Funding for To The Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff foundation.

Coming up on To The Contrary.

Specifically about people who are single and like being single.

But it's also broader.

It's saying that people should get to live the life that they find most fulfilling.

Intro Music Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé, welcome to To the Contrary, a weekly discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Women used to be called spinsters and old maids if they weren't married by age 25.

As times have changed, more people are embracing their single lifestyle and challenging these societal norms about marriage and the traditional family.

This week's woman thought leader is Dr. Bella DePaulo, who is 70, never married and proud of it.

Dr. DePaulo has researched why.

Contrary to what many people think, single people have high rates of happiness and comfort.

She presents her findings in a new book, Single at Heart The Power of Freedom and Heart Filling Joy of Single Life.

Welcome, Dr. DePaulo.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

I love talking about this.

You queried a lot of people, talk about your research and your findings.

Right.

So I had an online survey that more than 20,000 people from more than 100 countries completed.

And then I did some in-depth interviews with people and talked to hundreds of people over the years more informally about their single lives.

And what I found is that there are a there's substantial some number of single people who are really happy being single.

Single life is their best life, their most fulfilling, living, meaningful, psychologically rich and authentic life.

I call these people single at heart.

They are happy, not in spite of being single, but because of this.

And what do you think the impact on society of that is?

I mean, certainly marriage as an institution centuries ago was designed to have children and really was the basis for the family.

Well, start with the children part of it.

For people who are single at heart, who embrace the single life, who love being single.

They are more likely not to have children than other single people, but substantial numbers of them do have children.

But the other part, the adults in our lives, first of all, single people in general, not just the single at heart loving single, but in general, single people are actually more connected to more different people.

They pay more attention to their friends and their relatives, and they are more connected to them.

And it's not like what some couples do now.

Not all, but some couples will move in together, when they get married, they pay less attention to their friends.

Their friends can get put on the back burner.

Its all about themselves as a couple.

And single people, especially people who are single at heart, don't do that.

And there's also research showing that people who are single at heart invest more in their friendships, and in return they get more out of them.

And there's studies of, I think, about 200,000 people from more than 30 European nations that shows to show that when people spend time with other people, it often makes them happier.

And that's true whether they're single or both.

What single people get more happiness out of the time they spend with other people than married or couple people do.

Now, why is that?

Is it because they.

I don't know.

They don't fight with a primary partner?

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it.

And also they don't have this attitude that friends are, oh, they're just friends.

But the person who really counts is my romantic partner.

So they're more open to their friends.

They value more, they invest more in them.

If they want to spend time with them or help them if they're in need, they don't need to worry about a romantic partner who might want more of that time and attention for themselves.

So they're just, you know, people often think that being single is limiting, but in fact, especially for the single at heart, love, they're single lives and invest in them.

It's actually it's expensive.

They open their lives to more different kinds of people.

They I like to say they have the ones rather than the one.

And they are also more expansive, open hearted in the way they think about big, important concepts and experiences like family and love and intimacy.

So family to the single at heart, it could mean, you know, your siblings and cousins and all that, but it can also mean the people you choose as your family, the people you think of as family, like your closest friends, your confidence.

And so in that way, they have more expansive notions of family.

Same thing with love.

I mean, the word love got hijacked when people say, I'm looking for love.

They mean romantic love.

But love is a broad, open hearted experience.

And we can have love for our close friends, our cherished relatives, the special people in our lives.

We can have love for our ancestors or spiritual figures, our pets.

And so in those ways, again, being a single heart expands our lives, it doesn't limit it.

Intimacy as another example.

Intimacy for the single at heart can mean sexual intimacy, but it can also mean emotional intimacy and all of those kinds of intimacy are valued.

How do you measure people who are single at heart, as you would put it, or permanently single, affirmatively never wanting to get into a relationship, a one on one romantic relationship with somebody, versus people who are single and in between relationships.

How do you do that in your research?

Okay.

It's not that the single at heart never have a romantic relationship, some of them don't ever have them, but it's that you don't organize your life around them.

You don't prioritize them.

So if you have a romance, you might date casually, but you're going to be honest and open with the people that you're dating that you are looking for.

The traditional things.

Sometimes people call that the relationship escalator that, you know, you start dating and then you get more serious and you move in and then you get married and maybe you have kids.

And the single at heart don't do that, but the way I measure it is I have a 14 item quiz that asks a lot of different questions about do they find single life joyful?

