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In society, there is still an opinion that all women dream of getting married. But is it really so? Why is it that more and more women in the West, even in romantic relationships, prefer to date rather than live with a partner?
Women… According to stereotypes, they are simply obsessed with marriage. That should be their life goal, right? It is believed that the prospect of a lonely life depresses them much more than men. This is probably why when scholars and writers talk about single people, they mostly mean women.
Social psychologist Bella DePaulo, a specialist in the field of loneliness, works a lot with people whose social media status would be labeled “single”. She explores this topic and offers a fresh look at the current situation in the modern world. “When people — both women and men — get married, they tend not to become happier and healthier,” she says. “There are even signs that overall health may be deteriorating. And if you believe the research, just men are more likely to need a life together.
In our general consciousness, DePaulo ironically, men are presented as rude individualists, solo explorers, lonely cowboys. But maybe they are really the ones who desperately need a partnership?
This is hard to guess, judging by the way of life of young people. As Lynn Jamison and Rune Simpson point out in Living Alone, in younger age groups, men are more likely than women to live alone. This is true, they note, «for all regions of Europe and the United States.» And there is an important reason for that. Women usually marry at a younger age. This gives men more years of single life. This is one of the explanations for the situation.
But what happens over time? At a later age, the trend changes: there are more single women than men. There is also an important reason for this. Statistically, women live longer on average. So, over the years, they gradually remain much more than men. They are widows or divorced, or maybe they have always been single. And there are much fewer male peers, potential partners.
Especially interesting for research, according to Bella DePaulo, middle-aged adults are no longer young, but not yet retired. The scientist Gianni Liu and his colleagues were just studying this age group. Drawing on data from Canadian surveys conducted between 1996 and 2010, they focused on 6675 people who were living alone when the researchers first contacted them. Scientists followed their lives for the next six years.
The results of the study were quite remarkable. It turned out that it was women who lived mostly alone during these six years. “As if they felt pleasure from their and only their place at home, and found that they really like it,” the psychologist comments.
But why? As an expert on singles, Bella DePaulo offers several answers to this question.
1. Women love being alone more than men.
In Germany, Birk Hagemeyer and his colleagues studied how people feel when they spend time alone. They systematically asked participants whether they liked this condition and whether they wanted to avoid it. Every day for two weeks, people wrote about their experiences in a diary, indicating whether they had enough time for themselves. All respondents were in a romantic relationship.
Here are examples of control statements that participants agreed or disagreed with:
«When I’m alone, I feel relaxed.»
«I like being in total privacy.»
«I feel embarrassed when I’m alone.»
«The loneliness quickly becomes too much for me.»
In each study, there were significant differences between the responses of men and women. It was women who valued their time alone more. They liked being alone more, they were less likely to try to avoid it. In a daily diary study, women were more likely to say that they did not give themselves as much time as they would like.
It is important to consider that the survey participants were in a relationship with someone. Hagemeyer and colleagues found that often couples did not live together, but separately, precisely at the urgent desire of the women themselves.
2. Separate women are «successful» in friendship
“Of particular interest are the elderly, who are at greater risk of social isolation and loneliness,” writes DePaulo. — In 2016, a research center report was published based on a representative sample of Americans aged 65 and over. Participants in the study were asked, among other things, how satisfied they were with the number of friends they had. Women living alone were more satisfied than men: 71% versus 48%.
The ability to make friends helps not to feel isolated. Other studies show that women sometimes prefer to live alone, even if they are in a romantic relationship or marriage, because they want to freely meet with friends without arranging each meeting with a partner. They also don’t want to feel obligated to include a partner in all their social plans.
3. Separated women can spend more time on their hobbies
In the same survey, participants were asked if they began to spend more time doing things they were interested in as they got older. Among women living separately, this figure, again, was higher: 65% versus 49%.
It turned out that women are more likely to devote time to their hobbies if they live alone: 65% versus 63% of those who live with a partner. But men are more likely to engage in their hobbies if they live with someone: 73% versus 49% of bachelors.
Today, partners are becoming more equal in terms of the distribution of household chores, but in fact they are not yet equal. As a rule, women still do more. In one of her studies, Bella DePaulo found that because of this, women are often in no hurry to move in with partners. They don’t want to cook and clean up after another person who isn’t going to do the same in return.
5. Women worry about taking on too much care of others.
Women still bear a disproportionately greater burden of childcare than their partners. In addition, according to statistics, husbands are more likely to get sick and die before their wives. This means that women are more likely to have to do the emotionally and sometimes physically demanding work of caring for a spouse. Often they do it willingly and with love. But perhaps they are not very willing to part with their own home and comfort in order to repeat such an experience. “Men want to live together, women don’t,” DePaulo quotes one of the recent publications on this topic.
As is always the case with social science research, these results are just “hospital average temperatures,” and there are plenty of exceptions. However, Bella DePaulo is convinced that these findings suggest that the time has come to subject our stereotypes about women who supposedly “want to get married” to critical reflection, but in fact love to live alone.