--- title: An Ode to the Single Life description: 'Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other,' writes Bella DePaulo. canonical: https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/ author: Bella DePaulo article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-12-07T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:30.568Z article:section: Ideas og:title: An Ode to the Single Life og:description: "Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other," writes Bella DePaulo. og:url: https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ff5e8b0ce768ccb/698a4308b3fce32f600cb19f/singlelife.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: an ode to the single life og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: An Ode to the Single Life twitter:description: "Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other," writes Bella DePaulo. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ff5e8b0ce768ccb/698a4308b3fce32f600cb19f/singlelife.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # An Ode to the Single Life > Sponsored content. 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"Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other," writes Bella DePaulo._ Dec 7, 2023 12:00 PM UTC  Illustration by Katie Kalupson for TIME by [Bella DePaulo](https://time.com/author/bella-depaulo/) ## Bella DePaulo Dec 7, 2023 12:00 PM UTC Lovers of single life, it’s time to set yourselves free. Unshackle yourselves from those old, regressive stories that claim that single life is sad and lonely. Rise above those repressive notions that everyone wants a romantic partner and if you think you don’t, you’ll get over it, and if you don’t get over it, you need help. Gleefully reject the idea that putting a romantic partner at the center of your life is something you have to do, something that everyone wants, or that it is the normal, natural, and superior way to live. I have a new story to tell you, about people who are powerfully drawn to single life. I call them “single at heart,” and I’m one of them. For us, single life is our best life. It is our most authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling life. It is a psychologically rich life. No other way of life will ever feel as profoundly satisfying. To us, living single is every bit as desirable as a committed romantic partnership is to people who are drawn to coupled life. My own road to embracing my single life was unencumbered by worries about disappointing my mother. For the first 45 years of my life, she never said a word about my single status. In the seven years she lived after my father died, we occasionally traveled together, just the two of us, and we spent some holidays together. We talked about a lot of things, but she never pressured me to marry, not even subtly. I was proud of that. I thought it meant that she could see that staying single wasn’t an issue for me. In the last conversation I had alone with her, as she lay dying, she brought up my single life for the first time. “I worry about you,” she said. I don’t remember what I said in response, but I do remember that I was stunned and saddened. I wish she had understood that for me, and the millions like me, staying single was how I stayed happy and fulfilled. I wish I knew then what I know now and could have helped her to understand. The truth is that being single doesn’t limit our lives—it throws them wide open. We have our freedom, and we use it to make the most of our resources and opportunities, however vast or meager they may be. We get to decide the shape and contours of our lives, from our daily routines to life-altering transformations. We get to pursue our interests and passions, without trying to refashion or resize them in ways that suit a romantic partner. We get to welcome into our lives anyone we want—friends, relatives, mentors, colleagues, lovers, neighbors, spiritual figures, pets, or anyone else—as many or as few as we like, with no pressure to elevate a romantic partner above all others. We can devote ourselves to our inner circle, our larger communities, our countries, and our causes, if that’s what we want to do. We create homes that are our sanctuaries. We have our sweet, sweet solitude. If we don’t want kids, no partner is going to pout. If we do have kids, we get to raise them as we see fit. We enjoy intimacy on our own terms. The risk to people who are single at heart is not what we will miss if we do not put a romantic partner at the center of our lives, but what we will miss if we do. I will never say that it is OK to be single or that it is better to be single than to be in a bad romantic relationship. Those sentiments are far too grudging. For people like us, it is better to be single. Period. ### More From TIME To the single at heart, single life is joyful. It doesn’t matter if we have had no past romantic experiences or plenty of them. It doesn’t matter if any such experiences were glorious, horrifying, boring, or a mixed bag. We are not single just because we are running away from something or because we have “issues” (everyone has issues). We are single because [we love what single life offers](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/BARJYUVXEZPDZUZJRMJU?target=10.1111/jftr.12525) and will continue to offer for as long as we commit to it and invest in it. For us, that’s forever. Because we are embracing our single lives rather than trying to escape them, we develop