Living Single

 I don't think Americans have lost the bigger, broader senses of love and romance and passion and meaning that have probably been part of the human experience through the ages. Rather, I think that contemporary American society has been slow to give those experiences their due.

It is election season in the U.S. and singles should rule! At 92 million strong, they compose a huge potential voting bloc. But will they make good on the power of their numbers?

 Unlike the better-known isms, singlism is often practiced without apology or even awareness. Also, although singlism is not likely to be as scathing as racism, the steady drip, drip, drip of it could drive single people over the edge - if they were not so amazingly resilient.

There are some studies you will probably never read about in the mainstream media. They may have been published in the most selective and prestigious professional journals. The findings may be important, even provocative.  

 My colleagues and I - before we actually conducted the study - thought all of your predictions seemed plausible. Well, all except one: the one that was correct!

Can you guess what was said about the people who appeared to be dining on their own, compared to when the same people were shown dining with others?  

What if adults come to see the act of getting married as something to do in order to get more money? That's what the marriage-promotion posters seem, in a way, to be suggesting. Would the couples come to love one another less than if they had not been tempted by the promise of financial gains?

The author, Nadine Marks, had data from more than 10,000 students who graduated from high schools in Wisconsin in 1957. When she looked at their marital status around age 54, she found that for the women (but not the men), those who were married were less intelligent than those who were divorced or separated or had always been single.  

That is the key finding that you have been hearing all about: Married people look better than single people only if you compare reductions in blood pressure when the participants are unconscious. Even then, you cannot say that the marrieds had lower blood pressure BECAUSE they were married.

Once I realized that I was not the only happy single person, and that getting married does not typically result in remarkable or enduring improvements in happiness or health, I had to rethink what it means to live single in contemporary American society.