No Shrinking Violets

The Freedom and Fulfillment of Living Single: Conversations with Dr. Bella DePaulo

• Mary Rothwell • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Dr. Bella DePaulo challenges societal assumptions about singleness, revealing how many people are genuinely "single at heart" and thrive in this lifestyle not despite being single, but because of it.

• Being single at heart means feeling most authentic, comfortable, and fulfilled when living a single life
• Single people often maintain richer social connections with diverse people compared to coupled individuals
• The ability to flourish in solitude is a strength, not a deficiency or psychological problem
• Freedom is consistently cited as the greatest benefit of single life by those who are single at heart
• Some partnered people can score high on the "single at heart" scale and need space even in committed relationships
• Those who are single at heart need "the ones" (diverse social connections) rather than "the one" romantic partner
• Creating separate spaces within relationships can help those with single at heart tendencies thrive while partnered
• Being single at heart isn't about rejecting connection, but about living your most authentic life

Find Dr. Bella DePaulo's book "Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life" on Amazon and major booksellers, and check out her TED Talk "What No One Ever Told You About People Who Are Single."

Dr. DePaulo's website

Referenced in the episode:
How to Be Alone by Sara Maitland

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Mary:

Welcome to No Shrinking Violence. I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner. I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives. We'll explore all realms of wellness, what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms. It's time to own your space, trust your nature and flourish. Let's dive in. Hi and welcome to the show. I am beyond excited to talk to my guest today. I mentioned her work in my most ever downloaded episode to date, episode eight, in which I talked with Marieke Nissley James about living single after divorce.

Mary:

I myself have lived most of my adult life as a single person. Now I want to qualify that because, while I may have spent some of that time dating, I identified first and foremost as single at heart. While I knew I wanted a partner for adventures, I had always been my first support, financially, intellectually and emotionally. Even in my first marriage, I was motivated much more by joy and freedom than safety and security, and that's something we'll talk about more later in the episode. I'm now married for a second time, yet I still identify as highly single at heart and that may sound eye-raising to some of you, but I think you'll understand more what that means by the end of this episode. It may even resonate with you. For me, time alone or with friends is as much of a priority as time with my partner. I rarely get lonely, even after spending days in solo pursuits. I've traveled alone and going to a movie or dinner alone remains one of my favorite things. I knew this about myself before I got married and, as is important in any partnership, communication, respect and care for the other partner's nature is at the core of my marriage.

Mary:

I'm so happy to share my show today with Dr Bella DiPaolo, her latest book Single at Heart. The Power, freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life may still seem groundbreaking to some listeners.

Mary:

Being single has historically been colored as something to be ashamed of, especially for women. As with many gender-connected concepts, the terms for women still single, especially after 30, are often unflattering. Things like spinster or old maid. Yet single men are called stags or lone wolves -- strong masculine images, even in references, meant to be derogatory, and often we assume single men didn't CHOOSE to marry, while single women couldn't find anyone TO marry. Now, thankfully, I think these ideas are slowly changing. Some of the stigma of singleness was reinforced by society. I mean laws made it necessary for women to be married to have access to loans or other financial supports, and although a lot of that has changed, the idea of finding a mate and settling down is still held up as the ideal. People love love, and pictures of it and of couples on social media often get more likes and positive comments than any other "achievement. I think the popularity of my episode with Marika on choosing to live as a single woman after divorce signals that this is a theme for many, many people, more than we might believe.

Mary:

So today, Bella and I will be discussing her research and discoveries from her work with single people, and we will also explore her thoughts on coupled people who have quite a high dose of singleness of heart. I'd love to contribute to the destigmatization of singleness overall, but also give those in committed relationships some idea how to navigate, maybe a vacillating want to stay connected to a partner while honoring some of the joys of being in a relationship with yourself and the unique freedoms this offers. So let's get to it. Bella DiPaolo, PhD, has always been single and always will be. The Atlantic calls her "America's foremost thinker and writer on the single experience. Her TEDx talk what no One Ever Told you About People who Are Single has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. She is the author of one of my new favorite books Single at Heart the Power, freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, which, by the way, I think has been translated into six languages so far. So welcome to the show, bella. I have really been looking forward to talking with you.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction and for inviting me to be on your show.