That's a really big, important, easy one.

In fact, it's the question that is most likely to separate people who are single at heart from people who arent.

If you think about single life as joyful, you are likely to be single at heart.

I love solitude.

I like having time to myself.

I feel very comfortable that I rarely feel lonely.

Well, the about heart are going to be like that, too.

So they're going to tend to like solitude more than people who are not single at heart.

But what was really amazing was that just about every last one of them says that they're not afraid of being lonely when they have time alone.

They think of that time alone as sweet, sweet solitude.

And that comes with some really important advantages.

So if you are single at heart and you cherish your solitude and you're used to doing things on your own and enjoying them, you are protected from lonelines during the pandemic, people who are single at heart in some ways did better than people who aren't single at heart because they already had a life built on solo pursuits as well as their friends and people who they care about, but they could still stay in touch with them virtually.

That isolate of heart was less challenging for the single at heart and being comfortable in solitude also helped people as they age because they're not going to end up being that stereotypical old person who's isolated and lonely and they're going to continue to enjoy the time they have to themselves.

Yeah, but at some point, physical capacity to take care of oneself kind of gets in the way of that, right?

If you live long enough and you end up like many older people do in a wheelchair, not being able to shop for food for yourself, not being able to do your own laundry, I mean, there are things that happen in life.

I would imagine that may, of course.

But the thing is that.

Single at heart at an older age.

Right?

Quite difficult.

Yeah, that's true.

But the thing is, marriage is no, there's no perfect guard against those things happening.

I mean, your spouse could have all those things happen to them and be totally unable to help you.

And so now you're the caretaker and that's never going to be reciprocated.

But in general, you're right.

I mean, everybody, regardless of their relationship status, their marital status, needs to be concerned about later life.

And the thing about the single at heart, though, is that they aren't expecting to be able to count on a romantic partner to be their caretaker, the financial backstop.

So they are more likely to do the kinds of things that will protect them into later life.

For example, some of the people I interviewed were already in their thirties thinking about how to have a home that will make it easier for them to age in place.

And they were already talking to their builders and their renovators to make sure they were in the most protected place possible.

But at the same time, I mean, there's some things we all need to worry about, like how expensive they can be if we can no longer live by ourselves and we want to try something like assisted living that's hard.

And it's especially hard for single people because they're disadvantaged financially.

Right, Exactly.

I mean, that was another question I was going to get to about affording life on your own as opposed to sharing house payments or rent or the price of a car or all these major purchases.

But first, you're breaking a trend, I would say, or ahead of a trend of people enjoying living by themselves.

But this is also coming, at least according to some surveys, at a time when there's a record amount of loneliness among Americans.

How do those two intersect?

How do you explain that?

Yes.

I think some of the loneliness problem is because not all of it is because we have been sold this fantasy that if you have a romantic partner, then you will never be lonely again, and that if you are single, that means you don't have anyone.

And when we talk like that, then we tend to downplay our friends and not value them and not invest in them.

And I think the single at heart who are very much protected from loneliness, you know, not 100%.

Nobody is 100%, but they're much less likely to be lonely.

And there are several reasons for that, including that they actually enjoy the time they have to themselves.

That doesn't make them scared.

It doesn't make them lonely, and that they're more likely to invest in other people and have the ones instead of the one.

And value those people.

They don't think, poor me.

I have a friends.

And that's a very valuable way to think about your life and to live your life.

Now, a couple of activities occur to me that at least to me and to a lot of people I've spoken with, this is no kind of scientific surveyor data here.

But going to a movie, taking a walk in the park, going on traveling overseas to see amazing things, going to a museum excuse me, are things that people frequently enjoy a whole lot more if they're sharing with somebody.

They think they do.

Yes, there is actually research on this showing that people who are assigned to either go to a museum by themselves or with the friend, they're asked ahead of time, how much do you think you will enjoy it?

And ahead of time, the people who are you know, they're going to go by themselves like, I'm not going to like this.

But what actually happens afterwards is that the people who went by themselves were just as happy with their experiences as the people that went with others, and they were just as likely to want to do it again.

And even more than that, there's research showing that there are some kinds of activities that people actually enjoy more on their own.

For example, when they want to be really involved in, say, a performance they're watching and they don't want to be distracted by what is the other person think they're liking it or are.

There are a lot of people who love traveling by themselves and they like to be able to follow their own interests and make a last minute change or do whatever they want.

