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 is a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara. See full bio

January 1, 2010, Social Life

Top 12 ‘Living Single’ Posts for 2009

More people read these Living Single posts than any others

Published on January 1, 2010

I just noticed that Christopher Ryan listed the Top 10 posts to his Psych Today blog (as determined by number of page views), so with my thanks to him for that fun idea, I'm going to do something similar. My list is for 2009 only (though I'll also add some all-time favorites at the end). Also, my 2009 list is a Top 12 rather than a Top 10. (It still has that nice alliteration.)

I'm in awe of Ryan's numbers. I'm not going to include precise numbers of page views corresponding to my Top 12. I'll just say that what qualifies as a mere honorable mention for Ryan (over 10,000 views) would make one of my posts a real star.

Here are the most viewed "Living Single" posts for the year 2009:

USA Today's Big New Story on Marriage Peddles Same Old Fallacies. (If you read this, you may also want to read the follow-up here, though it did not get as many page views as the original post.)
Susan Boyle: The New Face - and Voice! - of the Spinster Cat Lady
Do Relationships Need Lies to Survive?
Children of Single Mothers: How Do They Really Fare?
Are the Early Years of Single Life the Hardest? Part II: Approaching Age 30
Men and Women Who Have Always Been Single Are Doing Fine
How Do You Make Friends When You Are Single?
Wedding Season 1: Newlyweds vs. ‘Parasite Singles'
Two Scholars Ask: What if Marriage is Bad for Us?
World's Most Revolting Facebook Status Updates
TIME's Misleading Cover Story on Marriage
Shriver's ‘Woman's Nation' Is Actually a Wife and Mother's Nation: The Evidence

(Actually, there is a post that was the #3 most viewed for the year, but since I moved it to the Huffington Post, I haven't listed it above.)

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Now looking all the way back to when I first started this blog in March of 2008, here are two posts that have been viewed more than 10,000 times (listed first) and two more that came close:

Is It Bad to Notice Discrimination?

Is It Better to Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved at All?

The American Psyche: Tipping Toward Solitude?

It's National Singles Week: Here Are 14 Reasons Why We Need It

Thanks, everyone, for reading, commenting, posting to Digg, and emailing your favorites to your friends. Happy New Year!

[The picture that accompanies this post is of the cover of my book, Single with Attitude: Not Your Typical Take on Health and Happiness, Love and Money, Marriage and Friendship. It includes many of my Living Single posts, as well as other essays I wrote on single life that have appeared in places such as the New York Times, Forbes, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. You can get it in paperback here or for your Kindle. One of the top 12 posts was about my other area of expertise, the psychology of lying. My little book, Behind the Door of Deceit: Understanding the Biggest Liars in Our Lives is also available both in paperback and for your Kindle.]