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

August 26, 2009

From Bitten to Smitten: Writing about Single Life, and Discussing It with All of You

An excerpt from "Singled Out" has appeared in the latest edition of the Bedford Reader, long used in writing classes. It wasn't what I expected when my initial attempts at writing for a non-academic audience were met with ridicule. Now my essay collection, "Single with Attitude," will be the topic of the next AtMP online book club. I'll be there to moderate and I hope you will join in.

August 21, 2009

Busted for Matrimania, and So Much More: Singles Collection, Part 3

All sorts of new nuggets: practicing matrimania and getting busted for it, Janet Napolitano's great quip about whether she is "seeing anyone," those secret questions on websites, more matrimaniacs, and some enlightened singles with pens and pins poised, ready to puncture the bubbles of singlism.

August 15, 2009

From a Single Man – and Fetching Writer – Who Lost Everything in a California Blaze

What is it like to lose every last material possession in an instant? I hope I'll never know. But a friend of mine, Per Wehn, does know. In one of those roaring California fires, everything that he owned went up in smoke. I first got to know Per at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I think he's a wonderful writer. I asked him to share his experiences with the Living Single readers. Here's what he wrote.

August 14, 2009

Times Reporter Thinks Single Women Fear Intimacy; I’m Afraid He’s Wrong

New York Times reporter John Tierney thinks that single women have a special "fear of intimacy" and that fear is keeping them single. The available research has found no significant differences at all between single and coupled women's anxiety about attachment or avoidance of attachment. As a single woman, I do have my own special fear: I'm afraid of ignorance. Especially when it gets a place of prominence in such an acclaimed publication.

August 13, 2009

Singles Treatment – The Good Kind

From years of hearing single people's stories about what they like and don't like about how other people treat them, one thing is clear - it can be hazardous to presume to know what any particular person wants. Here are some gestures I've really appreciated.

August 11, 2009

Romantic Relationships Are Hotbeds for Serious Lies

A while back, when most of my research was on the psychology of lying, my colleagues and I asked college students and people from the community to tell us about the most serious lie they ever told to anyone, and the most serious lie anyone ever told to them. What we found was that romantic relationships - both of the married and the unmarried variety - are hotbeds for serious lies.

August 10, 2009

Single with Attitude

Sometimes, when I'm thinking about topics I've written about previously (friendship, for example), I'll track down all of the blog posts and other essays I've written on the topic. I started making folders on various topics when I noticed another PT blogger mention that he had created a book and made it available through Amazon. It was one of those light bulb moments - why not!

August 10, 2009

Kudos to Time Reporter for Story on Exercise and Weight

John Cloud did not just take the news releases at face value. He read the original research reports - indeed, he seems to do so routinely - and found that the results were not what the press releases seemed to suggest.

August 4, 2009

Marriage and Health: Eh Tu, New York Times?

It would not increase your faith in Shamster one bit to learn that there were thousands of studies just like this flawed one showing the "benefits" of taking Shamster. Now imagine that a collection of such studies of a Shamster drug really did exist, and a New York Times story opened with the sentence, "People taking Shamster tend to be healthier than people not taking Shamster." It wouldn't happen. (For one thing, Shamster would not be approved by the FDA based on studies similar to the one-point-in-time investigations of the supposed benefits of marriage.) Read More

July 28, 2009

Newsweek’s Turn to Post Misleading Account of Latest Marriage Study

Newsweek claims that the recent marriage study provides "another reason to stay married." It doesn't. The reporters also neglect to mention something else: If you take all of the women who ever got married, then set aside those who got divorced or widowed, and even set aside those who remarried (because who knows what their previous dissolved marriages might have done to them), then even that very selected group of married women who are left have no better health than the women who stayed single the whole time. Read More