If you’re single, today may feel like the worst day of the year. Your co-workers are getting 1-800-Flowers deliveries all day, people are posting the mushy picture-perfect texts their partners sent them to commemorate Valentine’s Day all over your Facebook, and Hallmark keeps showing up everywhere — from your email to targeted ads — demanding that you pay tribute to the god of cutesy messages printed on expensive paper.
It sucks, but here are two things to consider: One, all that candy the people in relationships bought at retail will be 75 percent off tomorrow; two, it turns out that single people may have it all figured out, after all.
This information isn’t something we just made up to make you feel better, it’s based on scientific research that reveals that those who are living la vida solo aren’t actually worse off than their peers and don’t deserve either the sad clucking noises that they get when they show up at parties alone.
According to Bella DePaulo, PhD, a scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who presented her findings at The American Psychological Association’s 2016 convention, “the preoccupation with the perils of loneliness can obscure the profound benefits of solitude.” That means we’re so worried about whether people are lonely or not that we don’t really worry about whether they’re happy or whether going it alone can have benefits. But there are so few studies on singletons that we often ignore the positives of choosing not to be on Tinder or rejecting the idea that everyone needs another half.
From Eureka Alert:
DePaulo cited longitudinal research that shows single people value meaningful work more than married people, and another study that shows single people are also more connected to parents, siblings, friends, neighbors and coworkers. “When people marry, they become more insular,” she said.
And:
The studies that did focus on single people revealed some telling findings, she said. For example, research comparing people who stayed single with those who stayed married showed that single people have a heightened sense of self-determination and they are more likely to experience “a sense of continued growth and development as a person,” DePaulo said.
That doesn’t mean that you should write your partner a “Dear John” letter informing them that you’ve changed your mind about dating now that you know that single people can be more fulfilled, but it should make you feel a little bit better if you’re not currently dating. There are more single people living in America than ever before (50.2 percent, up from 37.4 percent in 1976), so it should no longer be a mark of shame to take yourself to the movies alone, eat out solo, or even go out for a night on the town on Valentine’s Day to celebrate just how great it is to not be tied down. And since single people seem to have better social lives than their married counterparts, you may find that there are plenty of people who want to join you.
Of course, DePaulo is quick to point out that being single isn’t objectively better than being married, and vice-versa. Instead, she says that it’s great that we live in a time when there’s no blueprint for “the good life.”
“What matters is not what everyone else is doing or what other people think we should be doing, but whether we can find the places, the spaces and the people that fit who we really are and allow us to live our best lives.”
(H/T: Cosmopolitan)