strengths, skills, resources, and attitudes that are less often honed by those who lead a conventionally coupled life. The time, money, and emotional resources that some other people devote to their pursuit of a romantic partner and then bestow upon that partner if they find such a person, we invest in the experiences that make our lives meaningful and that can never be taken away from us by a divorce or any other casualty of coupling. We value our friends, rather than looking past them for the romantic partner who may be on the horizon or waiting for us at home. That [pays off](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407520933000): The more we value our friends, the more fulfilling we find our single lives to be. We also savor the time we have to ourselves; because we are enriched by our solitude rather than fearful of it, we are especially [unlikely to feel lonely](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/solitude-netta-weinstein/1143660808). Our years of investing in our single lives and embracing all that single life has to offer [pay off along the way](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/BARJYUVXEZPDZUZJRMJU?target=10.1111/jftr.12525), but the investment comes to its ultimate, stereotype-shattering pinnacle later in life. We’ve been warned that we are going to end up decrepit, despondent, despairing, and oh so alone when we are old, but that’s not what happens. Studies show that people who have stayed single are especially likely to be thriving in later life. Unlike the newly single, such as the divorced and widowed people who organized their lives around a spouse, the lifelong single people aren’t trying to figure out for the first time how to do the things their spouse used to do for them. They aren’t trying to create a social circle or an emotional support system anew; they have been doing that all along. A 2006 [study](https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/61/6/S315/650267) of older people in the United States showed that the men and women who stayed single were most optimistic about the future, were most likely to have an active social life, and most likely to have the help they needed and the intimacy they wanted. Black Americans, who are the targets of so much moralizing and shaming for their relatively low rates of marrying, were especially likely to be living a fulfilling life in their old age if they had never married. An 2006 Australian [study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953605004995?via%3Dihub) of more than 10 thousand women in their 70s found that the lifelong single women without children were the most optimistic, least stressed, most altruistic, and had the fewest diagnoses of major illnesses, relative to the currently or previously married women, with or without children. Contrary to [stereotypes](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20447266), single people keep getting [happier and happier with their single lives](https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/75/7/1423/5257993) as they approach middle age and head on to old age. Across the entire adult lifespan, the single people who are not looking for a romantic partner are [especially likely](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02654075211005024) to find their single lives increasingly fulfilling, according to a study from 2021. We who are single at heart realize that by committing to our single lives, we are bucking the relentlessly touted and celebrated cultural script that insists that what adults want, more than anything else, is a committed romantic partnership. We know what people think: that it’s fine to be single for a while, but to stay single forever is just sad, and that to _want_ to stay single isn’t natural or normal. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve seen other bedrock beliefs pulverized. Is it abnormal to be attracted to people of your own gender? We know better now. Is a woman’s place in the home? Oh, please. Is it only natural for women to want kids? That doesn’t seem obvious anymore. Each time our understanding of human nature becomes more expansive, we all become freer to live our best and most authentic lives. In the enlightened world that I envision, every child will understand, as a matter of course, that living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other—and for some people, the best path of all. Every adult will forsake forever the temptation to pity or patronize people who are single, and will instead appreciate the profound rewards of single life. Adults who are naturally drawn to single life will not be asked to defend that choice ever again. Millions of happy single people will realize that they are happy and thriving not in spite of being single, but because of it. _Adapted from_ [Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life](https://www.amazon.com/Single-Heart-Power-Rewards-Uncoupled/dp/1954641281/?tag=wwwbelladepau-20%20)_, by Bella DePaulo._ ## Transcript [00:00] I could be happier if if [00:06] You know, I'd be happier if people aren't talking behind other [00:11] people's backs, teasing bullying other people for no reason. [00:18] I could be happier if there wasn't so much hate going around [00:24] in the world. [00:26] I could be happier if I had a better relationship with my parents. [00:32] I could be happier if I didn't struggle with appearance [00:36] and body Images. [00:43] I feel like, what is the biggest struggle for