Mary:

Well, I think we have a lot to talk about, so I'm just going to jump in. And so, of course, I have not only read your book, but once I read your book, then I wanted to know more. So I've heard you on some other podcasts, and one of the things that I love is sort of the way you got into what you're really focusing on and have focused on for a few decades, because I think it's interesting how some of the most impactful choices in life come from unexpected inspiration, like it's a combination of our own experience and maybe seeing it reflected in the world. So can you share a little bit about how you walked into this world of researching and being a champion for singleness?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Sure, so I have always been single, like you said in your introduction, and I never really had a research interest for me, it was just something about my life. Then, in December of 1992, I was 39 years old, it was near the holidays and somebody wrote into an advice columnist in my local paper and she said that she had recently been widowed and the holidays were so hard for her and how was she ever going to get through them. And the advice columnist had a lot to say, but I underlined one statement which was remember that one is a whole number. Now I wasn't feeling like an incomplete person because I was single, but I thought it was interesting that this person needed to be reassured that one was a whole number and that the advice columnist thought to say that to her.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And so that was the start of my academic or research interest in being single and how people who are single are perceived and understood. So I started this folder and I wrote the number 1 on the tab.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

This is 1992, before everything was online and I put that clipping in the folder and then I started collecting all sorts of other things relevant to how single people are portrayed in the media. I don't know if you remember the Kathy cartoons who was the single woman who was always saying, " which I did not think was the most favorable portrayal of a single person. But whatever, it was irrelevant to my project and I was finding that in prestigious publications there was this kind of condescending attitude towards single people and that really bothered me. At first this was all private. I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this and then at some point I decided okay, I have to see how other single people feel about this.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

So I was at a social event and I went up to someone who I didn't know very well, but I knew she was single, and I started telling her about some of the experiences I had had as a single person that I thought were because I was single. So, for example, the person who organized the class schedule where I was teaching at the University of Virginia said that she wanted me to come in at night to teach because it would be too hard for the married faculty to come in, they didn't even have kids yet. Or another example is that I would socialize with my colleagues during the week, you know, we'd leave from work and go out to lunch together, but then, when the weekend came, the couples would socialize with each other and they wouldn't include me. So was that because I was single and they think, you know, they're couples and they get to have their married couple club? Or was it because they just didn't like me and during the week they kind of felt obligated to include me because it was the

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Okay, so I approached this woman at this social event and I tell her some of those stories and I said do you have any examples like that? Have you ever been treated that way? And she did so. She started telling me her experiences. Then somebody else joined us and he started telling us his experiences. Then somebody else joined us and he started telling us his experiences. Then someone else, then someone else. We had this circle of people and we talked the whole night. I went home and I started writing notes. I tried to remember everything those people told me and I wrote for two hours. Then the next morning, I woke up, turned on my email and I had these notes from people saying, oh, and another thing. They remembered something, something I wanted to really focus on and do research on and write about. But I didn't want to just write for an academic audience, because this was something that resonated with people well beyond the halls of academia, and so that was the start for me.

Mary:

Wow. Well, I think it's so interesting because I always think of this story when I'm thinking about or talking about being single or even doing things in the world that show that you are single, or by yourself. So I taught this course at a community college and it was psychology of adjustment and I would tell my students stories about and when we talked about sort of individual and yourself in a relationship, I would talk a lot about what is it to really know yourself? And I said you know, I go out and I'll go to dinner by myself. And they were mortified that I would sit there by myself. I said, well, I take a book. Or I said, sometimes I'll go to movies by myself. And they couldn't, I would never do that. And I said, well, why would you never do it? And they often would say things like well, people think you're a loser and I'm like you know, like it's that idea, that simple idea that if you go somewhere alone you don't have anybody to go with you, and so often that's false, right.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

It is, you know, my first time I taught a course on being single. I had an assignment and I said that they should go out for a meal by themselves, and they loved the idea. So they upped the ante and they said not only are we going to go out for a meal, but it has to be dinner, not just, you know, lunch or brunch or whatever, and no books, no distractions, just be there. So that was really. I just loved my students for that. They were so into it.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

