Singles By Choice

This part of the blog is designed to stimulate discussion about choosing being single as a lifestyle, whether temporary or permanent. It is also a place where we can share our stories of why we have chosen to be single, including our battle-scars and doubts. I hope that we can give each other encouragement and support in those times of doubt.

It is also a site that will look at research that has been done by and about single people. Not the kind of research that tells us that we can only be happy if we get married but the kind of research that shows us how we can be happy no matter what and debunks the notion that marriage is required for happiness.

In her book “With or Without a Man,” Karen Gail Lewis proposes a new Life Stage Model:

The comprehensive model I propose reflects a life course with many twists and turns. The lifelines moves linearly from birth to childhood to adolescence to adulthood, where it splits into two equally viable paths. Some people move along the Single Adulthood path, while others move along the Married Adulthood path.

And of course, some of us move back and forth between the two paths.

When you have decided to stay on the Single Adulthood path - at least for a while - this part of my blog will come in handy. Hopefully, it will help you navigate that path, which, at times, can be a bit lonely.

So, please, check out these posts! To read more background on where I am coming from, please read My Story.

Singles: A Documentary Reinforcing Stereotypes

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As Bella DePaulo has pointed out in a recent blog post, there are several new documentaries on singles out. I wonder if I just watched the third one she mentioned (unfortunately, the spam filter at PT seems to reject any comment that contains the word “single,” so I can’t ask Bella…): “Single: A Documentary,” which shows DePaulo briefly but, unfortunately, not every time someone voiced a singlist or matrimanical opinion. I suppose that would’ve ended up being a documentary about singlism featuring DePaulo because she’d been all over the place! Unless they’re doing a complete 360 in the part that I missed, the message of the documentary is clear: If you’re single, you are selfish, suffer from ADD, too lazy to be in a relationship, and will live unhappily ever after. That people could choose to be single was completely not mentioned… That marriage is an institution that might need some serious questioning didn’t seem to occur to the film makers (although some of the people interviewed started down that path).

I am very disappointed because the documentary has a cast, which includes - aside from DePaulo - Stephanie Coontz. The trailer, though, already indicates the direction of the whole documentary: Despite doing lip-service to the idea that being single isn’t a problem, the goal in life should still be to get (and stay) married. So, I should’ve known that despite DePaulo, this wasn’t a documentary that would shatter myths. And if I had paid better attention, I would have noticed that Barbara DaFoe Whitehead, one of the cast members, is the author of “Dan Quale was Right,” an article published in 1993 that Nancy Polikoff sees as part of a rhetorical shift that “traced all social problems to the decline of marriage and invoked at the solution restoring lifelong marriage to its proper place” (67-68). Sigh. Well, don’t make my mistake and save your money or buy a book. Unless you’re interested in being depressed about being single or dating, you can skip this documentary…

Singlism from the late 19th Century

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I just finished Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller’s wonderful book “Liberty: A Better Husband. Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780 – 1840.” It is a great read for any single by choice because it provides some historical grounding: there were women in antebellum America who chose to remain single for various reasons and some of them were actually rather happy with that choice. Chambers argues that the Cult of Domesticity gave rise to a Cult of Single Blessedness that was built on the notion that it is better to be single than miserably married (17). Her book follows several women through their life - using their journals, letters, and in some cases professional publications. They struggle with finding their place in society, often making great personal sacrifices to live with the choices they made. Largely, though, they were accepted by society - until after the Civil War. Then things changed. Singlehood became a “great social disease.” Singlism was born.

The arguments brought forth sound strangely and sadly familiar: “The root of the great error of our day is, that woman is to be made independent and self-supporting,” warned Reverend John Todd in 1867 (190). It wasn’t God’s will for her to be something other than a wife and mother. And just like today, the specter of damaging health consequences was raised. Edward Clarke argued in 1873 that women’s blood cannot support their reproductive organs and their brains at the same time. He forecast that women end up “hermaphrodite in mind.” And of course, putting all that blood into the brain has painful consequences for the single woman. Since she hasn’t used her reproductive capacity, the organs will shrivel up and a painful menopause sets in (192). (Maybe these are the theoretical underpinnings of the recent headlines that marriage makes people smarter? Oh, wait, no, that would be the other way round, right? Because if you were married back then, you’d likely have all your blood tied up in the reproductive system, which would leave any blood for your brain, so you’d be stupider… I am digressing, though.)

But the impact of celibacy is not limited to the reproductive organs. No, the medical community of the late 19th century warned, spinsters will die younger: “Very carefully prepared statistics show that between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, more unmarried women die than married, and no instance of remarkable longevity in an old maid is known” (193). Of course, ignorance is not evidence but that argument was pre-baloney detection kit… (Then again, if you’re male and live in Australia, you’re still pushed into marriage with the carrot that you’ll be living longer. Having read much of Bella DePaulo’s work debunking studies like this, I suspect that this finding is as solid as thin ice… Update: One of the Rachel’s Musings readers pointed me to an article on a recent U of Michigan study that is also debunking that marriage is the only way to stay healthy. I’ll incorporate more in a future post!)

If it doesn’t kill us, it will drive us nuts: “throughout the civilized word there are every where three to four single to one married woman in the establishments for the insane” (193). Being exposed to these kinds of attitudes can indeed lead to insanity…

To make sure that the single woman can safely be marginalized in society, everything considered not “normal” was brought together in a sure-fire mix to discredit the health of a spinster. As Chambers puts it: “Celibacy, often a symptom of that new female sexual disease, frigidity, would result in physical and mental degeneracy. Homosexuality and female independence were degenerate in and of themselves. Thus the epidemic of spinsterhood had to be quashed. The progress of civilization and the health of women depended up it.” With that much danger, it is surprising that single women weren’t burned at the stake. Oh, wait, that was a different century…

It is sad to realize that many of the stereotypes that were created after the Civil War are still around today. If we’re single, there’s somehow something wrong with us. We’re (supposedly!) more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease and our blood pressure is higher. Seeing the historical continuity of these attacks doesn’t make them any less painful. Actually, it makes them more painful! And they make me wonder: Why are single women so threatening? Oh, wait, I think I know: If you make the whole existence of civilization dependent on marriage, of course, living single would be a big threat. That is the myth we’re up against.

Prevent Alzheimer’s - Be Skeptical!

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Bella DePaulo blogged about a recent BBC report on a presentation of findings from a Finish study on Alzheimer’s disease. The headline everywhere seems to be: to prevent Alzheimer’s, we should marry! Digging into the study some more - which has not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal - the first thing that struck me: Alzheimer’s is not very prevalent. Out of 1,432 study participants,

139 were diagnosed with some form of cognitive impairment, including 82 with mild cognitive impairment — which may represent a transitional phase between normal age-related memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease — and 48 with Alzheimer’s.

