Single Doesn’t Have to Mean <i> Alone</i> : Book Emphasizes Relationships as Key to Happiness

Looking back on the years I was single--between my divorce at the age of 23 and my second marriage at the age of 36--the biggest benefits were my ability to totally focus on my career, advancing my education, traveling whenever and wherever I wanted to, and putting enormous amounts of time and energy into my friendships.

In researching singleness over the last decade, I have found that singles, as a group, tend to be needier because isolation and loneliness is more likely than for married couples. But neediness, unfortunately, pushes people away, whatever your marital status.

Being single doesn’t have to mean being lonely or needy. Single people can be involved, animated, connected and energetic. A lot depends on how you feel about being single. It can be a torment or a blessing. Like marriage, it’s up to each individual to make that status as fulfilling and joyful as possible. For example, happy singles are not looking for someone to come along and “save” them. They may enjoy the company of men or women, and seek out others, but unhappy singles cling to others.

Refreshing Insights

There are some refreshing insights about the benefits of singleness in the book “The Joy of Being Single: Stop Putting Your Life on Hold and Start Living!” (Doubleday, 1986) by Janice Harayda. Harayda, a single journalist, suggests 13 ways that happy singles are distinguished from unhappy ones: “Happy single people feel connected to a family . . . tend to be gregarious loners . . . rally around their rituals . . . live with their homes instead of merely in them . . . acquire cheerleading squads . . . feel financially secure . . . find a way to nurture the next generation . . . put down roots in a community . . . enjoy their work but don’t sleep with their job descriptions . . . have social lives that exist independently of their love lives . . . treat themselves kindly as they would want a spouse to . . . and live as though they could marry tomorrow but might remain single forever.”

Harayda’s observations are really about the happy person--single or married--for someone who maintains her independence within a coupled situation, or finds ways to connect and be intimate when single, is a happy person indeed.

One of the benefits of singleness--the time to cultivate close or best friendships--can be enhanced by including good friends of both sexes in the activities that you do. (Consider buying pairs of tickets to activities you enjoy. Invite someone to join you by offering the extra ticket, a worthwhile investment in being connected.)

Chance for Romance

Singleness offers the chance for the Hollywood kind of romance that even the most “still-in-love” married couples will tell you mellows and matures as love endures. It’s nice to have a treasure chest of memories of meeting “him” across a crowded dance floor, being wined and dined and catered to, going dancing at midnight, and having lunch the next day with a new romantic possibility. A life that is filled with lots of different dates may seem superficial to some, but it can also be exciting, spontaneous, and a way to expand your horizons that married people who keep their vows do not find. Of course, AIDS has created necessary concern among singles, but dating without sex is still a possibility (and women can take precautions if sex enters the picture).

There is a wonderful sense of accomplishment when a single woman is financially self-sufficient. A close friend, who spent 16 years married to a difficult man who gave her all the material comforts a woman would want but little of the emotional or intellectual support that she craved, has found the three years of her post-divorce singleness to be a time of self-renewal and excitement. She’s made new friends and started a new career. She lives in a small two-bedroom apartment--a far cry from the two-story house with a swimming pool that she left behind--but “I’m happy,” she reports with spunk, self-confidence, and joy in her voice. “My business is doing nicely, and I don’t feel lonely.”

There is an excitement at being responsible for how each day, and especially each evening and weekend, is filled up. “I’m going to Texas for 10 days,” says a 38-year-old single woman who has only herself to answer to. If you want to go to a movie at 10 on a weekday night, there’s no one saying, “No, I’d rather do something else,” or “Aren’t you going to stay home and help me to watch the baby?”

Filling Free Time

Some singles may find that filling up their free time is the very aspect of singleness that they dream being a couple will eliminate. With the right attitude, and finding out about inner as well as social, cultural, and sports resources to draw upon, how you spend your non-work time can become a welcome challenge.

“Being single is better than being unhappily married,” says a 42-year-old divorced woman whose one-year marriage was a time of depression, confusion and disappointment for her. To her, and other singles, being single still offers the chance for a fulfilling romantic relationship; being involved in a hopelessly unsatisfying relationship eliminates that dream of a better tomorrow.

Some women need a period of time--or perhaps their whole adult lifetime--to be alone. A lawyer in her late 20s wants to come home from work, put her feet up, and not interact with anyone. Right now, she wants, and needs, a quiet personal life. Another woman is frightened by the complications and demands that too many people in one household might make on her. (Others, by contrast, like a busy, loud, and complex personal situation.)

Full Single Life

Ironically, as soon as I stopped bemoaning my singular fate and began to dwell on its advantages, and to create as full a single life as possible--going out, dining, turning my apartment into a home not just a temporary way-station--I was not single much longer.

Fortunately, we live in a time when there is little stigma attached to being single. A range of options exist--from being single and living alone to living with others, whether a friend or a romantic partner. Singles also have the option of parenting--naturally or by adoption. I was recently in a pizza parlor when a single woman confided, “I’m thinking of adopting a child,” she said, her face bursting with smiles, “and I’m 50.”

“That’s great,” I replied with a sisterly feeling of fullness for this stranger who was not going to let being single or even her biological clock stop her from the nurturing she needed to do directly. A toast to her and to being single, which is really another way of saying, a toast to one’s self.