But what you were saying about what people assume. So the very first study I ever did was to see how people perceive what they actually think of people who are dining alone were either by themselves or with other people. And then we brought the pictures to a shopping mall and we asked people what they thought of the various pictures and why was that person? If they were alone, why were they eating alone or what did you think of them? And what about the people who are together? And it was fascinating. Overall, on average, there were no differences between how people perceived the people alone and the people together.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Now that doesn't mean that there were were negative and positive, about both the single people and the people such as those who look like romantic couples. So here's some examples. So sure, some people seeing someone dining alone would say something negative, but more often they'd say, oh, she just wants some time to herself, or he looks contented. Or my favorite one, somebody said he looks secure. I love that, yeah. And then same thing for the couples.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

They might say, oh, you know, they wanted to have dinner together, but then they'd say negative things, like well, they're just together because they have to be, they don't have anything to say to each other. You know, they just felt obligated, and so it was just such an eye-opening set of results that people think, oh, you know, the single person is going to be seen as a loser, the couple is going to be seen as so cool, or the group of people, group of friends. That's not what happened. It was mixed about both.

Mary:

So I think part of that too and of course this is certainly something that's in your book is the idea that when you feel quite content by yourself and I can sort of verify this as a therapist people think, well, is there something wrong with me? Because I don't. I'm not drawn to this. You know, this thing that we hold up is the ideal that there's this one person. You should find this person, and so people can sort of fool themselves that well, if I'm really content and I can go do my thing or I can spend time in solitude and not feel lonely, does that mean I'm? And then they would assign am I commitment phobic, or you know, is there something from childhood that I haven't overcome? And that's not it.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Right, and this is something that really gets to me and I have experienced it over and over. I'm not a therapist, I'm a researcher, but people will write to me out of the blue, people I don't know. They'll send me an email or, occasionally, a handwritten card and they'll say something like I love my single life, I love the solitude, I love the freedom, I love spending time with the people I care about. And then in the next sentence they'll say do you think there's something wrong with me that I like being single? And it is so gobsmacking because here they have what everybody craves, a life that they love, and yet, because it's single life, they think that means there's something wrong with them.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And that's one of the misconceptions I am bound and determined to challenge with my single heart book, because I think that a lot of what gets framed as normal and good and natural and superior, which is kind of, you know, being with people, whether it's just socializing all the time or having the one, that's normalized and people who like their solitude more or or like being single, are stigmatized and questioned about whether there's something wrong with them, and I think that that really gets some really important things wrong.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

For example, I think that the ability to flourish in solitude is a real strength. That's not a weakness. That's a wonderful thing If you can be on your own and find that time alone to be restful or productive or good for creativity or spirituality or whatever you like to do in your alone time, instead of the stereotype of people being alone, being lonely, it's going to be just the opposite. If you flourish in solitude, you are very unlikely to be lonely, and that's one of the key things about people who are single at heart they love their solitude. Now, that doesn't mean they don't also like socializing, having friends and all the rest, but solitude doesn't scare them. They value it, they cherish it.

Mary:

Well, you have a whole chapter in your book on solitude.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yes.

Mary:

And there were so many quotes in there that resonated with me, and we'll get into this more because, as I mentioned, I'm married. But I'm going to tell you, Bella, I scored a 12 on your quiz. That's pretty good. So for people that don't know and I don't know, I didn't find this anywhere online, but in your book, at the end of chapter one, you have, I think it's 14 or 15 questions, right? Yes, 14, yes, yep.

Mary:

And so you answer those questions to sort of determine are you more single at heart? And it's really interesting because I know you pointed out in your book the question sort of about the idea that you can do most things like you. I forget what the exact question was, but that's always something that I felt like oh, I can, whatever comes up, I'm going to be able to handle, you know. And yeah, and there are certain things that I think it makes you think about it in a different way, but I loved that there was a whole chapter on solitude, because when I'm by myself, I don't think of that as being alone. This might be a little weird to some people. In my mind, I'm spending time with myself.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it, and, in fact, people who like being alone are more authentic. They're more likely to be living according to who they really are, and I think that's important too, that if you don't like being alone, sometimes I think what that means is you don't like being face-to-face with yourself.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

There's something about yourself that you're uncomfortable with. Maybe you're not living your most authentic life, but you're living the life somebody else thinks you should be living. When you feel that peace or even joyful about the life you have chosen, then it's going to be much more fulfilling to be face to face with yourself.

