One is a Whole Number

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About the Guest

 

Bella DePaulo has been described by The Atlantic as “America’s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience.” She is a social psychologist who earned her PhD at Harvard University and works as an academic affiliate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her latest book is Single At Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. She also blogs at Psychology Today.

 

Transcript

 

BELLA DEPAULO: People who are single and want to be coupled, they want what they're supposed to want, what they're expected to want. But I am trying to validate the people who love being single and have never been recognized or validated before.

BLAIR HODGES: Bella DePaulo has been single her entire life, but she doesn't want anyone's pity about that. This social psychologist loves being single, and always has. Her latest book is about being "single at heart," and she uses her skills as a social scientist focuses on people who are thriving not in spite of being uncoupled, but because of it. She joins us in this episode to talk about what her research uncovers about the "Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life."

 

The Secret Folder – 02:03

 

BLAIR HODGES: Bella DePaulo joins us on Family Proclamations. Bella, it's great to be with you.

BELLA DEPAULO: Thank you for inviting me.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm excited to talk about this book. It's called Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. Let's go back to 1992. You're in your thirties, you're single, and you created what you call a "secret folder" that you labeled with the number one. Talk about that folder.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes. So at that time, I had an established area of expertise in the psychology of lying and detecting lies, which was kind of interesting. People are always lying so there's always something to write about. But I was also really intrigued by the way single people seem to be viewed and treated. I'm seventy. I have been single all my life, and I will be single my whole life.

When I was thirty-nine in 1992, I saw this article in an advice column and it was near the holidays. The sentence I underlined in the advice column was "one is a whole number." The person offering the advice was talking to someone who was widowed and lonely over the holidays. And I never felt that as a single person, that I wasn't whole or that I needed someone to complete me, but I thought it was really interesting, that's how other people thought about single people—that they weren't really whole people, that they needed to be reassured one is a whole number.

So I continued to add examples like that to this folder. They were everything from the Cathy cartoon, which some people will remember if they're old enough.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] She's always like, "Aaaack." It's her catchphrase.

BELLA DEPAULO: She was not a role model for happy single people! But it wasn't just cartoons and the popular press, it was the prestige media. Places like The New Yorker and the New York Times were saying things about single people that seemed to assume no one would really choose to be single, no one could be truly happy if they stayed single. I kept adding more and more to this folder until I was finally ready to break out and not have it be secret anymore.

I did this one time at a social event: There were lots of people and I went up to someone who I didn't know very well, but I knew she was single. I said, "Have you ever had experiences where people think you don't have a life because you're single, or they think you're the person who can come in late or stay late at work and cover for other people?"

She started telling me her stories. Then somebody else heard us and joined. Then more people came, and then more people came. We had this circle of people talking about the ways single people are treated like they're not fully human, like they're more like children than adults and they don't have a life. This went on the entire time of this social event. I went home and I wrote notes for two hours about what I could remember. Then I opened my email the next day and I had emails from some of them that said, "Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention…"

I was invited to give a talk at another university. They held a little reception for me afterwards. I did the same thing and the same thing happened. It was becoming clear that this topic was hitting a nerve. A lot of single people felt like they liked their single lives but they were being treated as, "You poor thing." That's when I realized I needed to write about this. I needed to write about this not just as a professor in the scholarly journals, which I also did, but I wanted to write about it for all the people out there who don't have PhDs but are really interested in this and who want to hear a more affirming take on what it can mean to be single.

 

Single At Heart – 06:43

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's great background, because you're the one who coined "single at heart." That label, that term, that way of identifying, is something you came up with, and you differentiate it from people who are single and aren't particularly happy. We'll talk about that as we go, because there are some people who don't enjoy single life and struggle with single life, and we think about them.

But there are also people who happily identify as being single at heart. Define that specific category for us, what it means to be "single at heart," and how people might know they are.

BELLA DEPAULO: People who are single at heart love being single. It's their most meaningful, fulfilling, psychologically rich, joyful, and authentic way to live. For the single at heart, they are happy and flourishing because they are single, not in spite of it. People who are single at heart include men, women, people who don't identify as either, the rich and the poor, people of all different gender identities and from all different parts of the country, in the world. It's a very inclusive category.

BLAIR HODGES: In talking about numbers in general, you say in 2021 about half of all adults in the US eighteen and up weren't married. But you say that doesn't give us the whole picture of singles because if you include people who are coupled in some way and not married, the number of singles is around 31%, which is still a lot of people in the United States. I think when people think about that 31%, they do have that image of this pathetic person or a person who wishes they were coupled or who struggles with it.

Here you are saying no, a lot of these folks are single at heart. Like you said, they're flourishing. They're enjoying it. They come from so many different backgrounds.

Do you think women are more likely to be single at heart? Do you see any gendered components to how the numbers break down? Because there are social pressures that maybe line up differently for different people.

BELLA DEPAULO: That's what I thought going into this, but what I found is that men are, if anything, a little more likely to be single at heart, which I kind of loved. Because we always think single women get it worse.

In some ways they do—they're called spinsters, you know—

BLAIR HODGES: Old maid.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes. They're the ones that are expected to be devastated if they never find a romantic partner or get married.

But no, single men are getting a lot of bashing too. The so-called incels—who are not praiseworthy—don't represent all of what it means to be single men. I loved finding all these men who are single at heart because this is a very mature and sophisticated and psychologically rich way to be a single man.

BLAIR HODGES: You mention that being single at heart doesn't necessarily define what their current relationship status is. It's important to point out some people you say are “single all the way,” they've been single most of their life.

Other people have been in committed relationships, so they've experienced marriage or have been coupled for long-term or serial relationships.