Let’s see… 139/1432 = 9.7% and 48/1432 = 3.4%. So, out of a hundred people, about 3 people will get Alzheimer’s; 97 people will not. This are small numbers. Granted, having worked with people at the early stages of Alzheimer’s, the disease is devastating but apparently not quite as prevalent as the news coverage seems to suggest. In contrast, almost 4 times as many people have heart disease (11%). It is about as prevalent as stroke (2.6%, Table 2). And 7 out of a 100 people will get any type of cancer (Table 6)

Nevertheless, if we do want to prevent Alzheimer’s - the study claims - we just have to be married. Never mind that

The association with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease did not reach statistical significance.

But, okay, the difference in other cognitive impairments between singles and marrieds is statistically significant. However, there is something else that plays a role:

Having the APOE-e4 genotype — a risk factor for Alzheimer’s — was particularly damaging for those who were widowed or divorced from midlife through late life. Those who were married and had the high-risk genotype had a 3.44-fold (P<0.05) increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, compared with a 25.55-fold (P<0.001) greater risk for those who were divorced or widowed.

I have no idea what that genotype is but to me this finding that married folks have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s than divorced or widowed is, well, nice but not at all actionable. What are we to do? Ask people to get married to prevent Alzheimer’s? This would go down the (wrong) road of using marriage as a panacea, which it is not. Plus, causality - marriage prevents Alzheimer’s - cannot be established by this kind of study. It would require an experiment where people are randomly assigned to the “marriage condition.” Since that is not very ethical, we can’t conduct such a study. We can use longitudinal studies to approximate this, watching people with changing marital status. However, as the researcher pointed out, there might be other things at play here, too:

This suggested, Hakansson said, that other factors beyond cohabitation were involved in the associations. [...]

Hakansson speculated that those who were widowed or divorced — and remained so — were at a greater risk than those who were single because the loss of a partner destabilized the psychobiological system, enhancing vulnerability to disease.

Maybe stress is the mediating factor, not marital status? Loosing your spouse - through death or divorce - certainly is stressful!

Now, is there anything we can do to prevent Alzheimer’s? There is apparently a “general hypothesis of social stimulation as a protective factor against dementia.” So, be social and be active! Start a walking group where you skeptically dissect news reports on what benefits marriage are supposed to bestow upon us. If nothing else, you’ll prevent heart disease through the walking…

Is Marriage Natural?

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When challenging the preferential status of marriage, I am often countered with “but marriage is natural!” No, it is not. Reading about the history of marriage in general and in the US in particular, it is clear that marriage is an institution created with specific civic purposes, which changed over time but were always there. In the US, it is steeped in the Christian tradition of monogamy, which the founding fathers imposed on the new nation.

Of course, this is avoiding the real question: Is coupling natural? I suspected that it is for reproduction and possibly for child-rearing but not for personal fulfillment seeking and happiness achievement. Certainly, the idea of a soul mate can’t be natural, I figured. Fortunately, there are people who have done the research for me. Elizabeth Pillsworth and Martie Haselton have written a commentary in response to a paper by Bella DePaulo and Wendy Morris. In their commentary, Pillsworth and Haselton summarize the evidence from evolutionary psychology. Their answer? Yes, coupling has evolved to facilitate reproduction and, to some extend, child rearing. Evidence from a variety of disciplines indicates “a species-typical pattern in which individuals generally seek long-term cooperative reproductive relationships.” Longer-term coupling also helps decrease the risks of pregnancy. And “the formation of pairbonds may be an adaptation for caring for offspring.” The desire to couple also seems to be universal and rather resistant to ideologies:

Men and women are more likely to form lasting, semi-exclusive pairs than to pursue a lifelong strategy of casual, fluid relationships.

However, before the Religious Wrong celebrates (willfully ignoring that they would have to accept evolution to accept this argument but that’s another story), let’s read on. It is important to distinguish between the evolutionary reasons for coupling - reproduction and child rearing - and the cultural overtones, especially those included in the more recent idea of a romantic partner. Pillsworth and Haselton stress this distinction:

Evolutionary approaches suggest that humans will possess a strong desire to form conjugal pairs, but nowhere in evolutionary theory do we see the prediction that one’s romantic partner will serve all social functions.

Matrimania is neither natural nor a direct consequence of the evolutionary grounding of coupling. This is because coupling serves specific evolutionary purposes: reproduction and caring for the offspring. So, someone can have excellent reproductive potential but might be a lousy partner (and sometimes reproductive ability and parenting doesn’t even co-exist in the same person, which has lead some species to split even those roles).

There is, therefore, nothing from an evolutionary perspective that would suggest that all relationship roles can be collapsed into a single partner. Each type of relationship serves its own unique set of purposes, guided by specialized adaptations.

Yet, modern marriage, and to a large extend intimate relationships, seem to presuppose this role collapse. We are not looking simply for a father or a mother for our children when we’re looking for a partner. No, that person has to be our best friend, be interested in almost everything we’re interested in, must be good to talk to, fun to be with, laugh at the same points in the movie, oh, and be good looking, of course, terrific in bed etc etc etc. This modern ideal, then, is almost unnatural - it goes against the evolutionary adaptation mechanisms that helped specialize certain roles.

Aside from the role collapse, Pillsworth and Haselton also point out that “the fact that humans have adaptations for coupling does not imply the moral superiority of coupled individuals.” A couple who can reproduce and rear children is necessary for the survival of the species. They don’t have to be happy. In fact, they really only need to be alive long enough to raise the offspring, who tend to be self-sufficient around 15 years of age (well, used to at least…). The other, very important caveat, is that

the psychological adaptations underlying coupling evolved in an environment that differed in many ways from the one in which we live now.

In other words, just because something was necessary thousands of years ago on the savana doesn’t mean that we can’t move beyond it nowadays. Thus, coupling might make just as much (or little) sense as the gendered-division of labor. In today’s world, men and women can pretty much do most jobs equally well. So, we should be able to seek fulfillment without the traditionally prescribed panacea: marriage.

Finally, Pillsworth and Haselton examine the bias against singles, which they suggests “exists because relationship status conveys information with reproductive relevance.” If someone has always been single, this might be an indicator that they are “exceptionally low mate material.” However, just like coupling in general, this evolved reason may no longer be very relevant in modern society. Remaining single can be a reasonable choice and, thus, does not reflect at all on one’s reproductive ability. The information conveyed by the single status, which was crucial to our ancestors, has lost its value in today’s society.