Mary:

Yeah, I really agree with that, and I don't know the exact quote, of course, in the book, but somebody talked about that they are better around other people if they can spend the time they need by themselves.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Isn't that great? And you can find that sentiment in other places too. Sarah Maitland wrote a book called how to Be Alone, and she also talked about how she is a better friend. She's better in personally when she's had her full measure of solitude, and that was what the person in my Single at Heart book was saying as well.

Mary:

That's really true for me that I need to have a certain amount of time in solitude, because it sort of helps me kind of regulate my thinking. It just gets me back down to kind of a grounded state. I don't want to sound too kind of woo about it, but it sort of renews me, and so I think we think of that sort of trait as introversion. Now, first I'm going to say I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding of what being introverted means. But do you find that that is a commonality that a lot of people that do have sort of this peace with being single tend to be more introverted?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

people who told me their life stories. More of them were introverted than extroverted, but there were extroverts and there were people who also considered themselves somewhere in between. So, yes, it tilts towards introversion, but it's not the same thing. And people who study solitude as their scholarly interest and expertise have found that appreciating solitude is not only something that's true of introverts, that even extroverts who like being with people a lot of the time, can still like having some time to themselves, and that what really matters is authenticity. So are you living your most authentic life? Are you being true to yourself? And the people who are being true to themselves are most likely to be at ease in solitude or, even better than that, they savor their solitude.

Mary:

Yeah Well, so to take a little turn now to another chapter. That was one of my favorites. You have a whole chapter on freedom. So what I found interesting? So in my episode eight I talked to my friend Marieke, who has two kids, was married but she got divorced, dated a little and then she realized she truly was happier as a single person and I asked her what did she like the most about being single? And she said freedom. And I was like absolutely. That was in Bella's book.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yes, in fact, every person who was single at heart and shared their story with me when I asked them what they liked about being single, every one of them in some way or another, said they loved their freedom. What might come to mind? First, that you can arrange your schedule any way you want. If you live alone, you can have a place that reflects who you really are and it's decorated the way you want, and you have your own sleep schedule and you eat what you want when you want, and when you put something in the refrigerator at night it's still there the next day, and all those kinds of things. But it's also bigger things, like financial freedom, getting to decide how much to save and to spend, and really big things like making big life-changing decisions without worrying about what a romantic partner would think or if they want to do it. And I did that myself when, in the year 2000, I moved from the University of Virginia on the East Coast all the way over to UC Santa Barbara on the West Coast. Now, it was supposed to be just a one-year sabbatical, but I loved it out here. You know.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

The sunshine and the progressive values and the people were just so interesting and thoughtful and it was getting toward the time when I was supposed to go back because it was supposed to be just for one year, and I was walking the beach with somebody else who had also been at the University of Virginia and now is at UCSB and stayed there, and I said I just don't want to go back.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And she said I just don't want to go back. And she said, well, don't. And of course you know I'm single, I could do that, and so I just upended my entire life that was based on the East Coast, moved to the West Coast, and that is also when I decided to commit to putting the study of single people at the center of my professional life. And you know, imagine trying to do that with a spouse. Okay, you know, we're all settled here in Charlottesville, virginia, but now I moved to Santa Barbara, california, and I don't have a job there, and you don't have a job there, and our families are on the East Coast and yet on my own.

Mary:

Yeah, you didn't have to check with anybody. So, yeah, so that idea of freedom, just to be able to make those choices, that I think is overwhelming to some people. And so I, again, I often frame things in different ways because I think about, if agonize over, maybe there's someone they truly care about, a partner, and they're feeling this pull towards you know. But I really feel happy by myself. I love this idea of freedom.