Then some people who are single at heart who are currently in committed relationships. Relationship status doesn't give us a clue about whether people are single at heart or not.

BELLA DEPAULO: That's why I called it “single at heart” instead of just “single” or “happily single.” What happens is the expectation that you will be romantically partnered, that you will put a romantic partner at the center of your life—whether you're married to that person or not—it's so insistent and so relentless. It's in movies and TV shows, and song lyrics, novels, and music. It's really an important part of religion, politics—it's even written into some of the laws of our land.

BLAIR HODGES: Capitalism. It's very important to capitalism.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yeah. So what happens as a result of that is, many people keep trying out romantic relationships. They keep trying out marriage. If they are single at heart it's just never going to work for them because a life organized around a romantic partner, just—

One of the people I interviewed said, "It's like a pair of shoes that doesn't fit. It's just uncomfortable." What's really interesting about that is even if everything else about your life is wonderful—let's say you're happy and healthy and wealthy, and anything else you think defines a good life for you—if you are living in a way that's not true to who you are, you're never going to feel truly fulfilled.

To me the most persuasive stories were from people who had found “the one.” They found someone who loved them, who they loved, they had no complaints. They didn't tell horror stories about dating or tell how bad they were when the doors were closed or anything like that. [laughter]

But they just didn't want that life. And I think it's important to understand that, because it tells the people they were with something important. What the single at heart might tell a partner they were with and they loved and who loved them and they had no complaints about, they might say, "It's not you, it's me." And that sounds like boilerplate.

BLAIR HODGES: Cliché.

BELLA DEPAULO: Cliché, right. But for the single at heart, it really is true. It is them!

Now, there is an exception. Now, I had to be persuaded of this. But there are some people who are in committed romantic relationships, maybe even married, who insist they are single at heart. There are several versions of this.

The first version is the one I totally understood and expected to find, which is they got married maybe, committed to this person, they really do love their person, and they think it would be unfair to leave them after they made this commitment to love and cherish in sickness and health and all that. So they stay married or they stay in the romantic relationship even though they just really don't want to be in it.

The second one is the one I had to be persuaded of, to let them count as "single at heart." There are people who do have a committed partner and they don't want to leave, but they tell me, "At heart I'm really single." It turns out what they mean by that is they really like their solitude. They like having some freedom. They're not really enmeshed with their spouse or their romantic partner.

All of the people like this I have interviewed who insist that, yes, I have a committed romantic partner, but I'm single at heart—there's something quirky about their relationship. Often they don't live with their romantic partner, even if they're married. It's not because they want to cheat behind their back. It's because they like their space. Or if they live together, they have separate parts of the house that are one or the other. They're particularly independent.

One person said she was surprised when her romantic partner said he wanted to see her more often and she said, "What do you mean? What's more often?" He said, "Well, like every day." [laughter] She thought that was too much.

Those are some of the examples. I have this “single at heart” quiz: “Are you single at heart?” When people like that take the quiz they don't score as high as people who are single at heart and do not have a romantic partner at the center of their life. But they score high enough that I will go along and include them. But I'm ambivalent!

BLAIR HODGES: Maybe that speaks also to where you're at on your scale of single at heart, which is just hardcore single all the way.

 

From Shame to Joy – 15:28

 

BLAIR HODGES: There's also a narrative arc to a lot of the stories of people tell you, single at heart people, some common touchstones in their lives. One was that they experienced a shift from feeling shame about themselves toward more acceptance and embrace.

This can explain why, again, some single at heart folks became coupled earlier on, or maybe even still are coupled. All that social pressure you talked about gives them a sense that maybe something's wrong with them. They're watching Disney movies as kids and they're seeing these wonderful love stories and they're like, "That doesn't land with me, is there something wrong with me?"

BELLA DEPAULO: It goes back to the relentless messaging that no one would ever really want to be single—maybe temporarily, but not for the long term, and if you're single you can never truly be happy. A lot of people internalize that.

I think most people internalize that. People who actually love their single lives and feel most comfortable when they're single think they need to keep trying to find that person. Maybe they think to themselves or they believe when other people tell them, "Oh, you just haven't found the right person." So they keep trying. And part of that trying is motivated by trying to avoid feeling ashamed of being single.

Now this kind of shame leads to some bizarre things, which is you get people who are really happy with their single lives and they will write to advice columnists and say, "I'm happily single. I like having time to myself. I have good friends. I have a home I love. I love staying home and reading. But—" in this one example, "my grown kids are telling me I need to get out there and date."

So they have what almost everyone strives for. A life they love. And yet because their life is single life, they doubt themselves and they ask an advice columnist if there's something wrong with them. If they really should listen to their adult kids and start going out there and dating even though they'd rather stay home and read a book.

BLAIR HODGES: This reminds me of Kristen, one of the people you talk about in the book. You say she had two “coming out” moments in her life. The first was she came out as a lesbian, which for her, coming from a background where that maybe wasn't as acceptable, that was a big step for her. Then she later had to come out as single at heart, which she said felt like coming out again in a way.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes, and she didn't think that would be an issue. When she came out as a lesbian, she was worried about telling her family, maybe some of her friends who weren't as accepting of that. But when she was coming out as single at heart she thought, “This is no big deal. No one's going to have a problem with this.”

Well, they did! Her mother thought, "If you want to be in a relationship with a woman, I'm okay with that. But to not want to be in a romantic relationship at all?" She just didn't get it.

BLAIR HODGES: There are a lot of people who you've spoken with who go through this shame to acceptance journey. Some of the shame comes from ideas people have about why someone might be single, or what being single at heart might "really" mean.  There are stereotypes like being commitment-phobic, or that they're bad at relationships. Talk about some of the ideas people might have about single folks who want to be single.

