Singles Happy but Looking for True Love

Life is good, said Michael, 28, who was eating alone and reading a book at a Costa Mesa coffee shop.

A good job. A new car. An apartment in Newport Beach. A devoted cat. No wife or ex-wife. Enough girlfriends, but none of the serious kind, he said. Marriage can wait, maybe forever.

Michael is one of the estimated 838,000 single adults in Orange County, a group that is close to constituting half the total adult population. Two-thirds are white and not yet 40 years old. More than half have attended college, but in 1990 only 4 in 10 had an income over $20,000. Women slightly outnumbered men.

A recent Times Orange County poll on the attitudes and lifestyles of unmarried residents found that the vast majority of singles, like Michael, say they are happy with their lot. But unlike Michael, most of the 500 single adults interviewed in the random telephone survey in late June said they want to forsake the single life and marry. In Orange County, meeting people is easy, they said, but finding the right mate is hard.

The poll conducted by Mark Baldassare and Associates also found that:

* There are few playboys out there. Two out of three single men who were dating described themselves as monogamous; with women, it was more than three-quarters.

* Good looks and wealth seem to be the important dating assets that stereotypes indicate they are.

* Although singles are more satisfied with their leisure time than adults in general, they are much less satisfied with their love lives.

“The love life ratings of singles are tied to the reality that only half are now dating,” Baldassare said. “Unmarried women tend to be more satisfied than men.”

Belying the image of the swinging single who disdains marriage to date a number of women, nearly half of all single men described themselves as monogamous and 4 in 10 as celibate. Only 15% of men and 4% of women reported dating more than one partner at a time.

“The playboy was a myth,” said sociologist Jerome Kirk, professor emeritus at UC Irvine. “The sexually active person taking on all comers may have been a bit of a folk hero 25 years ago, but it wasn’t emotionally very satisfying. So I think the pendulum has gone back the other way.”

Nowadays in Orange County, about half of all singles are dating, but enthusiasm and opportunity decline with age. Only a third of the middle-aged singles were dating, only a fourth of the oldest singles.

“I get all the female attention I need,” said Arthur, a Laguna Hills Leisure World resident who would give his age--73--but not his last name.

“There are a lot more widows than widowers here. But I don’t go out on dates. Mostly, it’s just hanging around with friends, men and women.”

The middle-aged group appeared to be the most frustrated. About 4 in 10 wanted to date but did not. About half said they were celibate. More than half of the 55-and-over singles said they were no longer interested in dating.

“There are a much larger number of elderly women living alone than a generation ago,” said Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist. Women still tend to outlive men, but few widows nowadays seek living quarters with relatives, he said.

“The most common living arrangement for women over 60 is living by themselves. They don’t want to live with their children, but they want to live nearby. Most elderly people are happy to live independent lives. It’s a mistake to think they are unhappy.”

The great majority of singles say they believe in “true love,” would like to be married and find it easy to meet other singles like themselves in Orange County. So why do fewer than 4 in 10 have a serious romance under way?

“What kind of spouse are they looking for?” asked Frances Goldsheider, a demographer at Brown University. “If their standards are so impossibly high, they will remain single.”

“It’s somewhat depressing,” said Jim Gollner, 39, of Yorba Linda, now divorced. “Women want to check your financial statement. When I date we go out in my old truck, and it ends with one date. A couple girls said they were looking for a Clint Eastwood type. Back when I was young, you could meet someone and go to dinner and it wasn’t a big thing. Now to go to dinner almost takes a commitment.”

Poll results reflect the conflict. Two-thirds of singles said most singles they meet are predominantly interested in looks. More than half said most are interested in material wealth.

Yet when asked about their own priorities, singles put these two factors at the bottom of the list. About 7 in 10 said a fun-loving, outgoing personality and shared values are very important and about 6 in 10 listed intelligence as well. Women sought shared values and intelligence more than men did.

However, the old stereotypes seem to persist. Men are more likely than women to admit that looks are at least somewhat important, and women place relatively higher emphasis on wealth.

“The emblems of good looks and wealth are powerful, that’s undeniable,” said Paul B. Whittemore, a Newport Beach psychologist who counsels dating singles. “They are not the whole story, but they are what get you noticed.

“There tends to be a deep program in men and women to try to get the best that they can. Women, for example: For a billion years, females have been programmed by evolution to seek out the strongest mate with greatest resources--the best nest.”

Two-thirds of all singles rated Orange County an excellent or good place to be. Those polled singled out Newport Beach and Huntington Beach most often as the best places for singles to live.