Mary:

So it makes me think of so I'm going to go a little academic for a second. It makes me think of William Glasser's choice theory. So he talked about having five basic needs and those are our motivations that determine how we make a lot of our choices in life. So one of those is freedom. Freedom is a big motivator for me. I like being able to make my own choices, be autonomous. But another one of those basic needs he calls it survival, but I'm going to call it safety and security, so an idea of being anchored to something. So for some people in your situation, they would like being able to talk that over with a partner right and decide together and maybe even abdicate their own choice if that wasn't the best for the couple or the partnership. So what are your thoughts on this kind of thing? Thinking about what motivates us? Do you think that might help some of these people that are?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

There is so much either pressure to be coupled or just the assumption that, of course, everyone wants to be coupled, and that can make it hard for people who really thrive while being single to understand that, as the kids say, being single at heart is a thing you know.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

There are people more than you might ever imagine, who've lived their best life their most meaningful, fulfilling life as a single person, most meaningful, fulfilling life as a single person. And so the question is, or one of the questions is how do you know? And I think one thing that matters is how you feel when you're in a romantic relationship. So people who are in a romantic relationship and it doesn't work often think to themselves, well, that was just the wrong person, or I'm not at the right point in my life, I need to work on myself. And so they try again and again. And what is really telling is when they find someone they do love and who loves them, and it still doesn't feel right. And that is so telling because it's not about, oh, you met the wrong person or you're at the wrong time in your life, or any of that. It's that single is who you really are, that it's that single is who you really are. That's how you live your best, most fulfilling and authentic life.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And single very important to understand does not mean alone or isolated or unattached, even though people assume those things.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

In fact, single people in general are more connected to more different people, so they stay in touch with their friends and neighbors and colleagues and parents and relatives, whereas people who get married, and research shows this when people get married, they become more insular, so they become more focused on their spouse.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

They pay less attention to their friends, their parents, and you know that doesn't mean every married person does that, but on the average that's what happens. So it's the single people who are more connected to other people, and so I think it's really unhelpful and actually hurtful to have these societal-wide assumptions that everyone wants to be married or in a committed romantic relationship and if they don't, they're just fooling themselves or there's something wrong with them. We've got to get beyond that so people can live their best lives. And, of course, it's really important for people who are themselves single at heart, but it's also important for the people that they try to pair up with, you know, because they feel like, well, I should be trying to find the one, and so they get into these relationships and it's not fair to the other person who probably really does want a committed romantic relationship and is not single at heart.

Mary:

Right and that socialization, I think, is so strong that sometimes it takes some time for people to really be able to push that aside and listen to their I call it their essential nature as to what actually makes them the happiest.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Right, and I think what also helps is having some validation, so knowing that there are other people like you and that's one of the reasons I wrote Single at Heart and it helps to find your people online. So I have an online Facebook group that I started in 2015, called the Community of Single People, and we talk about every aspect of single life, except dating or trying to unsingle yourself, and that now has more than 9,000 members from more than 100 nations.

Mary:

Wow. Well, it's certainly something I've heard from so many people that thanked me for telling her story because now she had a family that she didn't feel pressure to recouple after her divorce. But she also has that spirit, you know, and so you paved the way to this next question, because the another chapter in your book that I love is you talk about the ones that we have this idea that we're supposed to find the one right and there's still this idea that there's one person out there for everyone. I'm gonna give people a clue that's not the case. But having the ones basically means that you have I don't know kind of a tribe or like your peeps or your people, and this woman, marika, has tons of friends and you know, I think when you have that system, it's not a case where you're expecting one person to fill every need. I don't know anybody that has a partner who you can actually talk to about everything, and it's not really fair.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yeah, and when you have the ones instead of the one then you can talk to people who are especially good at certain things, like maybe you know being there for you when you're happy, or somebody else might be better when you're sad, or somebody else might be better at understanding your righteous anger about something. And in fact there's a study of that that looked at people who went to different people, had different people in their lives who were kind of like emotion specialists for them, and compared them to the people who always went to the same person, for no matter how they were feeling.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

You know which is the typical not every couple, but a lot of them, and they found that the people who had different people for different needs were more satisfied with their lives than the people who were always going to the same person. And I think it may be in part what you said, that it's actually not fair to think that one person is going to you know, like the song lyrics say, it's going to be your everything. Oh, I just want to be your everything. Yeah, and that's not a great way to live.