Why, then, does the argument that marriage is naturally meeting our needs so pervasive? Pillsworth and Haselton offer this observation:

Coupling is so pervasive, and thinking differently about singles so natural, that singlism has virtually escaped notice until now.

Just like racism, sexism, and heterosexism might have developed around some biases in our evolutionary past, singlism exists because we are not counteracting what we, as a species, have learned. This is especially the case in the US:

In American society, we appear to have merged several social roles into a single relationship. [...] In most cultures around the globe, your spouse is not your best friend, or even your primary social partner.

It seems that we are counteracting some evolved forces - those that gave specialized purposes to other relationships - by focusing our attention on only one force: coupling. The idea that a partner is a soul mate is not only historically very recent but also might be an evolutionary counter-productive social adaptation. By putting all our relationship-eggs into one basket - marriage, whether the legal kind or the look-alikes - we are ignoring lessons from evolutionary psychology.

(Hat tip to Bella DePaulo for pointing me to this commentary.)

Beyond Marriage

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Aside from Nancy Polikoff’s recently published book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, there is also an online statement calling for activists, especially in the LGBT movement, to move beyond marriage, which goes back to July 2006. It is an encouraging affirmation of all forms of relationships and families.

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal ­– for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.

As a single by choice, I feel fully respected by such a statement, unlike some of the pro-marriage arguments, which seem to suggest that somehow marriage is the only valid form of relating. This includes, sadly, some of the claims in the Center for Inquiry’s position paper on same-sex marriage, such as the suggestion that marriage is the best way for “promoting stable relationships.” This is denying that there are many stable relationships outside of marriage! As Polikoff argues, marriage is the wrong policy for many, possibly all, societal problems. For example, marriage does not get children out of poverty. Education does. Also, many feminists still think marriage is ultimately a patriarchal institution, especially given its history. We should not be forced to marry simply to obtain certain rights and benefits, such as the right to visit a friend in the hospital or to ensure that our estate goes to a person who was important in our lives or to get health care coverage. Marriage is the wrong solution.

Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways ­ – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.

Slowly but surely, the Wrong is dismantling benefits that LGBT activists hope to secure through same-sex marriage. Another reason, why marriage is the wrong solution.

So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world.

Oh, this is just beautiful! An emphasis on the nuclear family, and matrimania in particular, has undermined communities because the relationship to one person has been elevated above all other relationships. By moving beyond marriage, we can counteract this dangerous trend and build inclusive communities.

The Principles at the Heart of Our Vision
We, the undersigned, suggest that strategies rooted in the following principles are urgently needed:

  • Recognition and respect for our chosen relationships, in their many forms
  • Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households, and families, and for the children in all of those households and families, including same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, second-parent adoptions, and others
  • The means to care for one another and those we love
  • The separation of benefits and recognition from marital status, citizenship status, and the requirement that “legitimate” relationships be conjugal
  • Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households, and families
  • Access for all to vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor
  • Freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression
  • Recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and practical affirmation of the importance of joining with others who also face opposition to their household and family compositions, including old people, immigrant communities, single parents, battered women, prisoners and former prisoners, people with disabilities, and poor people
  • We must ensure that our strategies do not help create or strengthen the legal framework for gutting domestic partnerships (LGBT and heterosexual) for those who prefer this or another option to marriage, reciprocal beneficiary agreements, and more. Our movement strategies must never secure privilege for some while at the same time foreclosing options for many. Our strategies should expand the current terms of debate, not reinforce them.

I have modified the last two points slightly to broaden them beyond the specific LGBT focus of the Statement, which is intended for “LGBT and allied activists.” I think they apply just as much to organizations such as the Center for Inquiry, for example, which gives some lip-service to other forms of relationship (p. 27-8), the bulk of its Position Paper excludes non-marital relationships.

It is clear that moving beyond marriage does not undermine the right to marriage for same-sex and different-sex couples. Instead it calls for a disentangling of that right from the legal benefits that come with marriage that are often not addressing the underlying societal issues.

At a time when the conservative movement is generating an agenda of fear, retrenchment, and opposition to the very idea of a caring society, we need to claim the deepest possibilities for interdependent social relationships and human expression. We must dare to dream the world that we need, the world that has room for us all, even as we also do the painstaking work of crafting the practical strategies that will address the realities of our daily lives. [...] Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.

This is such an encouraging vision! Too bad it seems to get lost in the way too loud pro-marriage rhetoric that sees marriage as the panacea it is not.

Religious Wrong’s Influence

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An interesting commentary at AlterNet made me realize how destructive the influence of the Religious Right really is (hereafter I call them the Wrong - they might be on the right-side of the political spectrum but they are dead wrong in their positions). The topics where their influence plays a role are ever expanding in my awareness. Here are some of them:

The last point is especially disturbing to me. I am currently reading Nancy Polikoff’s brilliant Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage. The parts that I have read so far are an interesting walk through the history of the LGBT rights movement and how it used to fight for the rights of all families, a fight that was started within the feminist movement through the marriage critique. Yet, somehow the attack by the Wrong on non-traditional families (where a traditional family is the good old separate spheres marriage with kids, father works outside the home, mother works inside the home), led to a push by LGBT activists for the right to marry. No longer did they combine forces with others to fight for the recognition and protection of all families and all relationships (and all people, really). They wanted a piece of the marriage pie even if that pie excluded people who did not want to marry, like marriage-boycotters or singles by choice. I am saddened to notice this conservative influence on a movement that used to be vibrantly challenging the status quo. Now, they seem to just want to be part of that status quo.

Most LGBT activists no longer question whether marriage is a desirable form of relationship that needs to be attained above all other forms (I am generalizing here, fortunately, because there are still voices within the LGBT movement who are questioning the sanctity of marriage, Nancy Polikoff and Michael LaSala are two examples). As a single by choice, I feel left out in the cold. But what is worse, the Wrong was obviously able to infiltrate their agenda into a progressive movement. Which brings me back to the AlterNet commentary:

Pardon the ugly analogy, but this steadfast assault has all the makings of an inexpugnable infection…one that requires timely treatment lest it render the unsuspecting host into a state of perpetual decline. As such, one can never assume that a period of remission will be sustained. Like it or not, these inviolable interlopers are constantly searching for a vulnerability that can be exploited.

We haven’t even noticed how much that infection has spread…

Atheism and Marital Status

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The Pew Forum on Religion breaks out religious affiliation by marital status. According to their detail table, the highest percentage of never marrieds are amongst atheists (37%), almost twice the rate as in the total population (19%). This might be at least in part due to the younger age of atheists (37% are between 18 and 29 years old compared to 20% in the total population). 30% of secular unaffiliated/atheist/agnostic are never marrieds; 45% are currently married. 29% of this group is above 50 years old, so not all these singles are young adults.

