Living Single

The truth about singles in our society.

Bella DePaulo is author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. She teaches at UC Santa Barbara. See full bio

November 6, 2009

Change Seats for a Couple? Here’s What Sherman Alexie Thinks

Celebrated author Sherman Alexie has been asked between 20 and 30 times to give up the seat he booked way in advance so a couple could sit together on the plane. Here is the brief and moving poem he wrote about it. If you are one who believes that you just don't "get" poetry, this particular exemplar just may inspire you to reconsider the genre.

November 5, 2009

What’s the #2 Thing a Restaurant Staffer Should Never Do?

The New York Times has been running a feature on the 100 things that the staff at restaurants should never do. That's a lot of things to avoid, including, for example, #21, "Never serve anything that looks creepy or runny or wrong" and #44, "Do not discuss your own eating habits." So what piece of advice was as close as possible to the top of the list, without actually being #1?

November 3, 2009

If You Can’t Fathom Single Life, Don’t Be a Therapist

The blogger seemed befuddled by the fact that the people in his psychotherapy group, who all said they wanted to be coupled, didn't seem to be trying very hard to make that happen. There's a possibility he did not recognize. Maybe there were some people in that group who really were not all that eager to be coupled, but didn't want to say so. Maybe they were not ready to admit it even to themselves. Consider that they are in a matrimaniacal society in which it is just assumed that everyone wants to be coupled. They are in a group led by a man who says about himself, "I was once between wives for about six minutes. I didn't like it at all." Now add to all that a scene in which the first few hands are going up (the fellow group members indicating that they want to be coupled), and what are you going to do? You raise your hand, too.

October 30, 2009

Nicky Grist: Single-Minded Change Agent

Nicky Grist, Executive Director of the AtMP, discusses her efforts to create a more just society for all single people. "Our work," she notes, "focuses on making it not matter whether a couple marries, or an individual remains single, or a family includes more than one or two adults. We think relationships are good for people, caring relationships are good for society, and society should treat caring relationships fairly based on what the people in them do for each other, not what they call each other." Don't miss her description of her most memorable experience as a single-minded change agent. Read More

October 30, 2009

What’s the Best Thing About Being Single?

Here's what I love best about living single. How about you?

October 27, 2009

They Survived Cancer, Only to Get Bashed by Singlism

The headline on CNN blared, "Childhood cancer survivors less likely to marry." Singlism so suffocates our reasoning capacities that of course the article devolved into the question, "What's WRONG with these childhood cancer survivors that they don't manage to marry as often as their siblings?" One of researchers even suggested a link between getting married (rather than staying single) and being capable of living your own life, independently. Read More

October 23, 2009

Shriver’s “Woman’s Nation” is Actually a Wife and Mother’s Nation: The Evidence

In her review and critique of the Shriver Report at the Women's Media Center, Gloria Steinem proclaimed that "anyone with a stake in increased equality also has a stake in the success of The Shriver Report." I, too, share Steinem's hope that "government and business will have to adjust policies to meet women's needs as parents and workers in order to keep the economy going, and also that more men will get accustomed to women as indispensable co-workers and co-breadwinners, and thus increase their share of the housework and childcare." But really, you're Gloria Steinem. Isn't the goal of honoring the many meaningful ways of leading a life at least as important as getting men to do more dishes and diapers? Read More

October 23, 2009

Shriver Report Serves Up Compulsory Marriage and Mothering

Women, the Shriver Report cares about you. The authors want you to be everything you can be - as long as you don't choose to stay single, to not have children, or, most horrible of all - both. You won't find an explicit call to marriage and parenting in the report. Those goals are simply assumed. In the Shriver Report, marriage and mothering are compulsory, in the same way that Adrienne Rich described heterosexuality as compulsory in her ground-breaking essay nearly three decades ago.

October 18, 2009

Who’s the Smuggest of Them All?

When people post these over-the-top, incessant, sappy, and embarrassing updates, I think they are revealing themselves as people quick to buy what popular culture is selling. They are grasping at the matrimania, without stepping back first to get away from the hype. Those who do step away from the fray may still decide that coupling or marriage is what they want - but I bet they won't brag about it relentlessly on Facebook. Read More

October 15, 2009