Mary:

So much of it is reinforced, you know, by moving it's all about. We do love love and I love love. But I think you have to be a realist that literally the honeymoon period will end and you're negotiating everything with that partner Because, really, even as I am very single at heart, you know I love my solitude. There's so many things. I have a huge friend group that I love. But it's not also fair to my partner to just skip off down the path and not think about you know what his needs are, and so that has been. You know, that's challenging in its own way.

Mary:

So I'm going to thank you ahead of time for indulging me here, because I sort of want to look at this idea of people who might truly be more I'm not going to say 100%, 14 on your quiz single at heart, but they have a lot of what I have, but they're also in a committed relationship. So as I was reading your book, it occurred to me that in some of the couples that I might've worked with in therapy, there might've actually been one of them that was single at heart, but they didn't have the words for it and instead they thought, oh, we're just incompatible, or that person felt bad for struggling. So I'm just curious with that about what have you found and I know this hasn't really been the focus as much of your research, but you did mention you knew people through your studies that are in a committed relationship. A huge need for freedom, a high degree you know want a high degree of joy.

Mary:

What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yes. Well, this is something I had to be persuaded of. When I was doing this research and asking people to tell me their life stories, I would hear from people who were in committed romantic relationships, maybe even married, and they insisted that they were single at heart and I don't know. But then, like you, they scored fairly high on the single at heart scale, not the highest number not 14, but typically, just like you, around 12. And what I found is that they were not the typical I won't say typical. They weren't the kind of couple that was enmeshed in each other's lives. So they were more interdependent and they had more independence. So they had more physical space and that might mean even to the point of having their own places, what's called living apart together. And they wanted their own places, not because they wanted to be free to cheat, but because they liked having a place of their own.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And others of them didn't have separate places, but maybe they had separate places within the place that they shared. If they had the room, they might have separate floors or separate ends of hallways or separate ends of hallways. And they also had other kinds of space, like social space, where they got to socialize with their friends or with the other people who are important to them without having their partner with them all the time and without having their partner stew about that or feel like that time belonged to them because their partner might be off doing the same thing and they probably have more independence in how they handle their money, and so they really do crave and value their freedom.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

They value the time they have to themselves, but they also value their romantic relationship, and I think what's important about that is having a partner who either is also single at heart or who kind of gets it, because if you're not compatible that way, if you're not both single at heart, that could be a problem. In fact, when I first started talking about this many years ago, a columnist wrote an essay about it and she said that her husband went away for a few days and when he did.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Oh, she was so happy, she did all these things that she loved to do and she had time to herself and it was great. And then a little while later she went away and her husband had time to himself and he just stayed home and soaked. And so I think that you know that can be hard, and it can be hard for lots of reasons. One is that the person who likes being by themselves might feel like they're being a bad partner, or their partner might think they're being a bad partner or that there's something about them that is at fault. That means that their partner doesn't want to be with them all the time, when, in fact, it's not personal to the partner. It's about the person who is single at heart, Because for them, even if they found the most perfect person in the world and some of the people I interviewed feel like they have found that they still don't want to organize their life around a romantic partner.

Mary:

Yeah, and I think I would encourage people to think outside the box. If they find themselves in this situation and they're finally able to have the words for it or to recognize it's not that you don't love the person, it's just you want a relationship with yourself too. Yes, normalize, like you mentioned, having maybe separate parts of a home. And I'm going to tell you so I know myself pretty well. I am not a spring chicken and my second marriage was much later in life. So I know myself so, and I will say my husband probably would score pretty low on your quiz, so we are truly an anomaly. But I said before we got married, I think I'm going to need some space to myself. So we found this, these people that built this beautiful. We call it the retreat. It's like a she shed. So in the woods I have my own little retreat that when we both are working from home, or even some evenings.

Mary:

I just say I'm just going to go out to the retreat and it's in the woods. And what some people I think don't understand is, even if you both are in the same room, but quiet, there's still this, this, you know this sense of like somebody in my space.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

And they're stealing a sliver of your mind.