BELLA DEPAULO: When I tell stories of single people who keep trying to make a romantic relationship work and it never does, some people say, "Oh, they're just commitment-phobic."

Now, some single people really are commitment-phobic. They really want to be committed but it scares them and so when they get in a relationship they run away or they do something to sabotage it.

But for people who are single at heart, that's not commitment phobia. It's a problem of trying to be someone they actually are not. They're trying to live an authentic life. I think authenticity is really the core of our wellbeing. If we can't be who we truly are, then we're never going to be truly fulfilled.

 

Global and Systemic Considerations – 20:21

 

BLAIR HODGES: You're also careful in the book to talk about how singlehood possibilities are different throughout the world. You point to India as a place where, for some people, it's a lot more challenging to be single at heart than even in the United States.

BELLA DEPAULO: One thing I was worried about when I first started studying this was, are the single at heart just going to turn out to be the elites? People who have a lot of resources and a lot of money and status and education? I was heartened to find that wasn't true, that the single at heart come from all ends of every spectrum. That was just wonderful.

An example is a woman in India who was part of the most disparaged caste. In India, not very many people live alone so she had a really hard time finding a place to live. She was given all sorts of untenable assignments as a schoolteacher who was single and they told her, "You have to take the far away event and walk home on dark streets at night because it's too hard for the women who are married. They have to be home with their kids."

And yet this woman talked about how she felt so proud of her single life and she was using it to educate children and to make their lives fulfilling. I was impressed by her story because I wonder, as much as I absolutely love living single, I wonder if I lived in a place where I was treated as badly as she was, could I really have the courage and conviction to stay single? Or would I say, "Oh, screw it, I just can't do that."

I am so inspired by people who have so much going against them when they try to live single, and yet they do so and they do so joyfully.

BLAIR HODGES: That gives us a sense of the challenges someone in India can face, and here in the United States you say the deck is stacked against single at heart folks when it comes to government policies or social and cultural capital.

At my job, I get certain benefits. I get health insurance that also pays for my spouse and my kids. That's extra money my company's paying that isn't going to a single person at the same work. You talk about how some of those inequities might be addressed, where companies could apportion a certain amount of money to all employees that they can choose what to do with, and that way things are more equal. Because as it stands right now, there are some financial advantages to being coupled compared to being single.

BELLA DEPAULO: The one you just described is so important. If you work in a workplace where people who are married can put their spouse, maybe their kids—although some single at heart people have kids so that's not a key distinction, but in any case if you're in a workplace where your  married colleagues can put their spouse on a healthcare plan at a reduced rate but you as a single person can't put someone who's important to you, like a sibling or a close friend, on your healthcare plan, that is unequal compensation for the same work. My married colleagues are getting more compensation than I am, even if I'm doing better work, higher quality work, more work than they are.

There are so many examples like that, where if you are officially married you get all sorts of benefits and protections that legally single people don't get, even single people who are part of committed romantic relationships but aren't married. In fact, when you think about that whole leadup to the legalization of same sex marriage, a big part of it was wanting access to all those legal benefits and protections.

Can I tell you one more example?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, please.

BELLA DEPAULO: Another big one is Social Security. I can work side-by-side with a married colleague doing the same work, or I could be doing better work or more work or work for more years, and when my married colleague dies their benefits go to their spouse, or under certain conditions to a whole series of ex-spouses. Yet, my benefits go back into the system. I can't bequeath them to a sibling or a really close friend or anyone else, and no one can give their benefits to me.

That's another big way in which people who are single are disadvantaged just because they're single.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm really glad we spent a little time on that because we'll have another episode that's going to go in depth about some of these inequities that happen because of how laws work, those kind of structures. We'll have a specialist on who will give us more about that.

 

Social Capital – 26:01

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk for a second about some of the social and cultural capital that comes from marriage. This part really made me wrack my brain for things I may have ever done to people. People described becoming partnered and then suddenly this whole new world opens to them. All of a sudden people treat them totally differently. People want to become their friends and so on. People who have been single for a long time suddenly have this whole new world open to them when they announce they've become coupled.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes. They're included more often. They're taken more seriously. They're confided in more. It's like they join the “couple's club,” and it's this elite group, according to the way they're treated and the way they treat others. I think they really see themselves as better than single people and maybe better than their previous single selves. I'm not saying everyone feels that way, that's totally not true.

But there's research showing this. There are studies that follow people over the course of their lives and check in with them every year and see how happy they are and who they're in touch with and how their life is going. What they find is when romantic partners move in together, or when they get married, they become more insular on average—it's not true of all them, but on average they see their friends less often, they are in contact with their parents less often. It's almost like some of them take those song lyrics seriously, like "You are my everything, I want to be your everything."

What that means for their single friends is they've either gotten ditched or demoted. Maybe you used to see your single friends for dinner now and then, and now they get brunch maybe. Or maybe you used to go out to dinner and movies with them and now you invite them to your kids’ birthday party.

BLAIR HODGES: It made me evaluate how I relate to my single friends. Even where you said it might not be malicious and it might not be a conscious sense of superiority. I've experienced at least expecting single folks to be more flexible in their schedules, for example, because I've got kids. It's really prompted me as a coupled person who rates fairly low on your assessment by the way, I'm coupled at heart with some single at heart elements, let's say that. That makes sense for me, but it made me reevaluate how I interact with other people and just how mindful I am.

I think people who read this book will get a better understanding of single at heart people and be able to get rid of some of the microaggressions we might inadvertently be putting toward our single at heart friends. That's really important. 

