>Being single allows people to “live their best, most authentic and most meaningful life” and the idea of wedded bliss is largely a myth, a psychologist has claimed.
>“The available findings are telling. For example, research comparing people who have stayed single with those who have stayed married shows that single people have a heightened sense of self-determination and they are more likely to experience ‘a sense of continued growth and development' as a person,” said Professor DePaulo, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
>“Other research shows that single people value meaningful work more than married people do … another study of lifelong single people showed that self-sufficiency serves them well: the more self-sufficient they were, the less likely they were to experience negative emotions. For married people, just the opposite was true.”
>“Increasing numbers of people are single because they want to be. Living single allows them to live their best, most authentic, and most meaningful life,” she said.
>“Single people are more connected to parents, siblings, friends, neighbours, and coworkers than married people are, and when people marry, they become more insular.
>“The preoccupation with the perils of loneliness can obscure the profound benefits of solitude.
>Professor DePaulo said married people were bolstered by the “relentless celebration of marriage and coupling and weddings that I call matrimania”.
>“Single people, in contrast, are targets of singlism – the stereotyping, stigmatizing, marginalizing and discrimination against people who are single,” she said.
>But academic studies did not support the prevailing idea of “get married, get happier and healthier”.
>“People end up about where they were when they were single. In other ways, results are exactly the opposite of what we have been led to believe,” Professor DePaulo said.
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