Mary:

Well, and I say too that I feel like people that tend to, I think, enjoy solitude and be comfortable with themselves. I think that we also have a high degree of I don't know like empathy or connection, like we read people, we read them, I think we read emotion, we read the room, and I think partly that's why we like some solitude, because, you know, it's sort of like we're very aware of those other people near us or around us, and he's been wonderful with understanding that exactly what you're saying, this is not about him. One other thing that I wanted to explore a little bit with you, because this makes me think of this this do you feel like in what you've discovered, you've had a lot of examples of people that have been coupled and then choose just like my guest, choose to choose now to stay single? Do you feel like this is kind of like nature versus nurture? Is it it like an inborn? Or do you feel like people maybe develop this love of being single as they go through life?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Well, the short answer is I don't know for sure, but I do think that being single at heart is more than just a lifestyle choice is more than just a lifestyle choice. So people who are single at heart are powerfully drawn to single life. It's the life that feels most natural, comfortable and authentic. But at the same time, it could take certain life experiences to come to understand yourself as single at heart. One of my favorite is what happened during the pandemic.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

There were people who were on their own for an extended period of time for the first time in their adult life. You know, there's someone who told me that she went on dates constantly every time a relationship broke up, because she didn't ever want to be single. And then, during the pandemic, she was on her own and she realized, oh wow, I like this. And she realized, oh wow, I like this. And I have heard similar stories from people who have become divorced or widowed and maybe at first it's devastating and they don't like being on their own at all, but then they kind of start to like it and they start to feel comfortable on their own and making their own decisions and basically learning who they really are apart from a spouse or a romantic partner, and understanding that they appreciate the freedom they now have and they take advantage of that.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Now, this isn't true for all of them, but it is an interesting experience and, again, an important part of it is understanding that there is such a thing as flourishing because you are single and not in spite of it.

Mary:

Yes, 100%. And so there certainly are people that they would rather be coupled, and it's not a society thing, it's just that's their heart. But I guess my message, or really your message for sure, is that people that choose this life I mean okay, let me correct that, because they're not choosing it, it's who they are. But when you see them living that life, they're good. You know. We don't have to worry about them, we don't have to pity them. They're not lonely and sometimes I love. I love the story you told about you rented a place?

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

The Outer Banks in North Carolina

Mary:

Yeah, and people thought, like they were, it was great surprise to show up early and it's like no, that's no.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Right, and then I would rent a place and I'd save the last couple of days to myself. So I'd invite friends for the first part and then save the last few days. And I had a friend who couldn't understand that, Like why couldn't she just stay the whole time?

Mary:

People really really don't understand that, like why couldn't she just stay the whole time? People really really don't understand sometimes, and so I think your message in this book is so important because it supports the idea that what has been put out there and really I think it was not until 1974 that the laws changed that women didn't need a man to co-sign loans for her- yeah, isn't that amazing.

Mary:

Our society was set up to be coupled and there's still as you probably know very well, having been single your entire life there's still things with taxes where you have an advantage if you're married Absolutely and have kids, by the way. Yeah. So being aware, I think, and overcoming just the assumption that if you want to have a partner, awesome, but that's really not what everyone else might want, and if they don't want that, they're not broken.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Right. Right. So my single and hard book isn't anti-coupling, it's pro living your authentic life, living the life that's best for you, most meaningful, most fulfilling. And nobody needs a book saying that, oh, marriage can be meaningful and fulfilling, because that's what everybody assumes. But we do need a book saying single life can be a powerful freeing and a life of heart-filling joy.

Mary:

It is very powerful, for sure, for sure, and this has been just so fun. I look forward to talking to you for so long, and so I appreciate your being here today. This has been a wonderful talk.

Dr. Bella DePaulo:

Yes, I've really enjoyed talking to you too. Thank you again for inviting me.

Mary:

And again for everyone listening, Bella's latest book is Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. You can find it on Amazon and other major booksellers, so I will put a link to that in the show notes. I'm also gonna link you to her website. There's a lot of wonderful interviews and more information on her other books, and I will also link her TED Talk in my show notes. So thanks everyone for listening, and this podcast is really for you, so I would love to hear from you. Please review or comment or use the link above the show notes to send me a text with your thoughts. Follow the show so you don't miss a thing, and check me out on Facebook or Instagram links in the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.

People on this episode

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Mary Rothwell

Host
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Bella DePaulo, PhD

Guest