BELLA DEPAULO: Thank you for that.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, your book has been helpful at opening my eyes, so thank you.

BELLA DEPAULO: Thank you!

 

People Who Resent the Single At Heart – 29:07

 

BLAIR HODGES: Before we move on, I wanted to mention that you talk about people who become angry at the idea of being single at heart. You received an email in 2021 that you quote in the book. I'll read a little bit from it.

It says, "Hi, Bella. I just want to let you know that single people are inferior in every way. They're worthless, useless, lazy, stupid. There's nothing I hate like single people. Anyone single is completely defective."

This email just keeps going on. And then he says, "It's entirely your fault. You suck because you're single. Say it out loud: You're nothing. You're worthless."

You acknowledge that this person is a troll and say try not to feed the trolls, so you didn't respond. But the anger this person felt—not everybody would say these types of things. But there are people who feel angry when they think about someone being happily single. What do you make of that anger?

BELLA DEPAULO: In fact there are studies from two different countries documenting that. This is in a way really surprising. In these studies they show people a profile of a single person. It's either somebody who is really happily single and wants to be single, or someone who's single and wishes they were coupled. Each person only sees one of the two profiles.

The people who see the profile of the person who's happily single, who isn't complaining about their single life, they judge them much more harshly. They say they're not happy even though they're the ones who are happy. They say they're not warm. Any kind of dimension you can think of, they disparaged them. But the most striking finding is they were mad.

I think what's going on is we have this way of thinking about being coupled or married that is very seductive. We think that if only you find “the one,” and commit to that person, the whole rest of your life will fall into place, you really will live happily ever after, you will have your confidant and your sex partner and your travel partner and your coparent if you have kids.

That's such a promise. Even many single people want to believe that's true. That the way you get your life to unfold in a wonderful way is to get married, or at least get committed to a romantic partner. People who are single and like being single are challenging that worldview. They are showing that, no, you don't have to do that. You can be happy and fulfilled and lead a meaningful, joyful life if you are single and you love being single.

When I first started studying this, before I knew anything about the research or anything else and I read about things like this, I was just shocked. It's partly because that's describing me. I like being single. I love it. I used to think before I started doing the research and reading other people's research, that that would protect me. That I wouldn't get people putting me down because I was single, because I wasn't complaining. Why would they have a problem with me?

Well, they have a problem with me and people like me because we are happy and we're challenging this worldview that people are invested in. They want to believe it. They want to be true.

BLAIR HODGES: I wonder if there's some personal doubt on the part of people who become angry. Being coupled can be really difficult. It takes a lot of work. Not everybody gets along swimmingly with the person they love and even want to be with. I wonder if some people become angry because there might be a sense of jealousy, or "Hey, you shouldn't get to enjoy that. You're not putting in the work that I'm putting in and my life should be happier than yours." I think that might be another source of the kind of anger that you've seen.

I also wondered about singles who do long to be coupled. Do they ever become angry or even hurt when they hear from single at heart folks that are really happy to be that way? How do you navigate those relationships with people who maybe don't want to be single, where your joy in being single could be painful.

BELLA DEPAULO: I think that's really true. I wish there were an easy way around that. The way I think of it is, people who are single and want to be coupled, they want what they're supposed to want, what they're expected to want. They get a lot of empathy and sympathy. If a romantic relationship ends they can get a lot of consolation. What I'm trying to say is some single people have taken up all of our cultural conversation. People just assume everybody feels that way and if you know someone who's single you should feel sorry for them. You should try to fix them up as if they're broken.

I am trying to validate the people who love being single and have never been recognized or validated before. But I also I don't like the possibility or probability that people who are single and don't want to be might feel badly when they hear that message.

BLAIR HODGES: And when you get back to what you really champion, which is authenticity, I imagine you would hope for them to find an authentic, fulfilling life. You hope that for them, right?—

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: And to not have your joy in singleness take away from what they could have. It doesn't have to be a contest between the singles.

BELLA DEPAULO: Absolutely.

BLAIR HODGES: But I think you're right, the stereotype of the lonely single certainly does capture most of the public's imagination. Speaking for myself, that's true. Your research opened my eyes to the reasons why people are single at heart and the kind of things they prize about it.

We're talking with Bella DePaulo about the book Single at Heart: The Power of Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. Bella is a social psychologist who received her PhD at Harvard University. She is also an academic affiliate in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. She has a blog you can check out called Living Single at psychologytoday.com.

 

Freedom – 36:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: As I was saying, Bella, you researched the reasons people give, what they like best about being single, and the number one answer you received was freedom, that sense of freedom they enjoy. Talk about freedom for single at heart folks.

BELLA DEPAULO: If you're single at heart, you get to curate your life. You get to decide who is going to be in it, as many or as few people as you want, and if you have a lot of people you're not worrying about a romantic partner who thinks your time should be for themselves.

You get to decide everything from the little things, like what's going to be in the refrigerator, what your thermostat is set at, and whether the toilet seat is up or down, all the way to the really big things like what you're going to do with your life, or whether—in my case, at one point I left a life I had built on the East Coast and moved entirely across the country to where I am now. I changed my area of research and I changed my home. I kept my friends from back east, but built new friendship circles. You can do things like that as someone who's single and especially as someone who's single at heart and wants to do it.

Freedom is the common thread that unites us, but what we do with that freedom is very different. Some single people love that they can be there for the people in their lives who need them the most. That might be an aging parent who needs a lot of help. One of the men I interviewed for this book said it was his honor to be there for his father when he was dying. That's just so touching.

