Lovers of single life, set yourselves free! Unshackle yourselves from those old, regressive stories that claim that single life is sad and lonely. Rise above those repressive notions that everyone wants a romantic partner and if you think you don't, you'll get over it, and if you don't get over it, you need help. Gleefully reject the idea that putting a romantic partner at the center of your life is something you have to do, something that everyone wants, or that it is the normal and natural and superior way to live. I have a new story to tell you. It is based on experiences of people all around the world who are telling their stories, often for the first time. It is also grounded in social science studies of hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of people. My story is about people who are powerfully drawn to single life. I call them "Single at Heart" and I'm one of them. For us, single life is our best life. It is our most authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling life. It is a psychologically rich life. No other way of life will ever feel as profoundly satisfying. To us, living single is as normal, natural, comfortable, and desirable as a committed romantic partnership is to people who are powerfully drawn to coupled life. We are the curators of our lives. Being single doesn't limit our lives--it throws them wide open. We have our freedom, and we use it to make the most of our resources and opportunities, however vast or meager they may be. We get to decide the shape and contours of our lives, from the structure of our everyday lives to the big life-altering transformations. We get to pursue our interests and our passions, without trying to refashion or resize them in ways that suit a romantic partner. We get to welcome into our lives anyone we want--friends, relatives, mentors, colleagues, lovers, neighbors, spiritual figures, pets, or anyone else--as many or as few as we like, with no pressure to elevate a romantic partner above all others. We can devote ourselves to our people, our communities, our countries, and our causes if that's what we want to do. We create homes that are our sanctuaries. We have our sweet, sweet solitude. If we don't want kids, no partner is going to give us the sad face. If we do have kids, we get to raise them as we see fit. We enjoy intimacy on our own terms. The risk to people who are Single at Heart is not what we will miss if we do not put a romantic partner at the center of our lives, but what we will miss if we do. I will never say that it is okay to be single, that it is better to be single than to be in a bad romantic relationship, or that it is better to be single than to wish you were. Those sentiments are far too grudging. For people like us, it is better to be single. Period. It is better to be single when we are young. It is better to be single when we are old. And it is better to be single during all the years in between. People who are Single at Heart include women and men and people who identify as neither. We include parents and people who are not parents. We include the rich and the poor, the young and old, the formally educated and the self-educated, people of all different gender identities and orientations, different races and ethnicities. Among our numbers are many kinds of believers as well as nonbelievers. Many of us hail from WEIRD societies (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), but substantial numbers do not. The Single at Heart range from people who have never married, never lived with a romantic partner, and never had a serious romantic relationship to people who, in the past, have had all of those experiences, sometimes over and over again. We include people who are not at all interested in sex or romantic relationships and people who are quite fond of both. Some of us enjoy dating now and then. What we all share is that we do not put a romantic partner at the center of our lives, and we do not ever want to organize our lives around a romantic partner. Perhaps even more importantly, we share the joy we experience by living single. Being single is something we savor. It doesn't matter if we have had no past romantic experiences or plenty of them. It doesn't matter if any such experiences were glorious, horrifying, boring, or a mixed bag. It doesn't matter if we had a miserable childhood or an exemplary one. We are not defined by any of those things. We are not single just because we are running away from something or because we have "issues." (Everyone has issues.) We are single because we love what single life offers us and will continue to offer us for as long as we commit to it and invest in it. For us, that's forever. We don't ever want to unsingle ourselves. We realize we are bucking the relentlessly touted and celebrated cultural script that insists that what adults want, more than anything else, is a committed romantic partnership. We know what people think: It's fine to be single for a while, but to stay that way is just sad. To want to stay that way isn't natural or normal. Over the course of my lifetime, I've seen other bedrock beliefs get pulverized. Is it abnormal to be attracted to people of your own gender? We know better now. Is a woman's place in the home? Oh, please. Is it only natural for women to want kids? That doesn't seem obvious anymore. Each time our understanding of human nature becomes more expansive, we all become freer to live our best and most authentic lives. In the enlightened world that I envision, every child will understand, as a matter of course, that living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other--and for some people, the best path of all. Every adult will forsake forever the temptation to pity or patronize people who are single and will instead appreciate the profound rewards of single life. Adults who are naturally drawn to single life will not be asked to defend that choice ever again. Millions of happy single people will realize that they are happy and thriving not in spite of being single, but because of it. Because we who are Single at Heart are embracing our single lives rather than trying to escape them, we develop strengths, skills, resources, and attitudes that are less often honed by those who lead a conventionally coupled life. The time, money, and emotional resources that other people devote to their pursuit of a romantic partner and then bestow upon that partner if they find such a person, we invest in the experiences that make our lives meaningful and that can never be taken away from us by a divorce or any other casualty of coupling. We value our friends, rather than looking past them for the romantic partner who may be on the horizon or waiting for us at home. Because we don't split the tasks of everyday life with a romantic partner, we learn out how to cover everything ourselves, either by mastering each task, finding ways around it, or figuring out how to find people who will help or who we can hire. Because we plan to stay single, we create homes that will continue to accommodate and comfort and inspire us as we age. Our years of investing in our single lives and embracing all that single life has to offer pays off all along the way. It comes to its ultimate, stereotype-shattering pinnacle in later life. We've been warned that we are going to end up decrepit, despondent, despairing, and oh so alone when we are old. But that's not what happens. Studies show that it is the people who have stayed single who are most likely to be thriving in later life. Unlike the newly single, such as the divorced and widowed people who organized their lives around a spouse, the lifelong single people aren't trying to figure out for the first time how to do the things their spouse used to do for them. Lifelong single people never demoted the people who mattered to them once a spouse waltzed into their lives. They aren't trying to create a social circle or an emotional support system anew; they have been doing that all along. A study of older people in the US showed that the men and women who stayed single were most optimistic about the future, were most likely to have an active social life, and most likely to have the help they needed and the intimacy they wanted. Black Americans, who are the targets of so much moralizing and shaming for their comparatively low rates of marrying, were especially likely to be living a fulfilling life in their old age if they had never married. An Australian study of more than ten thousand women in their seventies found that the lifelong single women were not just doing better than the previously married women; they were also doing better than the currently married women. Compared to the currently or previously married women, with or without children, the lifelong single women who had no children were the most optimistic, the least stressed, the most altruistic, and they had the fewest diagnoses of major illnesses. Those studies included all people who stayed single and did not distinguish between the reluctantly single and the Single at Heart. Once researchers start zeroing in on the single people who want to be single, the findings will be even more impressive. We already have hints of that. A ten-year study of more than seventeen thousand people without romantic partners found that, over time, the people who were not looking to unsingle themselves were becoming happier and happier with their lives, while those who were pining for a partner were becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Excerpted from Single at Heart: The Power, Rewards, and Fulfillment of Singlehood by Bella DePaulo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