I think the high presence of singles, especially never married people, underscores the need to discuss alternatives to marriage, as well as singlism, amongst secular humanists.

Should Marriage be a Human Right?

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True Majority asks activists to sign a letter to the governors that calls for marriage equality. The call is framed as marriage equality being bigger than all other issues: “Marriage equality comes down to human rights.” I took issue with that and wrote them the following:

Thank you for your actions regarding marriage equality. As a single by choice, I take issue, though, with your framing marriage equality as a human rights issue: what human rights are we exactly defending by asking for marriage equality? The right to discriminate against other forms of relationships? Marriage is an institution; not a human right. People have human rights simply by being human, not by their relationship status. By expanding who can marry, we are perpetuating the inherent discriminatory policies that are endowed on people because they “tie the knot.” As a single by choice, I find it frustrating that people ignore that many of the 1,100+ benefits have nothing to do with human rights or protecting anybody. They simply privilege those who are in a state-sanctioned relationship, aka marriage. This discriminates against all of us who are in relationships other than marriages.

While I think that everybody who wants to marry should have the right to do so, I do not appreciate that this private commitment comes with a huge package of rights and benefits that are not available outside of marriage. I would love to see True Majority fight against singlism (the discrimination of singles) and marital status discrimination in all forms. We should fight for human rights for all people, regardless of their marital status, relationship style, sexual orientation, race, or gender.

After I hit sent, it occurred to me that I failed to do some research. Maybe marriage is considered a human right. After all matrimania is so ingrained in our cultures… I decided to check the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. And, indeed, Article 16 states:

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Wow. Marriage is a human right? And the family is a natural group unit of society? Am I the only one who finds both of this disturbing codification of discrimination and cultural assumptions? What is this based on? Marriage is a historical construct, an institution, nothing natural (unlike reproduction or even our need for interpersonal connections, even that might not be completely natural, at least once we’re beyond infancy). I find it sad that it is codified as a human right like this. What about my right as a single person to be respected as a complete human being without having to be married (or coupled)? I guess we have more consciousness raising to do than I thought before we can move beyond marriage…

Aside from the presumption that family is the building block of society, there are two interesting angles that we can look at here: The right to marry and the rights married folks get. I think, looking at it this way, it is clear that the right to marry is very basic: Everybody who wants to make the commitment that marriage entails, should be allowed to do so. However, this does not mean that these people should automatically receive benefits from the government, although that seems to be implied in the assumption that marriage is a human right. This second part - the rights married people receive - is what I take issue with.

Taming our Singlism Dragons

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Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting my pet dragons. It was a mixed pleasure, of course. Realizing what thoughts perpetuate my internalized singlism was somewhat frustrating (I thought I was over these!) but it was also good to see them clearly. After all, unidentified dragons are difficult to tame. “Dragons” are self-defeating thoughts that come up over and over again as repeating themes, sometimes with variations but usually easily identifiable on close inspection. Calling these thoughts dragons helps create enough distance to analyze them more carefully (although as Timothy Wilson points out that might be an uphill battle).

The dragons I identified are (notice that they are quite interrelated):

These dragons are rather familiar to me and, I suspect, to many others as well. The difference now is that I realize how much they are driven by internalized singlism and our culture of coupledom. Essentially, these dragons are undermining my sense of self-worth and preventing me from fully accepting myself as a single person.

REBT offers some useful approaches for addressing these thoughts. The following dragon taming tools are adapted from Paul Hauck’s book Overcoming Jealousy and Possessiveness, two self-defeating emotions that stem from self-worth issues. Self-worth issues do not have to lead to full-blown neurotic jealousy to create problems, so they warrant taking a closer look. The idea behind REBT is that our emotional pain “comes from our own words, our thoughts, our self-talk” (46). We create the painful statements ourselves; the dragons are home-bread. Hauck continues:

Those painful statements can give you great emotional pain, such as feelings of depression, guilt, inferiority, anger, fear, or jealousy. [...] Thinking logically and rationally can protect you from any of those emotions every time you decide to think sensibly instead of hysterically.

Dragon Taming Tools

These tools can help us think logically and rationally whenever we have created painful statements and the dragons are causing mischief.

Dispute your beliefs that you are not lovable and thus worthless
While it is very nice to be loved, Hauck points out that as adults we can survive without love. It can be our preference to have people in our lives that love us. To avoid feeding the dragons, we need to take care not to turn this into a demand (”I must have love!”). Furthermore, nobody has the right to judge our worth, including ourselves. We are worthy simply by the fact that we have been born.

Learn never to blame, rate, or judge
Blame leads to anger either against ourselves or others. To avoid this destructive feeling - anger - we need to learn not to blame ourselves and not to blame others (50). Hauck gives these details:

By self-blame I mean rejecting faults in yourself and also rejecting yourself totally as a human being. That leads invariably to feelings of (1) guilt, (2) inferiority, and (3) depression.

Other blame occurs when you reject unacceptable behavior in others and then reject them as human beings. That act leads to feelings of (1) anger, (2) resentment, (3) hatred, and (4) often superiority and conceit.

To overcome this blaming-game, we can learn to not judge ourselves or others but rather judge only our actions (60). We might have done something bad (or self-defeating), yet this does not make us a bad person. Also, reminding ourselves of the following can help:

Everyone in the world has a perfect right to be wrong, stupid, inconsiderate, and imperfect. That’s not a nice way to be, but people have a right to be human. (49-50)

We all do things that we later regret. That’s unfortunate but it’s simply human. By stopping to beat up ourselves and others over this, we can move beyond self- and other-rating.

Start your life now and stop waiting for a soul mate
Modern society has created the myth of the soul mate. There is no perfect match out there, so move on and start enjoying your life - with or without a partner (and there’s no soul either: when you die, you’re dead, so enjoy life while you can!). This myth perpetuates the idea that we are incomplete without a partner, not a full adult. It also suggests that we cannot truly be happy unless we find “our other half.” What nonsense! (as Albert Ellis would probably say). Happiness requires work on our part, not a cure-all partner. To expect a magical change in our lives simply from one person is absurd and puts too much of a burden on that person. Kay Trimberger identified six building blocks of a happy life as a single (or for anybody, really). Leading a satisfying life can be a helpful anti-dote to the dragons.

The most important suggestion Hauck has, slightly adapted: We have the right - even the obligation - to accept ourselves despite all our dragons that have set up camp feeding us self-defeating thoughts. It will take some time and lots of thought disputing to tame those dragons and turn them into pets. They will still try to hijack our thinking, so we need to remain vigilant. The payoff is immense, though: self-acceptance is the foundation of a happy life.

