When the ring doesn't fit..

Happily never married? The words just don't seem to belong together. They're an oxymoron, like military music or honest politician. Never-married women are supposed to be needy neurotics frantically hunting down a spouse, lonely depressives who hole up with a clutch of cats, or, a more recent image, icy workaholics who trade the cozy warmth of husband and home for glitzy high-power careers. No matter how you look at them, they're unloved, unwanted, unhealthy.

Take a closer look. After years of being dismissed and ignored, the never married are coming into the spotlight. And much to everyone's surprise, psychologists are discovering that "happily never married" rings true as fine crystal. Unseen and unheralded, lifelong singles have been staging a quiet revolution, bat-fling social prejudice, family expectations, and their own apprehensions to set a new standard for what it means to be a successful, fulfilled, and content woman.

To be sure, the majority of American adults still say "I do," though at an increasingly later age, but the ranks of the unmarried have been growing. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1984 about 3 million women age 35 and older had never married. By 1994 the figure had climbed to nearly 4.5 million. Some of these women are living with men in what amount to common-law marriages and some are gay; exact statistics aren't available. But the vast majority are women who have remained single and on their own, many by choice.

WHO'S REMAINING RINGLESS?

Women no longer need to wed out of economic necessity With thriving careers, even steady jobs, they can afford monthly mortgage and car payments on their own. Nor is marriage a requirement for motherhood. The days of being stigmatized for bearing a child out of wedlock are waning and adoption has become a viable option for single women. Moreover, tying the knot is no guarantee of happiness: 50 percent of marriages unravel.

Still, the idea persists that staying single is a personal issue, or, more usually, a problem. "It's not considered a pragmatic choice but a personal failing," observes psychologist Janice Witzel, Ph.D, who teaches at the Family Institute, a counseling center at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and who also practices privately at Psychological Resources. "Women are still largely visible only through matrimony: one is married or not."

"A woman has a much easier time if she can say she's been married and divorced, even if the marriage only lasted as long as the ceremony," says Philadelphia psychologist Judith Sills, Ph.D., author of Biting the Apple: Women Getting Wiser About Love. Being divorced seems to confer a stamp of acceptance and normalcy. "Even if a woman's been divorced for decades, people say, 'She hasn't remarried yet.' But if she's never married, then there must be something wrong with her."

Even content lifelong singles admit to niggling doubts. "I was as brainwashed as anyone," confesses Witzel, who confronted the issue a decade ago when she was in her mid-forties and a graduate student. "I was reading the literature on developmental psychology and realized that I wasn't coming across adult lives developing as mine was, as a never-married woman. I felt pretty satisfied with my life, but the descriptions I found talked about deficiency." Her curiosity piqued, Witzel decided to interview lifelong singles for her doctoral dissertation, but not without some dread. "I kept thinking: Was I really unhappy and didn't know it? Or was I denying it?"

For her interviews, Witzel purposely sought out seemingly well-adjusted women who were highly regarded by their peers. "But I was secretly thinking there must be something wrong with them," she says. With the aid of friends and colleagues, Witzel gathered 25 women, ages 36 to 83, who were white, heterosexual, had no children, and lived alone. "I expected that once I began digging, their happiness would prove pretty shallow," she recalls. "And I assumed that our conversations would show they were focused on strategies for achieving emotional intimacy and would include questions like 'Where do you go to meet men?'"

Witzel quickly discovered she was wrong. "I did one interview No misery. Then another. Same thing. These women were happy, with satisfying life work and strong attachments to their families, friends, and community."