Other people use it to pursue meaningful work instead of work that pays a lot when they can't have both. I thought that was really interesting too, because in some ways to be single is to be more at risk financially—if you lose your job, if you get cut back on your hours, you don't have a spouse who can tide you over for a while.

And yet people who are single at heart do this thing more than people who are coupled of going for the work that is meaningful. That's how they use their freedom. Other people use it to contribute to their communities, or to learn and to grow. I think of myself as having a life of the mind. I absolutely love that. I like thinking about things, reading, talking to people about ideas. That's one of the ways I use my freedom. Other people use it to travel the world.

There's a study of thirty-one European nations, hundreds of thousands of people participated, and they asked them how much they valued their freedom and trying new things and being creative. The people who valued their freedom, whether they were married or single, were happier. And the single people got more happiness out of their freedom. The link between valuing freedom and being happier was stronger for the single people.

I think that's because they're more likely to take advantage of their freedom and use it to do whatever they find most fulfilling, whether that's learning and growing and traveling or caring for the people they love so much, or doing meaningful work instead of lucrative work, or whatever it might mean to you.

BLAIR HODGES: This chapter challenges some big stereotypes about single at heart people, for example that they're selfish. That they would value careers or money instead of family. But you show that a lot of these folks are pursuing meaning instead of more lucrative jobs. So ideas about selfishness are challenged by the actual statistics. You found that single at heart people are great at giving and donating and volunteering and connecting and giving back to their communities.

Again, you’re decoupling the idea of selfishness from being single or being generous from being partnered.

BELLA DEPAULO: Another part of that is in the workplace when bosses assume if there's somebody who needs to be transferred, it should be the single person, especially a single person who doesn't have kids. But what they misunderstand is some single people are really rooted in their communities. They have community ties, they have friendships they've developed over years, or maybe they chose the place where they live because it really speaks to them.

That's how I feel about being on the West Coast now. I grew up on the East Coast, and I liked it. But wow, once I got here, this is my place. I think single people can be rooted in a particular place. To be single doesn't necessarily mean you're carefree and fancy free. Although some people who are single do like to use their freedom to try out different places and move a lot, but others really are rooted where they are. No one's going to move their best friend with them. That's not something employers do.

BLAIR HODGES: I love that. I would say so much of your book could be called "not necessarily," which is basically like, well, aren't single people like this? Well, not necessarily. Isn't it like this? Not necessarily. There's so many moments in the book where my expectations were turned upside down.

 

Solitude – 42:25

 

BLAIR HODGES: The second reason people gave, the second most common reason they enjoy being single at heart, is solitude. Some people might associate solitude with loneliness, but as you point out, those aren't the same thing. Single at heart people really exhibit that fact.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes. Before I did this research and talked to all these people and analyzed this survey of twenty thousand people from more than one hundred countries, I thought, “Okay. I'm single at heart. I really like my time alone. I like my time with other people too, but I have to have time alone. It nourishes me and relaxes me, rigorizes me.” So I thought on average people who are single at heart are going to like their solitude.

But when I asked the question, "How important, if at all, is it for you to have time to yourself?" every last person said it was really important. Several people said it was like breathing.

Being comfortable in solitude, thinking about the time you spend alone or experiencing it as something wonderful, something you savor—that is a superpower. If you are comfortable by yourself then you are very unlikely to be lonely, which defies one of the most insistent stereotypes of single people, that they're lonely, especially if they're home alone. For people who are single at heart, that piece of their lives, when they do get time to themselves, is wonderful!

BLAIR HODGES: I was surprised to see some single at heart people reported feeling lonely, but it was more often when they had to be around other people. They couldn't relax, they couldn't feel like they could be their true selves, they felt lonely when they weren't alone.

BELLA DEPAULO: Especially if the group interactions are superficial. I have an example of that. In Charlottesville there's this wonderful downtown mall, which I used to go to all the time when I lived there, and I was there with a friend one night and we were having a great conversation walking along the mall.

Then there was this table of people who were already there from our workplace, the psychology department, and they looked like they're laughing and having a good time, and my friend wanted to join them. We sat there for a while and it was just so inane. It was just small talk. Not that there's anything bad about that, but I was having this great conversation with her before. I just decided I'd rather be home alone. So I made some excuse and I left.

It's not that I don't like being with people. I do, but sometimes being with people can feel lonely when you don't feel connected or it feels like noise.

BLAIR HODGES: That story is helpful to illustrate this loneliness in a crowd that can happen. I really connected with that part of the book because I really enjoy being around people, but I also value alone time. I could relate to single at heart people who are a lot more single at heart than I've been. That's something I could really relate to, especially as I've gotten older. I've come to value solitude a little bit more.

 

Finding The Ones – 45:55

 

BLAIR HODGES: Even though we've talked about solitude here, single people aren't necessarily isolated or necessarily away from people all the time. Your fifth chapter is called "The Ones," instead of "The One." It's about the many different connections single at heart folks make. Give us some examples of the kinds of relationships single at heart folks like to build and are enriched by.

BELLA DEPAULO: One of the big ones is friendship. Single people put more into their friendships, and as a result they get more out of them. That's one thing. Then cherished relatives, mentors, coaches, teammates, spiritual figures, and pets. I always have to include pets because people get mad at me if I forget. They can be very important to single people.

The way I think about this is single people have “the ones” rather than “the one.” It's easy to think that's a disadvantage—all your needs and wishes fulfilled by one person. That person is always there. But it's actually a source of resilience to have a number of important people in your life. If you are in need of help there's probably going to be someone who is available and willing and happy to help you. Whereas if you depend on just one person, as some coupled of people do—not all of them, I don't want to stereotype them—then what happens if you demoted your friends because you're all about your romantic partner, and now your romantic partner is sick or has to work?