Alternatives to Marriage

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Although I am excited about the California Supreme Court’s decision to override a ban on same-sex marriage, I continue to be leery about the preferential treatment bestowed upon people simply because they “tie the knot.” According to a compilation of the General Accounting Office, in the U.S. married couples get at least 1,400 rights and benefits that non-married people do not get (an updated version is available as a PDF). While some of these rights clearly intend to protect children (although my own experience with the divorce law make me sometimes doubt that and there is also other evidence of that failure), many of those rights are simply discriminatory. As a single person, my social security benefits are not paid beyond my death. If I were married, my surviving spouse gets those benefits. I could add a spouse to my health insurance but not a very close friend who has lost hers with her job (or never got any health insurance). Although it certainly simplifies things, it does not make sense to me why these rights are not easily available outside of marriage. Easily is the key here because at least some of these rights could probably recreated through complex contracts. So, why not create a simple legal vehicle that would be available to people in any relationship, be it as a couple or siblings or friends? Something like a union contract that two (or more) people could sign that conveys similar rights and benefits no matter who those people are would be much less discriminatory. A marriage could simply be the expression of a commitment between two people - no special rights and benefits are attached to it, except through the union contract that every married couple had to sign. This would uphold the rights and benefits for married people but would end the matrimonial discrimination of other relationships. It is time that we come up with alternatives to marriage rather than perpetuating a discriminating vehicle.

There is an excellent editorial on courant.com, which brings up several good points along the lines I have argued here. Froma Harrop argues that “there is a marriage debate we ought to have — or to put it more accurately, a non-marriage debate.” She continues:

The troubling aspect of the push for gay marriage is the part that perpetuates the notion of marriage as a goody bag for sundry government and corporate benefits. A gay advocate asks, “Why can’t I leave my $4 million estate to my partner tax-free, as Jane and Joe Jones next door can do?” Valid question — but then one asks: “What about Widow Smith and her sister, who have lived together for decades? Shouldn’t tax law favor their estates, as well?” [...] Given the growing percentage of unmarried adult Americans, the whole obsession with same-sex marriage has become rather dated.

Keep marriage as a romantic and religious ideal for those who choose to partake. Public policy, on the other hand, should be marriage-neutral.

This is the marriage issue that the leading candidates should be addressing. You just know that they won’t touch it.

Excellent!

Single Voters

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Bella DePaulo wrote an interesting article on Huffington Post about single voters, especially single women voters. Among her findings:

In their values and their appraisals, single women are on the leading edge of where the country is already headed. Currently, for example, 77% of both married and unmarried women believe that the country is on the wrong track. But single women got there first. In November of 2006, 66% of single women, compared to just 54% of married women, thought that the country was headed in the wrong direction. Single women were on the vanguard in their disapproval of the Iraq War, too.

DePaulo suggests that voters who are single - “people who are divorced and widowed, along with those who have always been single” - are an attractive segment of the population, especially for the Democratic party. It remains to be seen if the Democrats notice us!

To help Democrats, DePaulo even includes a list of suggestions of what Democrats can do to mobilize single voters. Starting with how they talk to us: Rather than the exclusionary language many of the candidates are using, they need to start realizing that “we need to value all of our important relationships, and not just our ties to a spouse or our own children.” Next, they need to get their facts straight: Instead of claiming that families are the bedrocks of community, they need to look at the mounting research that shows that

Singles are more likely than married people to help, encourage, and spend time with their neighbors and friends. They are also the ones who more often visit, support, advise, and contact their siblings and parents.

And this happens despite discriminatory laws and policies that favor married people. DePaulo provides details.

The bottom line, argues DePaulo, is to realize that including single citizens, in language as well as in action, includes all citizens.

Marital Happiness Myth

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I am reading an interesting book about happiness, Well & Good, written by an Australian researcher, Richard Eckersley. It is a great book that is reflecting some of the questions that I’ve been grappling with: there is something that is tying many of the issues we’re facing together. Eckersley also attributes a lot of our current malaise to misplaced answers to the questions of meaning and belonging. I am a little leery about his references to spirituality but I haven’t read the book far enough yet to know exactly where he’s going with that. I look forward to sharing a book summary in the not too distant future.

I cannot resist, though, to comment on Eckersley’s bold false statement in reply to his questions what makes a person happy: “Marriage, religion, friends, work, leisure, health and money all enhance wellbeing” (78). Could we have some qualifiers, please! I could get Bella DePaulo’s most excellent book, Singled Out, to debunk the marriage-happiness link. The irony is: I don’t have to. Eckersley’s claim is debunked in the same chapter; he just doesn’t realize it. The marriage-happiness link basically goes like this: Happily married people are happy. Well, duh! I have another secret: Happy people are happier than unhappy people. Yes, I know! It’s earth-shattering news!

Jokes aside, let’s look at the data Eckersley presents and then use DePaulo’s work to make sense of it all. I am calling for qualifiers because “the measures represent a ‘buffered’ view of reality and so present a false, or at least incomplete, picture of social conditions” (100). In other words, we don’t know it all and we might be implying things that aren’t really there. Eckersley also points out later in the chapter that these happiness surveys do not measure causation - being religious does not cause greater happiness, for example - they show correlations. Thus, happy people might be more religious. His statement falsely implies causation: If I get married, find religion, and earn more money, I will be happier. We can say at most that these factors “can enhance” or “might enhance” wellbeing and happiness (Eckersley looks at happiness as one factor of wellbeing).

Although Eckersley also presents evidence that contradicts the money-happiness claim, I want to focus on the marriage-happiness link because, partly, Eckersley does not see that it’s a myth (he does with money, see 79-80) but also because it’s so pervasive and such a great contributor to unhappiness (in the form of singlism, including its internalized version).

Here’s what Eckersley has to say about marriage:

For example, the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index showed that marital status produced the largest difference in life satisfaction: measured on a percentage scale, married people scored an average 13 percentage points higher than the separated (and 7 more than the never-married). (81)

Married people are happier than separated married people. Well, if you’ve ever gone through a divorce - or even a relationship break-up - that does not come as a surprise to you. Again, this shows that happy people are happier than unhappy people. Later in the chapter, Eckersley even presents an explanation for the 7-point difference between married and never-married: “The public mask may conceal most in those individuals who outwardly appear happiest and most successful, those whom modern society most celebrates and holds up for admiration” (103). Married people have made it, according to current cultural trances. They are adults. Matrimania requires that they feel happier, so even if they don’t feel it, they pretend as if, certainly when they answer survey questions.

According to Eckersley, British economists have put a monetary value on life events (82):

On average, marrying increases happiness by about the same amount as having an extra £70,000 ($170,000) a year; separating costs about £130,000 ($320,000) a year.

