August 22, 2016
Psychologists say single people are more fulfilled. I'm getting to understand why
There remains a pervasive notion that happiness can only truly come from finding a spouse, lest one rot of loneliness in some dusty attic. But a new study out of the University of California at Santa Barbara provides a very different view of singledom, one that this single woman finds enormously encouraging.
In work presented at the American Psychological Association’s 124th annual conference, Bella dePaulo suggests that single people may have more fulfilling social lives and experience greater psychological growth than some married people. She sifted through 814 studies and found data that showed that single people are more connected with family and friends, whereas marriage tends to make two people insular. She also found that the more self-sufficient single people were, the less likely they were to experience negative emotions. But with married people, greater self-sufficiency actually seemed tied to stress and difficulty.