I think people very much understand the possible fulfillment of having this one person in your life who means so much to them. But maybe they don't totally understand the risk to that and the joys of having a circle of friends. The ones instead of the one.

In fact, there's research showing people who get different kinds of needs met by different kinds of people are happier. They're more satisfied with their lives than people who turn to the same person, whether they are happy and want to celebrate, or sad and want to be consoled, or they're angry and want someone to be angry with them.

BLAIR HODGES: I think coupled people could learn something here because it can encourage folks to make more connections and to see where their relationship is at and how many people would you like to share happy news with?

If you just have that one person, that's great. But it might also be great if you extended your networks out.

BELLA DEPAULO: Right. And as a couple, allow your partner to do so without trying to shame them or control them. Because I think if they have other people to confide in and celebrate with and so forth, that takes the pressure off their partner to be their everything. That's too much to ask of someone. 

BLAIR HODGES: That reminds me of Esther Perel, the famous therapist. She talks about this social phenomenon where our partner is supposed to be our everything. Our confidant, our intellectual partner, our sexual partner—every aspect of our life. That's a lot of pressure to put on one person. We can see that in some of the marital difficulties and some of the relationship difficulties people run into.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Maybe one solution is to, again, take a page from the single at heart folks and look at how we can be more open and build more networks and be welcoming to our partners to do the same. A lot of food for thought for folks.

BELLA DEPAULO: Great.

 

Single And Sex – 50:11

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about intimacy. When it comes to intimacy and sex you point out that single at heart folks are less likely to be heterosexual. They're a little bit more likely to be ace, to be asexual. But it's a myth, according to the research you've done, that most single at heart people are asexual. You say only about twelve percent of the single at heart folks identified that way.

Now that is higher than the general population studies show which is about three percent. That's a pretty big difference. But it's still just twelve percent overall. It's not the fact that single at heart people just don't like sexual intimacy. What do you hear from single at heart people when it comes to sex?

BELLA DEPAULO: Sexual intimacy comes in a variety of forms for the single at heart. In fact, that's one of the things the single at heart like about being single. It doesn't limit their sexual opportunities. In fact, it in some ways expands them.

Some people who are single at heart like to date. They like to have casual relationships, but they are very clear from the outset they are not looking to what some people call "ride the relationship escalator" and keep going up towards more and more interconnected lives.

Some people like being single at heart for sexual reasons because they get to try out different kinds of sexual experiences that a romantic partner might disapprove of.

Another thing is that, as you said, some are asexual, they are not sexually attracted to particular other people. Being single, when you don't feel sexually attracted to other people, and especially being single at heart where you love your single life, that's wonderful. That's such a great advantage over wanting to be in a romantic relationship and having the problem that the other person really does want sex.

Something else people don't understand about sex when they think married and coupled people are so much advantaged over people who are single is they think of it as, if you're married then you always get to have exactly the amount of sex and the kind of sex you want. You're always in the mood the same time your partner is. They envision this magical mythical romantic partner who is totally with you in your sexual interests and desires. That romantic partner is mostly fictional.

 

Parenthood – 53:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: So you say single at heart people, a lot of them do seek rich sex lives. A lot of times we couple sex with having kids and you point out for singles at heart, they're often damned if they do and damned if they don't. To not have kids can be seen as being selfish. But then if they want to have kids that can be seen as irresponsible.

You point out that's especially the case for single moms. People like to blame single moms for the downfall of society. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Maybe spend a second on that dynamic for single at hearts and their relationship to having their own children.

BELLA DEPAULO: Yes. I have talked to single at heart mothers—and scholars, who are also mothers—who find as a single parent they develop a special bond with their child or children, and they feel like their children are free of the conflict that sometimes happens in married person households and the battles that can go on, and sometimes the coldness.

There was this wonderful review of every study ever done of what makes kids thrive. What's a nourishing relational environment for them? What they found was, whether they had one or two parents wasn't that important at all. What really mattered was whether they were in a family environment that was cold or conflictual or angry or just a very unpleasant environment. That was what was bad for kids.

Single at heart mothers and fathers who love their children, wanted their children, will often have this special relationship with them that's not going to be tainted by any difficulties they're having with their partner, or any difficulties their partner might be having with their kids.

BLAIR HODGES: There seem to be tradeoffs here. Again, another moment for me to pause and reconsider things I thought about what it meant to be a parent and how single parenting can work.

Once you stop to think about it, it becomes obvious. My partner grew up with just a single mom. Even the way that I phrased that, with "just" a single mom.

BELLA DEPAULO: Right. Good for you for noticing that.

 

Flipping the Script and Finding Role Models – 55:48

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well again, your book is the kind of thing that helps get more people thinking in those ways. Your book has so many moments of “flipping the script,” you call them. They're so funny, but also so to the point. You'll take a phrase some people say, and you turn it on its head.

For example, "He's single at heart? No, he just wants to travel the world and have all these adventures because he’s trying to fill that hole inside of him. He's filling it up with all these adventures." You're like, "Well, what if we flip the script and say, 'Oh, you see that married man over there? He's just trying to fill that hole in his life by getting married and having kids. But really, he's just an insecure person who's trying to fill the void inside.'"

BELLA DEPAULO: It's the sort of thing I often think to myself when I hear things like that, and so why not share it? One of the challenges in writing the book was trying to be persuasive and challenge thinking that is so ingrained and so rarely challenged and so often assumed. I found that flipping the script was an effective and fun way to do it. I tried to make it fun. I'm not trying to shame people or anything. I'm trying to educate, enlighten, and entertain.

