When I was invited to participate in an hour-long debate, “Married or Single?”, I jumped at the chance. The show is Open to Debate, moderated by John Donvan, who used to be ABC’s White House correspondent and has won 4 Emmys. The show will air on WNYC and many public radio stations around the country. It is also available as a podcast on Apple and Spotify and it is on YouTube too.
It was a great opportunity for me to explain what’s wrong with claims that married people are happier and healthier (starts around 22:00), to demolish the claim that single people are selfish (starts around 24:00), and much more. When my debate partner, Jonathan Rothwell, kept mentioning the awesome contributions that parents make, I asked him outright whether he was claiming that parents are more virtuous than people who are not parents (starts around 35:00).
Previously, I dismantled the claim Rothwell made on Twitter/X after the debate, that maybe singles were treated unfairly in the past, but that’s not happening anymore.
The format of the debate:
- Introduction by the moderator, John Donvan
- Opening remarks, Jonathan Rothwell, then Bella DePaulo
- Debate and discussion
- Questions posed by 4 experts: Joan DelFattore, Dinah Hannaford, Marcia Zug, and Jeff Guenther
- Closing statements, Jonathan Rothwell, then Bella DePaulo
With the permission of Open to Debate, I’m sharing the text of my opening and closing remarks. I wish I had more time during the debate to address more of the points that were raised, but it was great fun doing what I could.
My Opening Remarks (limited to 4 minutes)
Claims about the supposed superiority of married people obscure something significant: Single people are not a monolith, and for some people, probably more than we ever realized, it is single life that is their best life – their most joyful, meaningful, and fulfilling life. I call them “single at heart” and I’m one of them. If we were coaxed into marrying, we wouldn’t be happier and we wouldn’t live longer – it would just feel longer.
We embrace our single lives and that pays off for us and for other people.
- In the interviews for my “Single at Heart” book, I found that the single at heart have big, open-hearted values – for example, they see love as encompassing far more than just romantic love.
- We invest in our friends. A study of 6,000 singles found that those who were not looking for a romantic partner valued their friends more and more over the course of the 7-year study.
- We also savor solitude rather than fearing it. That capacity to be alone is a sign of emotional maturity and it often protects us from feeling lonely.
- Our freedom enhances our lives too.
- And let’s talk happiness. A 10-year study of 17,000 singles found that as single people’s interest in having a romantic partner declined, they became happier and happier.
Of course, there are married people who are happy. If you are one of them, that’s great. But if you have to be married in order to be happy, well that’s a vulnerability that the single at heart do not share.
You know, if marriage really were the royal road to happiness, then people who follow that road and get married would get happier. But instead, dozens of studies show that maybe people get a little happier when they first marry, but typically that doesn’t last.
The real question is, why don’t they become lastingly happier after they marry? After all, they are the beneficiaries of a whole system of inequality that advantages them and disadvantages single people. Consider how:
- Single people are expected to cover for married people in the workplace, or how
- Single people are pitied and married people are celebrated, or how
- hundreds of federal laws in the US benefit and protect only people who are legally married. They get tax breaks, they get to give their Social Security benefits to their spouse when they die, while mine go back into the system. And so much more.
Where would single and married people place themselves on the ladder of life if all these discriminatory policies were reversed to favor single people, or if they were equally fair to everyone?
I want single people and the people in their lives to be valued for their strengths and contributions, and supported rather than stigmatized. A society that did that would be less lonely, more loving, and more just.
My Closing Statement (limited to 2 minutes)
Over the years, I’ve heard from many people who tell me how much they love living single. They appreciate their freedom, their solitude, and the people who care about them. And then, some of them follow that with a gob-smacking question: They ask me what is wrong with them that they don’t want to live a conventional married life?
Imagine that – they have what so many of us crave – a life they find joyful, meaningful, and fulfilling. And instead of feeling proud of themselves, they think they are damaged. Some force themselves to become romantically involved, even though married life will never be their best life. Their potential to flourish is being undermined by the relentless pressure to be married.
What I am trying to do is to advance the project of human flourishing so that we can all claim our full humanity and live authentically. That project advanced when women were less often pressured to stick to homemaking and childrearing if that’s not what they wanted. It was advanced when queer people were less often forced to fake heterosexuality, and when the narratives about them being deficient were challenged. “Black is Beautiful” advanced the project of human flourishing. And recognizing the potential power, freedom, and heart-filling joy of single life will advance that project too.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) Disclosure: Links to books may include affiliate links. (4) This post is also shared at my blog at Medium. (5) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