And some people who love traveling by themselves also note that they are actually more likely to meet more people and interact with more people than they do if they're with a romantic partner or even a friend, because they're actually more open to the people around them.

So that's not to deny that some people really do enjoy lots of experiences more when they are with other people.

But what we need to keep in mind is the universality of that is overstated and people don't always appreciate that.

And it's true also about how people view others who are on their own.

But what you're saying sounds to me like it denies the human need to share, to share experiences.

No, not at all.

It's just the I mean, when you're when you're in a foreign country and you're looking at an elephant or gorilla, the silverback gorilla or some kind of exotic birds or Victoria Falls in Africa.

Yeah.

There's something about the sharing of that and the shared memory of that that is very important, at least to me.

I think that there is a power in being able to appreciate those wonderful experiences without having to share them with someone else.

I think if you can only really enjoy the bounties of nature, the spectacular wildlife, if you have another person with you that's kind of limiting.

Or I'm talking any kind of trip, a train trip through the Rockies or, you know, not just not just environmental experiences, but whatever it is you like to do.

Riding a roller coaster in a foreign country, whatever it is you like to do when you're traveling.

Well, you know, some people do feel that way, that they're just not going to enjoy it as much as they would if they were with somebody else.

But, you know, people are different.

And some people really enjoy it a lot when they're on their own.

And that doesn't mean that they're cut off from the human experience of sharing, because as I mentioned, single people are actually more connected to more different people, but they, the single at heart, both appreciate and get a lot out of being on their own and doing things by themselves.

And they also enjoy sharing experiences with others so they're more flexible are what I think of as more expansive in the kinds of experiences that make them happy.

Interesting.

You know, I mentioned at the very beginning that I have a pet peeve, which is calling people who've including plenty of people who have chosen not to have children, who were perfectly capable physically of doing that childless.

Tell me about how that might relate to your terminology on single at heart and how it is frequently described in the media.

What do you want to revolutionize?

Yes, I want to revolutionize the way we think about people, but also people who don't have children because they don't want children.

And I think the parallels are very close.

So people, adults are expected to want to be couple to want to be married and it's considered like there's something wrong with them if they don't.

And the same thing with having kids and other people assume that they know you better than you know yourself.

So they might tell you, you'll change your mind, you'll want to get married later, you'll want kids later.

You just haven't met the right person.

Or, you know, you'll grow into it.

And that's really a very presumptuous thing to say.

No one says to people who say they want to have kids, you might change your mind.

You just don't know what you really want.

And my mission really is it's specifically about people who are single and like being single, but it's also broader.

It's saying that people should get to live the lives that define most fulfilling.

And that includes, of course, people who don't have kids because they don't want kids.

Now, you talk about these attitudes and last question.

There's obviously been a revolution in how society, or at least a lot of people in this country maybe, you know, not all of them, but I would imagine a majority how they look at non-binary people, which wasn't even a term 20 or 30 years ago, how does that play off of intersect with how they look at single people?

You were saying, you're supposed to have kids.

It's you know why they're having you made me a grandfather yet, blah blah blah.

Are people's attitudes about staying single at heart, single for a life, changing also in that way?

Yes, I think they are.

So I think it's all part of a growing open mindedness about how we get to think about ourselves and how we get to live our lives.

And that might seem inconsistent with all the blowback we're seeing now with, you know, the anti-trans attitudes and laws and the book banning and all that.

But I think that all of that and all of the pro marriage things you're hearing these days much more often than, you know, a couple of decades ago, That's not because we are so secure about the place of marriage and children in our lives.

It's because were so insecure.

Marriage is never going to be what it once was.

This entree to living an adult life and having kids and having a house that you own and being financially secure and having sex, you know.

None of that is wrapped up in marriage anymore.

Marriage is never going to take over our lives in the way it once did.

And that's very threatening to people.

That is a huge change in how people live and it's a huge change in world views.

Lots of people like to believe that if only you get married, you become a better person, you know, a happier, healthier and more life superior person and people who are single at heart and people who don't have kids that they don't want kids are challenging those wretched ideologies.

And that makes a lot of people threatened and angry and scared.

Well, Dr. DePaulo, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and sharing the information in your new book.

Thank you.

I really enjoyed talking to you.

That's it for this edition.

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Outro Music Funding for To The Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundatio the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundati For a transcript or to see an online version of this episode of To the Contrary, please visit our PBS website at pbs.org/tothecontrary.