BLAIR HODGES: It was. They're really funny and very insightful. I appreciated that.

You also had these little sections of the book that talked about role models, and how important role models have been for single at heart people.

BELLA DEPAULO: I think the people in our everyday lives that we look up to can be so important. They don't have to be famous people. But people who are single at heart told me about people in their lives they saw who were really happy with their lives and living single, and never did the married thing, or they did and then they were single and they stayed single. They created these interesting, enriching, fulfilling lives. They thought, "Wow, I can do this." It's so important. It's not like the people they looked up to were people who were trying to be role models. They were just living their lives. And yet, there they were, an inspiration.

 

What about when you grow old? – 58:02

 

BLAIR HODGES: I have an example of one right here. Lucas Bradley, who is thirty-seven. He says, "A single person I look up to is my friend Sue. She's seventy-seven. We first met at work in 2007."

He talks about their relationship, "She's the antidote to that single scare story of, ‘what will happen to you when you're old?’ She always inspires me, especially considering she has a chronic health condition that limits her mobility and to this day she still lives alone."

He saw her as a person who could calm some of his fears about things people say to single people, which is what we're going to talk about next: What happens when you get old? Very common thing to say to a single at heart person.

BELLA DEPAULO: One of the scare stories is you're going to grow old alone, and implicit in that is the idea you're going to be miserable and lonely. When people tell me I'm going to grow old alone, I say I hope so. [laughter] I don't mean I want to grow old and not have anybody in my life, of course I want my friends, relatives, and so forth. But antidote to live alone. That would be awesome.

BLAIR HODGES: But wait, Bella, what about the woman who's fallen and can't get up from the commercial we've all seen?

BELLA DEPAULO: Oh my gosh, I love that. That's so funny. Do you know that famous woman who has fallen and couldn't get up was a Mrs.? She was married. Where was her husband? [laughter] That was great. I think if you really want to be protected against falling and not being able to get up, get one of those Life Alert.

BLAIR HODGES: The commercial is the solution.

BELLA DEPAULO: It really is. Because if you're married, you might have the most wonderful, devoted spouse, but they'll go to the grocery store sometimes. They got to work. They travel. You can't think they're always going to be there for you. But even more seriously, what was really interesting was the research shows it defies all these stereotypes.

Studies that follow single people over the course of their lives find that, first of all, they're on the happy end of the scale at every age. But then, when they get into their forties, or fifites, sixties, seventies, they keep getting happier and happier, which is exactly the opposite of what the stereotypes predict. The people who are single at heart who have embraced their single lives are especially likely to get happier and more satisfied with their lives as they grow older. I think part of that is because they've invested in themselves. They've invested in the ones. They've invested in their single lives. They didn't do what some coupled people do, which is demote their friends once they get married. They have these people they've attended to their whole life.

Something else I think is an advantage for people who are coupled and live together that people who are single and live alone don't have, which is you get to split up the chores of everyday life, however fraught that decision might be.

BLAIR HODGES: It usually falls on women. We've got some episodes on that coming up too. But in the ideal scenario, you're right. You can divide and conquer. I can go do this while you do that. In an ideal situation, that circumstance is certainly available.

BELLA DEPAULO: There are times when I wish, my computer crashes or some other techy stuff, that I had someone around who would just fix it for me and I wouldn't have to figure it out. But in later life it becomes a real advantage that single people have had to figure it all out. You take somebody who is newly single, let's say divorced or widowed, and their spouse used to cover some of the things and now they either don't know how to do any of that or they're out of practice. That can happen at the worst possible time when you're already grieving for your spouse or upset about the divorce. So that's another thing.

Another thing is, people who are single at heart and invest in their single lives don't count on having someone else there to be their caretaker or their financial backstop or any of those things. They are especially likely to become prepared. One of the people I interviewed was someone in her thirties who was already thinking ahead and renovating her home so it would be especially accessible as she aged.

I think in a lot of ways people who are single and who have been single for a long time, and especially if they're single at heart, do great in old age, and what a revelation that is likely to be to a lot of people who say—one of the things they say to single people like me, when I was younger, who love their single lives, "Oh, you might love being single now. But wait until you get older." Wait until I get older? I am so happy!

BLAIR HODGES: But then you say they'll say, “you're going to die alone.” The “die alone” thing is one of these go-to things. You point out some people would prefer to. That's not a scary thing for some folks.

BELLA DEPAULO: There are some scholars who have studied this in detail and they find it's what they wanted.

BLAIR HODGES: As you point out in the book, about half of all people older than sixty-five in the US are single. Just statistically speaking, I think for people who value relationships in general it would pay dividends to invest in more relationships than just your isolated couple. Because anything could happen to a partner and if you have nourished friendships and grown networks beyond that, you're setting yourself up for that happiness to continue to expand as you get older.

BELLA DEPAULO: It's also really beneficial, even apart from any strategic thing, like I want to have people for me if my spouse dies or leaves me or whatever, but it's a psychologically rich experience to have a number of different people in your life rather than mostly just one.

BLAIR HODGES: Psychological richness is an important theme throughout the book. Define that for us. Because this is something single at heart people really value. I think everybody can learn from this psychological richness.

BELLA DEPAULO: Psychological richness means having a variety of interesting experiences and diverse experiences you can learn from. You can get psychological richness from having different kinds of people in your life, from having different kinds of experiences.

An interesting thing about it is, the experiences do not have to be all positive. For example, if you become widowed, and that can be devastating. But it can also be enlightening. You can learn about yourself. You can learn about the world and have perspectives you never had before. That adds a wisdom to your life.