So, being married but separated eats up the gain of marriage and then some.

Is there a link between marriage and happiness? Bella DePaulo has not found one despite what looks like research evidence that points to a link. In fact, she found the same convoluted arguments that Eckersley presents: Implying causality and ignoring the various forms of being married, including that form, which is leading to a divorce (aka separation). Her major criticism is the point-in-time nature of these studies: if we measure happiness when a couple is happily married, of course, they’ll be happy. But what happens when their marriage goes sour, as many marriages do these days. To determine that, we need to look at people over time using longitudinal studies. Interestingly, these are rare in the marriage-happiness field, maybe because they debunk the myth. DePaulo found one (Richard E. Lucas et al.). This study, which followed people for about 15 years, shows that always-married people are happier than always-single people. Don’t run off to the altar yet: this holds true before and after marriage! DePaulo speculates that people who are successful at marriage might just simply be people who are happier. So, if there is a causal link between marriage and happiness, it is probably going in the opposite direction as most researchers claim: Happiness creates good marriages (again, though, we can only see correlation, not causation, so this is speculation, although I would claim, speculation that is more based in reality). If we look at all the people who got married, including those who eventually divorced or were widowed, we notice a little blip in happiness right around the wedding. Soon thereafter, though, things go back to normal. And people who divorced ended up less happy than always-singles. It is also important to note that we are not talking about huge differences. The lines for all three groups hover around a 7 on a 10-point scale, with always-marrieds a little above 7 and always-single and divorced a little below (see The Marriage Graph in Singled Out, 36).

Perpetuating the happiness-marriage myth is especially disturbing in the context of Eckersley’s book. He talks about the increased isolation we are facing in modern, Western society. If we look at the history of marriage, our modern idea of marriage has at least contributed to this isolation. The nuclear family has largely replaced connections with family and community. The idea of seperate spheres, which still influences the modern nuclear family, established the home as the sanctuary from the outside world, the place where we would get all of our needs met. With increasing income, public conversations moved to the home, in front of the TV, further increasing our isolation (see Jennifer Hecht’s Happiness Myth). All this suggests that our matrimania - our idea that marriage will solve all of our problems - might be a contributing factor to our current cultural malaise. By focusing our need for belonging onto one person - our partner - we miss out on building a larger network of friends and ultimately communities. Perpetuating the myth that marriage brings happiness, researchers prevent us from taking a critical look at the damage our idea of marriage (and intimate relationships) is doing to our communities. Instead, we should look at pillars that help everybody live more satisfying lives, whether married or single, such as those found through the work of Kay Trimberger. Her work suggests that intimate relationships are important to our lives but they do not need to take the form of a marriage. Building new ways of connecting that do not rely on the glorification of marriage can help us create more meaningful lives with a stronger sense of belonging.

Internalized Singlism

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Although I disagree with Robin Norwood’s diagnosis in Women Who Love Too Much, I think some of the behavioral patterns she is describing are real (even if she made up a lot of those case histories). We need to find a way of explaining the patterns that does not blame the victim but rather empowers them. Re-labeling co-dependency as “internalized oppression” might be counter-productive because it is such a broad idea and it might not be supported by evidence. I would like to propose a new hypothesis: internalized singlism and matrimania.

Bella DePaulo points out eloquently in her book Singled Out that we live in a society that stigmatizes singles (singlism) and elevates marriage to the must-have cure-all of all unhappiness (matrimania). Both of these ideas are also internalized. From a young age, especially women are bombarded with the idea that we can only prove our lovability through marriage. The ring on our finger shows the world: Look! I made it! Someone loves me! Girlfriends - we learn - are fine to have but they are expendable, yet, somehow will always be there. Once we found The One, we won’t need them anymore, he will meet our every need, share all our interests, and we’ll live happily ever after. Ideas like this make it difficult to leave a relationship because we would be marked as unlovable since we lost our proof. They make us desperate to find and stay in a relationship.

And, of course, biology plays into this, too. A lot. Reproduction is an important biological driver as a part of evolution. However, the nuclear family is not a biological need. The idea of separate spheres and its mutation to the relegation of the man to the breadwinner role and the woman to the safe haven of the home are not reflecting biological needs. They are social constructs (which are even reflected in the nomenclature for our species: every mammal is of the breast, the nurturing aspect; homo sapien reflects the (male) ability to reason, to be out in the world, distinguishing us from the other animals). The concept of the soul mate in marriage is a rather recent invention. So is the individual pursuit of happiness, which is an idea encouraged since the Enlightenment. The two have been very strongly linked: We now pursue happiness by finding a soul mate. This linkage is not surprising since the idea of a soul mate developed around the time of the Enlightenment. It might even have been a reaction to some people’s attempts to take the ideas of the Enlightenment to their logical consequences and do things like give women the right to vote. The idea of separate spheres sprang up and was quickly absorbed into culture, preventing any ideas of equality to take hold. Marriage changed from an almost purely economic institution to one based on love, which was best expressed if both partners were experts in their sphere. Only after the second world war did the breadwinner truly become the sole provider: it was now economically possible to support a family with one income. The cracks were, of course, starting to show and marriage changed again. Or did it? Marriage remains the institution that is most coveted and least questioned. It remains a rite of passage to adulthood. And we remain stuck with the idea that we are somehow incomplete as one. Even though we have broken down the walls between the separate spheres, two remains better than one. As social animals, we interact, of course. Social relationships are what made us human and they remain extremely important. They do not have to be confined to one person, though. We can move beyond matrimania and view all our relationships as important and worthy our attention.

CFI jumps onto the marriage bandwagon

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I was saddened to see that the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy is jumping onto the marriage-for-all bandwagon without questioning the institution itself. While they acknowledge that marriage automatically comes with a large set of “legal, social, and economic benefits,” CFI stops short at asking if that is discrimination we want to perpetuate. Bestowing these benefits on people simply because they’ve “tied the knot” - whether as part of a civil union or a marriage - is part of the historical baggage that comes with marriage that might be appropriate to leave behind. There are other relationships, such as those with close friends or among siblings, that might warrant equal standing for the rights to those benefits, as, for example, Kay Trimberger and Bella DePaulo have pointed out in their work on singles.

I have left a comment urging CFI not to simply jump onto the marriage bandwagon. The current institution excludes same-sex couples, which clearly is discriminatory. Yet, we need to go beyond questioning that type of discrimination and look at the broader discrimination inherent in the benefits by asking whether marriage/civil unions should get automatic rights. I would second Michael LaSala’s call for a “critical view of the privileges of marriage.” (Michael C. LaSala. Too Many Eggs in the Wrong Basket: A Queer Critique of the Same-Sex Marriage Movement. SocialWork. Volume 52, Number 2. April 2007.). He calls on us to “advocate for freedom of sexual expression as well as economic and legal equity for all, regardless of marital status, relationship style, or sexual orientation.” It would be great if CFI were to heed that call.

