Ordinarily, in this Unmarried Equality blog, I focus on matters relevant to social policies and social justice. I’m now thinking that it would be useful to cast a broader net. I’ve been talking to many people in the media since my new book, Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, was published on Dec 5, and I’ve talked to lots of other people, too. I’m realizing that an important component of progress may be communicating what some single people love about being single, things that many people who love being coupled just don’t understand. In this article, I’ll explain the appeal of doing things on your own, including things that are conventionally viewed as enjoyable only when you are sharing them with other people.
Appreciating Special Experiences When You Are Alone
You know that look you sometimes get when you tell someone you are single? The “poor thing” gaze? It comes from a belief that single life is a lesser life. For people who are single at heart, exactly the opposite is true. We love being single, and that means we embrace our single lives and invest in them. For us, our lives are bigger and more expansive than they would be if we were coupled or if we uncritically accepted the conventional wisdom about what makes life joyful, meaningful, and fulfilling.
Needing Another Person to Appreciate Special Experiences: A View from PBS
One example of that came up in a discussion I had on PBS with Bonnie Erbe, host of “To the Contrary.” Toward the end of the interview, when I was talking about the benefits of savoring solitude instead of fearing it, Erbe countered with what she saw as a limitation to doing certain things on your own. Here is an excerpt from the longer discussion of this topic:
Bonnie Erbe:
“When you’re when you’re in a foreign country and you’re looking at an elephant or gorilla, the silverback gorilla or some kind of exotic birds or Victoria Falls in Africa, there’s something about the sharing of that and the shared memory of that that is very important, at least to me.”
Bella DePaulo:
“I think that there is a power in being able to appreciate those wonderful experiences without having to share them with someone else.”
Needing Another Person to Appreciate Special Experiences: The Golden Bachelor
In an essay I wrote for HuffPost about The Golden Bachelor, I described the joy that the single at heart feel when, for example, they are experiencing nature on their own. Then I pointed to the contrast:
“What a difference from Gerry’s inability to appreciate nature’s spectacular displays without a romantic partner: “OK, it’s a beautiful sunset,” he said during one episode, “and you walk inside and you go, like, who’s here? Well, who do I share it with?” The romantic fantasy has robbed him of some of the true joys of life.”
Not Needing Another Person to Appreciate Special Experiences: An Excerpt from “Single at Heart”
Something I learned about the single at heart from the life stories they shared is that they find fulfillment in sensual experiences – experiences that are often enjoyed solo. From Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life:
“People who derive great pleasure from sensuality, and not just the sensuality that is part of sexual experiences, have easy and nearly limitless access to joy. No one needs privacy, or any kind of partner, to look out a well-placed window, or to soak in the view over and over and over again. Food lovers get to indulge that sensuality multiple times a day, every single day. Craig never tires of music. Sonya’s dogs never get boring or annoying; they are perpetual happiness generators. Catherine, who has been running outrageously long distances for decades, sometimes through forests, still reaps “the blessings of the woods” every single time. When the single at heart create homes that are sensual sanctuaries, we get to bask in the comforts we have curated every moment of every day that we spend there.”
The Science: Why Some Things Are More Fun to Do Alone – and More Memorable Too
When people are out in public doing fun things, they usually want to be doing them with other people. In a series of studies, which I discussed previously, Rebecca K. Ratner and Rebecca W. Hamilton showed that people expect to enjoy their leisure activities more when they are going to be with a friend than if they will be alone. They worry that other people will judge them if they are doing fun things on their own. But when the researchers looked at how much people enjoyed an art gallery when they were there by themselves, compared to when they were there with a friend, they found no differences. The art gallery visitors worried about not enjoying it so much on their own, but their fears were unfounded.
Now those two researchers have collaborated with two others (Yuechen Wu and Nicole You Jeung Kim) to demonstrate something even bolder: Sometimes doing fun things alone is even more fun than doing them with someone else. Their report, “Navigating shared consumption experiences,” was published in the Journal of Marketing Research.