 

Advice for Allies – 1:05:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: Speaking of wisdom, do you have any advice for people who aren't single at heart, what they might consider to make the world a little bit better for single at heart folks, to erase some of the stigma that surrounds them? Give us some ideas.

BELLA DEPAULO: Advice for some of our allies? I think, first of all, be happy for us. Don't pity us and do believe us when we say we're happy because we really are.

BLAIR HODGES: But Bella, I do have to say I have a friend I've been meaning to set you up with. [laughter]

BELLA DEPAULO: Oh my gosh! That's great!

Another thing is, celebrate their milestones and their achievements. Show up for them. Ask them about themselves. Don't just say, “are you seeing anyone?” Unless you mean, are you seeing some new friends these days.

BLAIR HODGES: I loved that in the book when you said at work you can do something for the single folks when—maybe their niece they love the most is having a birthday, you should ask about that. Find out what motivates them or what's really big for them and celebrate that because it's easy at work to celebrate a child's birthday or whatever. Happy anniversary. Find ways to connect with coworkers and stuff around what matters to them. I like that.

BELLA DEPAULO: If you're a boss, remember your single employees have people who are important to them too. If they want to take time off to go to the funeral of their closest friend or a very special relative, that sort of thing should be honored.

I also have advice for people in the creative professions. Writers, artists, musicians. Feature people who are single at heart in your creative work. It will be a new and exciting person for people to think about and read about and relate to. It can also be really funny if you include examples of what the single at heart are thinking.

For example, when somebody comes into the workplace and shows their diamond, they just got engaged, and everybody's squealing. The single at heart people are rolling their eyes. If you are a good writer and you have a good comedic sense, you could do wonders with this.

BLAIR HODGES: Before we get to the last question, there's a quote I wanted to read from you. It says, "The key question to ask is whether the kind of life people have chosen is working for them."

That can be applied to so many different life ways. You're not saying maybe some axe murderer or something whose life is working for them. There's obviously ethical parameters around this, but you're basically saying, think about what this person values and believe them when they say they're working for those values and that those values are working for them. That opens us up to different experiences.

BELLA DEPAULO: In fact, I see single at heart as part of a much bigger conversation about getting to live our most authentic, fulfilling lives. When being something other than heterosexual became more validated and valued and not so often disparaged, that opened up a whole new set of possibilities for people to live according to who they really were, and not try to pretend to be someone else or to fake being the person that other people wanted them to be.

Even with women and men who used to feel compelled to adhere to traditional sex roles or gender roles, when we got a little bit past that—not that we're entirely past it—that opened up possibilities for men and women and people who don't identify as either to live more meaningful and fulfilling lives. The single at heart mission is part of that bigger project to make it more possible for people to live their best lives.

BLAIR HODGES: That's right. Your book is a manifesto of single pride. I think it's well needed. It was difficult to find someone to talk to about it. In your research, you have done so much over the years that I was thrilled, Bella, to get a chance to talk to you about Single at Heart: The Power of Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life.

BELLA DEPAULO: I really enjoy talking to you, too. Thank you so much.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises! – 1:10:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: Before we go, let's conclude with Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises. This is an interesting one, Bella, because you actually sent me the pre-publication copy of the book. So this book, as we're doing the interview, is about to come out. So to talk about regrets, it's pretty set in stone. Is there anything you wish you would have done differently in setting the book up? Are you pretty happy with how it has shaken out?

BELLA DEPAULO: Right now I'm pretty happy. But once it goes out into the world I'm sure I will have regrets or second thoughts or I could have stated that better.

The challenge was persuading other people in the publishing industry that this is something they should take seriously. That was hard. It was also a challenge to figure out how to frame the book. I am a social scientist and what I'm doing is grounded in social science research. I started out thinking of this as a big idea book. This is a big idea that totally changes, rewrites how we think of what it can mean to be single.

But when I only had a proposal for the book and was chopping that around, I got feedback suggesting I should include advice in the book. I'm not a therapist, I'm a researcher. I'm a social scientist. I was a little reluctant to do that. I also didn't want this to be seen as just a self-help book. That's not to put down self-help books, but it's to say, I'm something different. I'm not just about giving advice.

BLAIR HODGES: It's grounded in research. Empirical research you've conducted.

BELLA DEPAULO: So eventually I decided to do both.

BLAIR HODGES: That's great. I think it really worked. And at the end of each chapter you have advice for single at heart people, you have advice for their allies. I really appreciate that encouragement and the fact that you were able to incorporate that, because as you said it's not always comfortable for social scientists to do that.

It might feel a little preachy, just because of your background and training, to take your research and turn it into, “here are some things we might do with this.” I thought you pulled it off really well. It flowed really naturally. People will love it.

BELLA DEPAULO: Thank you so much. That's really reassuring to me. Thank you.

BLAIR HODGES: The book, again, is Single at Heart: The Power of Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. That's Bella DePaulo. She's been described by the Atlantic as “America's foremost thinker and writer on the single experience.” She's also lectured around the world and published in places like the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and currently is an academic affiliate in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. If you're interested in checking out the book, you might also be interested in her blog at Psychology Today. It's called Living Single.

Again, Bella, thanks for spending the time. I can tell the years of research you put into this book and I've personally learned a lot from this one.

BELLA DEPAULO: I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you again for having me on your podcast.

 

Outro – 1:13:42

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening. A full transcript of this episode is available at familyproclamations.org, thanks to my transcript editor Camille Messick. If you enjoyed this one, take a second to rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts or rate it in Spotify.

Thanks to Mates of State for providing our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges. See you next time.

 

[End]

 

Note: Transcripts are lightly edited for readability.