Is it time to ditch marriage?

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Reading Stephanie Coontz‘ Marriage, A History is a fascinating journey through time. Coontz’ main argument is that the shift from “yoke mates” to “soul mates” that started in the late 1700s contained the kernel for the demise of marriage. Her historical account also calls into question whether marriage itself is still serving a valuable purpose in our modern world. It seems to me that it’s time to move beyond the idea of marriage. That seems to be the logical conclusion of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the shift toward the pursuit of individual happiness and equality between all people. It would also accept reality: marriage is an outmoded institution. The cultural trances that are keeping marriage alive are getting onto thinner and thinner ice. Back in college, I took a very interesting class on economics and women. One of the marriage “undermining” developments we discussed was women’s increasing labor force participation throughout the 20th century. Especially once we started to close the pay gap at least a little, women had the earnings to be able to stand on our own and leave dissatisfying marriages. And we did: the divorce rates increased.

Since the economic necessity for marriage is largely gone, the cultural trances have become more subtle, directly playing to the pursuit of happiness idea. We are bombarded with the messages that we would be happier in marriage, that our blood pressure would be lower (at least when we sleep), and that we’d be lonely and miserable if we’re single. Reality, as usual, is different than the cultural trances: Happiness and marriage are not linked and neither is blood pressure. More and more singles speak out that they’re perfectly happy with their lives and feel very fulfilled without a marital partner. That reality - there is happiness outside of intimate relationships - has helped me leave several frustrating and unhappy relationships. I am sure there are many others who made similar calls. I suspect that it has raised our expectations but also lowered our tolerance for crap in relationships. At the same time, though, healthy singles are happy because their lives are grounded in community and connections with others, some more intimate than others (see Kay Trimberger’s analysis for more information). This seems to point to new ways of relating that could inform intimate relationships: away from the insane focus on the man-woman nucleus (or the homosexual equivalent) to the integration of such relationships into a bigger network of friendships and relationships - building a new form of community. Ironically, this might make those intimate relationships more stable because we no longer expect a “soul mate” who will meet our every need. Of course, it would redefine relationships - again - but hopefully in a more rewarding way than deluding ourselves about marriage.

High Blood Pressure and Marriage

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You’ve no doubt seen the headlines: Marriage keeps your blood pressure low. Well, at least when you’re happy in the marriage. Yet, even with that after-thought qualifier, the media got it wrong (again). Bella DePaulo took the time to actually read the original published article. Here are some of the things she found out:

  • There were NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES in blood pressure [ when averaged across the 24 hours of the observational period] between the married people and the single people.
  • There were NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES in blood pressure between the married people and the single people during waking hours.
  • Married people look better than single people only if you compare reductions in blood pressure when the participants are unconscious [while sleeping].

I wonder what these married people dream about…

The other flaw with the media’s conclusion about this study is, as so often, their usage of a correlational study to explain causation: Even if married people had lower blood pressure than singles, that would not mean that one caused the other. As DePaulo points out, we cannot really scientifically study whether there is a causational effect because that would require an experiment with random assignment of people to the marital and single statuses, which would violate a boat-load of ethical standards. One possible way around this would be to look at longitudinal studies, which follow people for years, or even decades. No one has undertaken such a study about blood pressure yet, though the one study about marriage and happiness clearly disconfirmed the myth that married folks are happier than singles (a draft version of that study is available online).

I am also wondering what the effect of this type of media reporting has on our collective blood pressure. Like DePaulo, blatant singlism like this raises my blood pressure…

Self-Commitment Ceremony

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Part of choosing to be single included for me a conscious commitment to myself and my life. Too often, my life had been hijacked by a relationship and every time I was left to rebuild my path. Well, actually, sometimes I even had to find that path all over again. I half-heartedly had decided to do this before but ended up in yet another detour relationship. So, I decided that this time, I needed to go out all the way. Sasha Cagan talks about marrying herself in her Quirkyalone book. I didn’t quite feel like having a marriage ceremony but I thought I could steal some ideas. I got a cheap ring to wear on my left hand’s ring finger (after all that’s the commitment finger, isn’t it?). I put the ring on every morning while repeating my vow to live authentically to myself. I also spent some time writing up my mission - really more of a statement of intent of where I’d like to see myself in a few years. I found this rather difficult because I was stuck with the idea that I somehow needed to discover my mission, that somehow I had an inborn mission that I simply needed to uncover. Well, despite reading a lot of self-help books this uncovery seemed to be impossible. It seemed no matter how much I dug, I couldn’t find my mission. It wasn’t until I read Eric Maisel’s Van Gogh Blues that I realized that I had the option of making my own meaning, of deciding on my mission. That shift - from seeking to making - helped a lot and I was able to move forward with writing a mission statement for myself. In the meantime, I stumbled on a silversmith who engraves rings, among other things. I decided that I was worth the expense and engraved a short version of my vow on a ring, which I now wear on my left ring finger.

I am finding that staying true to myself is a continuous experience - it weaves through everything from what I write about to what books I read and, of course, the people I associate with. But it helps me to feel more grounded. It also helps me to figure out my priorities.

I have since discovered a couple of books that might be helpful for others who would like to create their own commitment: Patricia Lynn Reilly’s Promise Yourself, which actually guides you through developing your own self-commitment vow and Mary Goldenson’s It’s Time, which helped me let go of things and start building my own life rather than waiting for Prince Charming.

Books for Singles

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Here is a totally random collection of books that might be useful to singles. I will add them as I run across books… If I’ve read them, I’ll give my totally biased two cents… Unless the text is in brackets [ ], I shamelessly copied it from somewhere else, most often from the book’s page.

Women on Their Own: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Being Single, edited by Rudolph M. Bell and Virginia Yans has just been published by Rutgers University Press. The volume consists of eleven essays concerning 19th and 20th century single women in Europe, the United States and the Caribbean. Historians and social scientists are the contributors. An editor’s Introduction places the essays within the current context of “singleness studies” during this, its foundational period. The essays include discussions of theories about singleness, widowhood, single motherhood, disability, work, ideology, and the psychology of single women. The book arose from a conference and yearlong interdisciplinary seminar in 2003-2004 sponsored by the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis.

