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The People Who Refuse to Believe that Singles Are Happy
Some people get mad at single people who have chosen to be single
I like to write about people who are single at heart — people who love their single lives and who feel that single is who they really are. I recognize, though, that there are plenty of single people who really do want to be coupled. I write less about them because they already get lots of attention. In fact, the prevailing myth is that, deep down inside, all singles are exactly like them. If singles say they love their single lives, the myth insists, they are just kidding themselves.
I was asked an interesting question recently: In your everyday life, is it harder to be single at heart or single and wanting to be coupled? The most obvious answer seems to be that singles who are pining for a partner are having a harder time — after all, they do not have what they want, whereas singles who are single at heart are living life on their own preferred terms.
In many ways, that probably is the correct answer. There is, though, something particularly challenging about being single at heart. Research shows that other people tend to discount single people’s claims to happiness, and that they actually feel anger toward single people who choose to be single.
When Single People Say They Are Happy, Other People Don’t Believe Them
I conducted the happiness research with my colleague Wendy Morris. We created many different profiles of people. The profiles included information such as the person’s age, sex, hometown, current residence, hobbies, and whether the person has children. For each profile, we created two versions that were identical except that in one, the person was described as single and in the other, the person was described as married.
Participants in the study read the profiles (each participant would see only one version of each profile, either the single or the married version) and answered various questions about their impressions of the person they were reading about. For example, they were asked, “How genuinely happy do you think this person is?” and “How happy do you think this person would claim to be?”
