I was stuck in an Instagram vortex a few weeks ago, which probably happens more than I’d like to admit when I came across a quote that really struck me.

“Not looking for a soulmate, just looking for my soul, mate.”

A simple sentence, that takes just a millisecond to absorb, but lands an incisive jab square in the face of society’s emphasis on finding “the one.”

I’m a 30-year-old woman who’s been single for nigh on three years (*shock horror*), which doesn’t worry me in the slightest, but our culture nudges me in many subtle and not so subtle ways to let me know that there is something wrong with me.

“When you come home next, we want you to be in a relationship,” “Wow, I don’t understand how you can be single for so long” are said to my face on the regular and questions about my love life often precede questions about my career or personal development.

Why is it that we put romantic stories on a pedestal and stigmatize singledom? Why is our desirability to sexual partners – or more to the point, our ability to “nab” said partner – equated to our worth? While singledom doesn’t come with a guaranteed spooning buddy, new research shows it offers some rather lovely bedfellows, of a different kind.

The untold stories of singledom

Movies, novels, love songs and even scientific research all seem to tell us the same stories: everyone wants to find that special someone. Once you get married, you will live happily ever after and you will never be lonely again.

Even public institutions are telling these stories. In the landmark ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the US, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out and find no one there.” A 2014 study found an unprecedented number of single adults in the US and many other nations around the world. And the numbers don’t just say people are staying single longer before settling down. More are staying single for life — many by choice.

Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard), an author, researcher and social psychologist, has dedicated her career to illuminating the happy, fulfilled ways that the unattached are living their lives. She wants to make these stories a part of our lives the way fairy-tales are.

And what she finds – pooled from her own and other research – often goes against the grain of popular opinion.

Ties that bind

While married and de facto couples are guaranteed one “to have and to hold,” DePaulo’s research shows single people are better at maintaining ties with friends, neighbors, parents and siblings.

DePaulo explains: “People who live alone are often the life of their cities and towns. They tend to participate in more civic groups and public events, enroll in more art and music classes and go out to dinner more often than people who live with others.”

“Single people, regardless of whether they live alone or with others, also volunteer more for social service organizations, educational groups, hospitals and organizations devoted to the arts than people who are married.”

“In contrast, when couples move in together or get married, they tend to become more insular, even if they don’t have children.”

It seems that married people have “the one,” but single people have “the ones.”

In sickness and in health

While society often preaches the perils of loneliness and its effect on one’s physical and mental well-being, DePaulo found many single people are actually better at looking after themselves.

“Part of the mythology of marriage, long bolstered by the writings of social scientists, is that people who marry become healthier than they were when they were single. But three big methodologically sophisticated studies published in 2017 shook our faith in that idea.”

In one of the studies, researchers followed more than 79,000 US women between the ages of 50 and 79 over a three-year period, tracking whether they got married (or started a serious relationship), stayed married, got divorced or separated, or stayed single.

With just one exception, every significant finding favored the women who either stayed single instead of marrying or who got divorced instead of staying married.

For example, the women who married gained more weight and drank more than those who stayed single. The women who divorced ate healthier, exercised more and had smaller waists than the women who stayed married.

Savouring solitude

It was the great philosopher Socrates, who uttered the words “Know Thyself.” In fact, he elaborated on this saying that “people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves.” Harsh, but also true.

This forms the perfect segue into perhaps the most illuminating area of research: personal growth, autonomy and self-determination.

In an analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households, more than 1,000 people who had always been single were compared to more than 3,000 people who had been continuously married. How did their lives change over the course of a five-year period?

There were two ways in which the lives of the people who stayed single improved over time, compared to those who stayed married.

First, they experienced more personal growth. They were more likely to agree with the statement: “For me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing and growth.”

Second, people who stayed single, compared to those who stayed married, also reported increases in autonomy and self-determination. They were more likely to agree with the statement: “I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are different from the way most other people think.”

According to DePaulo, “To have strong internal standards and to continue to experience personal growth over the course of your adult years strike me as important dimensions of a meaningful life. They are experiences that increase over time if you stay single, more so than if you stay married.” Now that’s something to write home about.