Singled Out, by Bella DePaulo. In depth research about the myths surrounding singlehood written in an easily accessible way. DePaulo’s second chapter should be a must read for anybody who is skeptical about scientific interpretations in the social sciences. It is a very good analysis of the influence of assumptions on the interpretation of data. [If you haven't figured out by now that I like this book, you haven't read enough on this Website ;-)]

The New Single Woman, by Kay Trimberger. The book tackles one of the largest social phenomena of our times: the increasing number of single women over 35. Drawing on the diverse personal stories of long-term single women, including herself, Trimberger explodes the idea that fulfillment comes only through finding a soul mate. [I highly recommend this book, too. The stories are very inspiring and the conclusions that Trimberger draws are very useful.]

So Why Have You Never Been Married?, by Carl Weisman. There are many familiar misconceptions about unmarried men over 40: that middle-aged bachelors disdain the institution of marriage, take obsessive pride in their single status, and balk at the thought of having children or being tied down. This book compiles interview responses from over 1,500 unmarried, middle-aged men, dispelling these myths and re-examining popular notions about long-term bachelors. Weisman also includes in-depth interviews with single men to shed light on their reasons for choosing singlehood. [See Bella DePaulo's take on this book before you buy it, though...]

With or Without A Man, by Karen Gail Lewis. This book is different from other self-help books in its explanation for why there are so many single women today: More women than men are pursuing their personal growth, so more women than men are ready for a healthy relationship. And, women only want to be with emotionally healthy men. [Very valuable reading on how to choose being single and make it work.]

Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, by Sasha Cagen. Quirkyalone is a bible for all who reject archaic notions of romantic relationships. The book is loaded with individual voices of people who are constructing new approaches to life and love. Don’t expect to find linear narrative or cliched self-help lingo. A quirkyalone is a person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple. With unique traits and an optimistic spirit; a sensibility that transcends relationship status. [This is a quick, fun read. It was the first book that made me realize that being single can be a choice, not "just" an accident...]

Singlism

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Bella DePaulo defines singlism in her groundbreaking book Singled Out as

People who do not have a serious coupled relationship are stereotyped, discriminated against, and treated dismissively. This stigmatizing of people who are single - whether divorced, widowed, or ever single - is the twenty-first century problem that has no name. (P. 2)

Singlism is pervasive: it is everywhere in our culture from attitudes toward single people to the tax code.

The flip-side of singlism is the glorification of marriage (or being coupled). DePaulo calls that matrimania (p. 10). Both are very much intertwined, if you are nothing without a partner, you instantly become someone when you are partnered.

As single people, we have to become aware of what I call internalized singlism: Our inner voices that tell us that there is something wrong with us because we are single. Since everybody around us seems to be coupled, since that seems to be the standard for being a mature adult, we must somehow repel potential partners and we certainly are not fully grown up. These are very deep seated myths that are a direct result of singlism and matrimania.

To counter these myths, reading DePaulo’s book is a good start. It will arm you with plenty of research that says that you’re not childish and that there’s nothing wrong with you. After that, it is time to move on to the positive. There are an increasing number of books available now that talk about how to live a single and happy life. Kay Trimberger presents stories of several single women in her book The New Single Woman. The book goes far beyond story-telling, though. She uses the experiences of these women and her own to distill six supports that lead to a satisfying single life:

  1. Fulfilling work,
  2. Connections to the next generation,
  3. A home (though we don’t have to own a house)
  4. Intimate relationships with a network of friends and extended family,
  5. A community, and
  6. Acceptance of our sexuality whether we have an active sex life or are celibate. (P. 65)

Using Trimberger’s research to craft supports for our single lives goes a long way toward overcoming internalized singlism. Finally, though, we will need to embrace the fact that there are (at least) two valid life paths: the Single Adulthood path and the Married Adulthood path, as Karen Gail Lewis suggests in With or Without a Man as I have already mentioned.

Armed with these three things - research refuting the myths, research showing how to build the supports, and a new life stage model - we can overcome internalized singlism and then fight singlism in the rest of society.

Further reading (& listening) on singlism

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Singlism has been in the news quite a bit lately. Check out these articles:

And the term made it into at least one online dictionary: The Double-Tongued Dictionary, which records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English, with a focus on slang, jargon, and new words. It’s a start!

If you don’t feel like reading, you can listen to DePaulo here:

Please let us know if you run across any other articles by posting them in the comments (if you include more than 2 links, I will have to moderate your post, so it won’t show up right away). Also, please share your ideas for getting singlism into more dictionaries…

Need for Belonging

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We all have a deep seated need for belonging: we want to be a part of something larger than ourselves. One option our society gives us is marriage. And in recent years, with the glorification of marriage, it has morphed into a panacea for all of our troubles. Marriage is supposed to meet all our needs for belonging and community. Of course, what nobody seems to acknowledge is that one person cannot possibly meet these needs. Yet, culturally, we seem to be trained to expect that we’ll find The One who will solve all our problems and meet all our needs, especially the need for belonging. I wonder how much disappointment is generated through this unmeetable expectation. It might even be part of the increase in divorce.

Of course, as singles, we already know - somewhere if not explicitly - that our needs for belonging are better met through a variety of channels: friends, family, neighbors, and organizations to name a few.

Immature Singles

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The assumption that we grow up only if we follow the culturally prescribed life path and get married in our 20s is pervasive. Bella DePaulo addresses this assumption as Myth #4 in her book “Singled Out.” Karen Gail Lewis also touches on it when she proposes a new lifestyle model in her book “With or Without a Man.” The current model suggests that adulthood is reached when we get married. What happens if we never marry? Well, we never really become adults. The myth is also perpetuated by the idea that we grow the most when we are with another person. Being single is just so much easier than being in a relationship.

DePaulo eloquently debunks the myth by pointing out, among other things, how the current nuclear family structure has evolved into a sort of care insurance. If we’re married, we feel secure to expect that our partner will care for us if we were to get sick. It is a very unreliable insurance, of course (the divorce rate in couples affected by chronic illness is 75%), but the idea nevertheless undermines the larger community. Family comes first. If any time and money is left over, then, maybe friends can expect some help, and then the neighbors, though they probably come up short. As DePaulo puts it: “we have taken a small set of relationships that deserve to be treasured, and turned them into the only relationships worth valuing at all.” (Singled Out, p. 133). Instead she calls for valuing “our common humanity.”

Singles, on the other hand, if they want to be happy, have to rebuild the community (as Kay Trimberger points out in “The New Single Woman”). They are mature enough to realize that without a community, without many friends, they might be in trouble if they were to get sick.

So, who is more mature? A married person who assumes that her/his partner is going to take care of them (when many call for a divorce at the sign of a protracted illness) or the single person who surrounds herself/himself with many friends? Maybe it’s my bias but I think community building is more mature than (naive) reliance on one person…

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