Living Single

What if you are single and happy until your mid thirties, then get married. Will you loose your single approach to dealing with life without a spouse?

It's commonly assumed that all human beings want/need romantic relationships, or else a close facsimile.

But what if that's only true of a majority? What if humans are more socially malleable than is commonly thought?

After all, just look at all the variations among the world cultures...

In addition to my above reply, I also just want to say thank you for these posts. When I lived in my native state of Pennsylvania I was never challenged in any way about my single status. As soon as I moved to my current home in Texas, however, all that changed. Now I am constantly questioned and in some ways rebuked for being 27 and happily single. Your blog really helps me to soldier on with all of my single might.

I am reminded of a study I read on general stress. The study took life events that may happen to people without specifically accounting for marital status. Events such as losing a job, having kids, moving, getting a promotion, ect.. were ranked in the order of reported stress ( good and bad) via a national survey. The number one negative stressor by far,was losing a spouse. I really do think this experience is untouchable by other life stressors that we all deal with. Single people may experience just as profound of a loss when it comes to a significant other ( not a spouse) but that's just a label discrepencey. The personal vestment the "single" person puts in to another person in order to relate to such a loss, makes them no more single than the person who legally declared thier love.

I think that you make a extremely important point with regards to diversity. The 'labels' and the constant questioning about whether people have a man or woman in their lives starts to become the bane of single people's social existence as they get older. I happen to be gay. I have an instant label - but now that sexuality is starting to be accepted by increasingly more people, I think that the 'single' label amongst my friends is becoming more socially unacceptable than the 'gay' label. Ironic. Society dictates far too much. The requirement to label everyone and everything is just another one it's dictations.

Your final sentence is going into my favourite sayings list; "What we should steer clear of are narrow ways of thinking that leave us all locked in small, stifling ideological boxes." I believe it can be applied across all areas of society... a general acceptance for the way people choose to lead their lives. Happiness is a way to travel through life, and not somewhere that can be reached!

Do you have demogrpahic data for people who have remained single over the long haul? I realize it's a small sample size, but the people I have known over the course of my life who have been remained single were fairly narcisistic... the same with the people who have CHOSEN to never have children.

I think if one were to look at the data for singles from this slant (that the people were simply narcisistic, and thus kept out anything which they didn't feel was favorable to them over the long haul), the numbers make sense.

To me, there also seems as though there is a financial factor involved... with singles being more in the exteme on either side - especially in regards to women where being able to take care of yourself financially, frees your mind to the idea that you do not need someone else. This was more than evident in both Southern California and Las Vegas, NV where I spent many years. Women in these areas were able to make a stable, reasonable income over the long-haul and thus chose their relationships or lack of relationships, based less on need and more on desire.

In using this quote as a mere "hook" on which to hang yet another exposition of the thesis which appears to be her life's work ("Bella DePaulo is author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After"), BP does a grave disservice to the meaning of Tennyson's lines. In his sense, "better" does not equate merely to "doing better" in terms of quanta of longevity, morbidity, "happiness" etc. My objection is not to the "well-being" stats she wishes - yet again - to invoke, but to the spurious resort to literature to create a pseudo-argument.

Tennyson is talking about the moral, spiritual - and perhaps also social - value of selfless love and irrespective of whether it is platonic, requited, and totally irrespective of any of the protagonists' age, sex or marital status. (BP seems to be unaware that the lines she quotes so easily were nspired in this instance by the profound impact of the death of a beloved male student friend many years earlier.) I have loved, I have been (briefly)loved in impossible circumstances, I have been married and unloved, I have been single and unloved, single and loved......Above all, I have loved, and I know whereof Tennyson wrote. I may live no longer, nor "do better" - or worse - as a result of experiencing any of these states but, as Tennyson suggests, my inner life has been enriched by my own capacity to love, and to appreciate the qualities of another, regardless of the outcome. I plan to have "Better to have loved" as my epitaph. Please don't devalue other dimensions by using literary works so superficially - For some people, poetry is their "thing", and they take it seriously.

People who don't know what love is do not appreciate what this means.
If you don't know love you can't appreciate it and love is a spiritual thing not an emotional fanciful thing either.
Love is gentle, easily entreated, full of tender mercy, suffereth long , vaunted not itself , is not puffed up and much much more than mere words can say..
God is Love and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.
There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment.he that feareth is not made perfect in love.

I am 29 years old my late husband and I were together for 10 years before he passed away unexpectedly. We have 3 children. In time maybe I'll feel different but now, 5 months after his death, I don't know if its better to have loved and lost. The pain is so deep and so bad. If I had it to do all over again maybe I would have held back. Maybe I wouldn't have had any children. Maybe I would have made it a point to make sure that even though he was the man in my life we always had distance between us. Maybe I would have been more selfish and not worried if we were living in different places for long periods of time. Maybe that still would not have made a difference and it still would hurt just as bad. Who knows? I wouldn't want him to have gone away being half loved either. He left here knowing he had all of my love. Maybe anything less would have been selfish. It still hurts to be the one left behind. I want to be optimistic that I will be blessed to feel that same love again one day. To have another best friend in my life to share everything with. If it happens again I will be happy. I can't imagine growing old without it. At the same time I can't except half love myself either. Yeah it's confusing but love like life sucks sometimes and it is complicated.

I can't get into the intellectual or literary argument about what Tennyson was writing about (not that smart)...but I have learned from good and bad experience, that for me it is better to remain single (as in living alone not just marital status) and love a like-minded person...I am selfish, narcissistic, and don't like compromising on many things. I have family that love me and plenty of friends. We (homo sapiens) are not a monogamous species nor are we a homogeneous species. Some people are driven to be married, it's in their makeup, they can't think of living without someone, it's their means of fulfillment...and there are those of us who are very happy being single and feel lost, confined and claustrophobic in a traditional married relationship.

Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? The author seems to not realize, or account for, the sizable contingent of people - both single and married - who have fallen in love, but must still live with unrequited love every day, because the one who is loved can't, or won't, return the affection. And these are the lovers whom I feel this quote was meant for when written by Lord Tennyson.

This fails to consider certain aspects. For example: divorced people are different creatures than widowed people. Divorced people choose to separate themselves, which means that they had problems and weren't right for each other.

Also, this holds true for most single people who have never experienced love, but for those who have, never trying would make them live in a state of "what if," desire without being able to do anything about it, and an overall feeling of sadness.

There is a difference between getting married and having romantic love. If someone never feels romantic love they can still get married. It's called lust, and unexpected pregnancies

I'm sure someone already pointed this out but Alfred, Lord Tennyson was talking about healthy, loving relationships that have ended because one of them has died unexpectedly.

My mother often quoted this quote in her 85 years of life.
Life is full of pain but her faith kept her loving till the end. She died 4 months ago and I miss her terribly. We had never been close until the last 10 years of her life. I was thinking if I had stayed distant to Mom and had not gotten close maybe I would not be grieving so. I remembered this quote that says I did the right thing. I took time to mend, to forgive, be forgiven, and enjoy my mom. Maybe wondered if some siblings are not suffering as much because they were not close to mom and dad. I don't think so. It truly is better to have loved and lost.