Over the past 40 years, romcoms have become more caricatured, giving life beyond romantic relationships less and less screen time. That’s not how real life has been unfolding.
When coupled people disparage single people, it can be motivated by their own insecurities. They feel threatened. More positive dynamics are even more interesting.
For people facing adversity and injustice, flourishing cannot be achieved by psychological exercises such as practicing gratitude. More fundamental societal changes are needed.
People reason in less sophisticated ways when they think about fairness to single people. We do not challenge prejudices against single people the way we challenge other prejudices
Loving the time they have to themselves for the single at heart protects them from loneliness. It is a key to flourishing during a pandemic and in later life.
Married employees often get total compensation packages worth far more than what singles get. The issue isn’t just money, it is about who is valued and respected and who is not.
Single people are systematically disadvantaged in ways that can leave them emotionally vulnerable. But there are also ways that single people are especially likely to flourish.
Are single people just waiting for their “real” (coupled) life to begin? Waiting is passive and powerless. That’s not what it is like for people who embrace their single lives.
People who have positive beliefs about aging live 7.5 years longer than those with negative beliefs. Is the same true for having positive beliefs about being single?
People are often surprised to lose custody of friends after a breakup, and unprepared for the hurtful ways they are sometimes treated in their newly single lives.
Despite the obstacles to homeownership for single people, more than half of Americans in their 50s who are single and living alone own their own homes.
Older people who live alone and have diverse social ties do even better than their peers who live with other people. Having confidants seems to matter more than marital status.
Insights on the psychology of making and keeping friends from 2 scholars who have studied friendship for decades and a journalist who interviewed 100 sets of friends.
Who gets to claim your dead body? Official next-of-kin can include people who are estranged. Some people do want to claim the body, but they don’t qualify as official family.
Singles who are flourishing find singlehood empowering. Even among those who find singlehood disappointing, substantial numbers recognize the opportunities it offers.
Do people who are married, or most like married people, have the best psychological health? No. What matters is whether you have friends or family you can confide in and rely on.
People with devalued identities often feel pressured to convert, to pass, or to cover who they really are. That makes it harder to live authentically and to flourish.
Both before the pandemic and now, many single people are not looking for a romantic relationship or even a date. The most important reason in 2022? They like being single.
MBA graduates are less likely to be promoted early in their careers if they are analytically talented single women than if they are married men, married women, or single men.
Experiences and decisions around parenting – whether, when, and how to do so – can be important to our identities. Here’s how we can be more understanding of different life paths.
People living in cohousing communities like feeling connected without being controlled and appreciate the flexibility to choose solitude or sociability.
Single life can be understood as a psychologically rich, meaningful life, if only the people we meet, as well as the social scientists who study us, would ask the right questions.
In the spirit of the book, Singled Out, Living Single is a myth-busting, consciousness-raising, totally unapologetic take on single life. At this blog, we discuss just about everything about single life -- except dating!
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