kids? [00:46] Right now is focusing on how other people see them instead [00:50] of how they see themselves. [00:51] I feel like that pressure comes from everyone can come from [00:55] social media from guys from school or scared to go someplace [01:00] and not have to worry about. [01:01] Is there going to be a shooting here? [01:03] Am I going to get harassed or kidnapped? [01:05] Am I going to have to deal with other people? [01:08] Judging me based on the color of my skin or the way. [01:12] I look how I dress. [01:14] Last year I was cyberbullied and sexually harassed online. [01:19] By people at my school, I tried to convince myself that I was [01:24] fine as well. [01:25] Even though I knew that I wasn't okay. [01:29] With the things that people were saying about me. [01:32] Social media has mostly impacted my body image a lot. [01:37] I feel like I have to constantly [01:42] constantly check my weight even though I know nowadays, [01:46] I don't want to because I'm scared of it. [01:50] I don't want to see how much I weigh. [01:53] I don't want to know the other kids think, [01:56] I'm fat tried to change myself into something, [01:59] I'm not, and it doesn't make me feel like fully myself. I [02:04] feel like I've changed myself into something. [02:06] I don't want to be. [02:09] Depression feels like being alone all the time. [02:13] Like you don't feel happy at all and you feel like you can't [02:16] talk to anybody, you just don't feel light inside you just feel [02:20] like you just can't work through it. [02:23] but I was being made fun of I [02:27] I ate broke me, like, physically and mentally. [02:31] I would never tell my parents about anything. [02:36] It's very hard. [02:37] I don't think it's in is I don't think it's an easy thing to [02:40] go to somebody and be like, hey, [02:42] I'm struggling, I need help, my anxiety feel like it was all [02:47] bottled up and I didn't really know how to deal with it. [02:49] I felt kind of Trapped, and just saw this abundance of stress [02:55] that I didn't really know how to deal with it. [02:58] Sometimes you need someone just to listen and some be there [03:01] or give you friendly advice. [03:02] Not parenting advice. [03:04] When I try to open up to my parents, [03:06] they try to tell me that it's something small in my life and [03:09] there's like a lot more they're going to experience. [03:11] But [03:13] In that moment, I'm just sitting here thinking that my whole [03:17] world is just caved in on me. [03:26] Yes. I do think I deserve to be happy. [03:30] I am happy and I'm happy with my life. [03:33] I am happy with who I am and I'm happy. [03:37] I would say that I'm happier now than I used to be, [03:41] I find that you're not going to be happy. [03:44] A hundred percent of the time, human interaction leads to happiness. [03:48] I'm just overall, Feel Good Vibes, leads to happiness, [03:53] Being Human, you're going to have negative, [03:56] emotions are going to have positive emotions and that's what [03:59] makes life great. [04:00] I find it. [04:01] Easiest to focus on the map. [04:03] It's really helpful. [04:05] If you think about today, if you think about what you're doing [04:08] today, there's going to be a lot of outside voices and who's [04:12] going to be the haters and there's going to be, [04:13] even your clothes loved ones, your family or friends pressuring [04:17] you to do something. [04:18] But in the end you have to realize you do just be comfortable [04:21] with yourself, like 7 billion, people on this Earth and just [04:26] knowing that I'm not alone, it's just really nice. [04:28] It just gives you this feeling. [04:30] What you see, may not always be with other people, [04:33] see, but voice, just nice to know that you're not alone. [04:39] Just love who you are, love yourself. [04:42] Once you learn how to love yourself, [04:44] you'll see why people actually do, you know, [04:47] like you, if you treat yourself the way you treat others and [04:52] you tell it in, you don't tell yourself, [04:53] you're fat, you're ugly. [04:54] If you tell yourself, you're beautiful, you're smart, [04:57] you're strong. You will start to believe that yourself. [05:00] So love yourself, love who you are, [05:03] and don't change. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/"},"headline":"An Ode to the Single Life","datePublished":"2023-12-07T12:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:03:30.568Z","description":"\"Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other,\" writes Bella DePaulo.","url":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/","keywords":["society","freelance"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Bella DePaulo","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/bella-depaulo/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/society/","name":"society"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/","name":"An Ode to the Single Life"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Teen Voices on Happiness and Mental Health Today","description":"\"Living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other,\" writes Bella DePaulo.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/3L2FHepD/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-09-28T17:15:27.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/3L2FHepD.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/","duration":"PT5M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```