There’s actually a scientific reason why you keep difficult people in your life

New research conducted in the US has a straightforward reason we can’t just cut difficult people from our lives – regardless of how much we’d like to.

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Whether it’s a passive-aggressive relative or a painful co-worker, chances are you can think off a few ‘difficult’ people in your life, who, as much as you’d like cut out, you simply can’t.

New research into why we keep these people in our lives has been published and the reason we don’t just say sayonara to these relationships is actually a lot simpler than you might’ve thought.

Simply put? It’s too hard. Either you need them, or you just can’t ignore them, according to a report published in the American Sociological Review.

According to Science Daily, the study’s co-author Dr Shira Offer expalined “difficult people are likely to be found in contexts where people have less freedom to pick and choose their associates.”

So if you think back to the most difficult people in your life, they’re probably family or colleagues, right? (Thought so.)

To reach this conclusion, researchers surveyed more than 1000 respondents in the greater San Francisco Bay area, and asked them to share people whom they socialised with, confided in and who they’d ask for help in an emergency, as well as who they found ‘difficult’ or ‘demanding’. The latter category accounted for about 15 per cent of the relationships people brought up, and generally, included aging parents and female relatives, per Science Daily.

The reason female relatives, specifically, were considered more difficult, according to the study’s findings, is because they, generally speaking, are more likely to play a dominant role in families, which opens them up for conflict.

Of the findings, Dr Offer said: “These are people with whom our lives are so complexly intertwined. Many are close family whom we need and even love; others we just can't escape. Social norms do not allow us to simply walk away from them, however much this might be tempting to do sometimes.”

Especially when it comes to the ‘non-kin’ category – think workmates who grind your gears or acquaintances in your outer-circle.

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