two women who both say:

“I'll be happier in five years.”

The first means:

I'm doing something difficult because it matters to me. I can see progress. I still enjoy parts of my life now, but I'm willing to give up some immediate comfort for something I value.

The second means:

My real life hasn't started yet. Everything will finally be okay when this one thing changes.

Those statements sound superficially similar.

Psychologically, they may be very different.

The first contains agency.

The second may contain conditional living.

One treats the future as something we are building.

The other risks treating the present as a waiting room.

The “I'll Be Happy When…” Problem

This is where Huang's research becomes useful beyond cultural psychology.

Most of us have future conditions attached to happiness.

I'll be happy when I get promoted.

When I find a partner.

When my partner changes.

When the children leave home.

When I have more money.

When I retire.

Sometimes the condition is perfectly reasonable.

But human beings possess an inconvenient ability to move goalposts.

The promotion arrives.

Then we need the next promotion.

The house is purchased.

Then it needs renovating.

The children become independent.

Then we worry because they don't call often enough.

Retirement arrives.

And suddenly Tuesday afternoon contains rather more Tuesday afternoon than anticipated.

There is nothing wrong with planning for a better future.

The danger lies in repeatedly making today's permission to enjoy life conditional upon tomorrow becoming different.

Optimism Works Best With a Little Reality

Optimism itself is generally not the same thing as pretending everything will work out.

The useful form of optimism allows us to imagine that improvement is possible while still responding to the circumstances in front of us.

Huang's findings are particularly interesting in this respect.

Greater relational mobility may matter because it provides options.

If people perceive that relationships and social circumstances can change, they may feel greater control over their lives and therefore greater confidence about the future.

But we should resist turning that observation into individual advice.

It does not mean we should abandon old friends for new ones.

It doesn't mean societies with more fluid relationships are simply “better.”

Stable relationships can provide extraordinary security, loyalty and belonging. More flexible relationship environments can also mean that relationships are less guaranteed and therefore require greater effort to maintain.

Every social ecology contains trade-offs.

That may be another reason the research is interesting.

Happiness Is Also Cultural

There is another complication.

Cultures do not necessarily define or pursue happiness in precisely the same way.

Research comparing several regions has found that the relationship between actively pursuing happiness and wellbeing differs across cultural settings.

One proposed reason is that happiness can be pursued more individually in some societies and more socially in others.

Happiness might mean personal achievement.

Or family harmony.

Independence.

Belonging.

Excitement.

Contentment.

Meaning.

Peace.

The English word “happiness” can quietly conceal many different ideas about what a good life actually feels like.

That makes international research on happiness fascinating—and difficult.

Maybe the Better Question Isn't “Am I Happy?”

There is something slightly exhausting about repeatedly asking ourselves whether we are happy.

Perhaps a more useful set of questions would be:

Is there something in my life I enjoy now?

Am I working toward something that matters to me?

Does today's sacrifice have a recognizable purpose?

Do I have some influence over what happens next?

And if the future I am waiting for never arrives exactly as imagined, is there still something worthwhile about the life I am living today?

Those questions don't require choosing between living for today and planning for tomorrow.

Most good lives probably contain both.

We save—and occasionally buy the ridiculous shoes.

We work—and sometimes leave the laundry until tomorrow.

We plan retirement—and still take the trip.

We care about where life is going without requiring the destination to justify every mile of the journey.

Lydia's™ Take

There is wisdom in delayed gratification.

Civilization would struggle rather badly if nobody were willing to sacrifice today's pleasure for tomorrow's benefit.

But happiness may deserve slightly different treatment from a retirement account.

We cannot necessarily deposit all of today's happiness and expect compound interest at 7 percent.

Huang's research suggests that people who experience greater freedom in their social worlds may feel more optimistic and more in control—and therefore more willing to believe that sacrificing some happiness today will pay off tomorrow.

That is a fascinating possibility.

But perhaps the most useful lesson is not that we should delay happiness—or refuse to delay it.

It is to notice why we are waiting.

There is a difference between postponing pleasure because we are building something meaningful and postponing life because we have convinced ourselves that happiness belongs to a future version of us.

Tomorrow matters.

So does today.

Perhaps a good life is not one in which we finally arrive at happiness.

Perhaps it is one in which the journey toward tomorrow still leaves room for something worth enjoying on the way.

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Research & Trusted Sources

Huang, K.-J. (2026). Relational mobility promotes optimism and willingness to delay happiness. Emotion, 26(5), 1047–1057. This is the principal study behind the article. It analyzed nationally representative data from more than 200,000 people across 22 countries and conducted a second study with 785 participants in the United States and Japan.
PubMed record and abstract

Thomson, R., et al. (2018). Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This large cross-cultural project provides important background for the relational-mobility construct and its international variation.
PNAS study

Yuki, M., & Schug, J. (2020). Psychological consequences of relational mobility. Current Opinion in Psychology. A review of evidence concerning how relational mobility relates to interpersonal strategies and psychological tendencies across societies.
PubMed record

Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people happy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. The study provides evidence that strongly valuing happiness can sometimes become counterproductive.
Full study via PubMed Central

Ford, B. Q., et al. (2015). Culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness predicts higher or lower well-being. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The research demonstrates that the relationship between pursuing happiness and wellbeing can vary across cultural contexts and may depend partly on whether happiness is pursued in socially engaged ways.
Full study via PubMed Central

Mauss, I. B., & Ford, B. Q. (2026). The pursuit of happiness: pitfalls and promises. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. This recent review emphasizes that pursuing happiness can either help or backfire depending on the goals, strategies, monitoring and context involved.
PubMed record