Their finding is counterintuitive to many people, but not those who love doing things on their own. In her book on the joys of traveling alone, Alone Time, Stephanie Rosenbloom said “Alone, we can develop our aesthetic sense at our own pace” and “Alone, I could listen to the rain come down, listen to it in a way you can’t when someone else is around, with bodily stillness.”
Other People Can Be Distracting
Yuechen Wu and her colleagues agree that people doing fun things on their own have the advantage of greater focus than people sharing their leisure experiences. If you are traveling with another person, and you are not just taking a structured tour, you need to be sensitive not just to what you want, but what the other person wants. How interested are they, really, in each possible stop? In what order do they want to take in each attraction? How long do they want to spend at each? Do they want to talk about everything all along the way, or have some quiet time to really focus on what they are experiencing?
The psychology may be the same for other kinds of fun experiences, too, such as festivals, theme parks, museums, aquariums, and sporting events. If you go with another person and you are not sure about their preferences, then instead of fully savoring the amusements or the art or the fish or the athletic feats, part of your mind is going to be preoccupied with wondering about the other person’s experiences. That distraction can undermine your own experiences. You would enjoy the events more if you were alone.
In one of the studies Wu and her colleagues conducted to test those ideas, students got to look at posters of movies that were being shown at a local film festival, with an opportunity to win a free ticket to their favorite one. They viewed the posters, and the accompanying descriptions of the movies, on a computer. Some of the students did this on their own. They decided for themselves how long to look at each poster and each description, and in what order. The other students sat next to another student and looked at the posters on the same computer. They figured out together how to navigate the task, and they were allowed to socialize with each other as much as they wanted. That should have been fun, right?
Not so much, especially if the students looking at the posters in pairs had no idea how interested their partner really was in the movies. The students who looked at the posters alone enjoyed the experience more than they did. As the researchers predicted, the students who got to look at the posters by themselves were able to focus better, and that seemed to explain why they enjoyed the experience more.
In a similar study in which students explored photos from a National Geographic Instagram account, the students viewing the photos alone again enjoyed the experience more than students who watched in pairs and had to decide together what pictures to look at and for how long. The students watching on their own also had a better memory for what they had seen. That again suggests that they were less distracted, and got to focus more on the aesthetic experience, than the students watching in pairs who may have been worried about whether the other person wished they would hurry up and move on to the next photo.
Is There Any Way Around the Problem of Distraction?
What if the students viewing the movie posters in pairs got some information about the other person’s interests?
Before they started looking at the posters, all the students answered the question, “To what extent are you interested in learning about the movies to be featured in the festival?” Half of the students watching in pairs told each other their answers to that question. That helped. Those students enjoyed the experience just as much as the students who were looking at the posters by themselves.
What if there is some fun experience you really want to savor, but you are stuck going with another person? One possibility, the authors suggest, is to discuss the outing in advance, so you have a better idea of the other person’s actual interests. Then you won’t be so distracted by wondering about that.
The authors also found that other people are less distracting when you are just trying to get something done (such as buying groceries) and you are not out to have fun. When you are trying to have fun, hanging out with an acquaintance rather than a friend won’t help with the problem of distraction. Both are equally distracting, the researchers found.
Making a Statement
Wu and her colleagues are not saying that you can’t have fun with other people, sometimes even more fun than when you are alone. It can be interesting to compare notes on what you are experiencing, and you can enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company. Plus, if you are doing something structured, such as a guided tour, then you don’t need to wonder whether your partner has the same preferences you do about which stops to take in and how long to spend at each—that’s all been decided.
Many people also like doing things in public with other people because they think it increases their status to be out enjoying themselves with others. “Hey look, I have friends!” But when people go out to have fun on their own, they are making a different statement, a statement of self-confidence: “I am comfortable on my own.” They came for the art or the music or the game, and they are going to focus on it and enjoy it to the fullest, without worrying about what anyone else might be thinking. You might even say they are badasses.
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) For links to previous columns, click here.
About Bella DePaulo
