I was single for a long time. Long enough that people stopped asking if I was seeing anyone and started asking if I was okay. Long enough that I developed a set of rehearsed answers for family dinners and work events, a rotating menu of explanations that were cheerful enough to end the conversation without inviting further investigation. And long enough to start wondering, privately, whether the people asking the questions were onto something. Was I actually happy, or had I simply convinced myself that I was because the alternative was too depressing to digest? The cultural machinery around singlehood is relentless, and it runs in one direction. Movies, families, social media, the entire architecture of adult life as it is currently constructed, all of it operates on the assumption that being unpartnered is a temporary condition to be resolved rather than a valid state to inhabit. The question was never whether being single was working for me. The question was always when I was going to fix it. And eventually, even the most clear-headed person starts to absorb that framing. I did. I spent more time than I care to admit wondering whether my contentment was real or just what resignation looks like after long enough to settle. A new study published in the Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin has something to say about all of this, and it is not what the cultural narrative would have predicted. Researchers at the University of Toronto tracked nearly 3,000 long-term singles over eleven years, checking in annually to measure life satisfaction, intimate satisfaction, and their desire for a partner. The findings will send Carry Bradshaw and her girls into a tizzy. Bored Panda spoke to relationship psychologists, therapists, and behavioral scientists to find out what the data actually means, why the cultural story refuses to update itself in the face of it, and what the research reveals about personality, desire, and the difference between wanting a partner and needing one to be whole. lookstudio / Magnific (not the actual photo) The research, led by University of Toronto PhD candidate Elaine Hoan and published in the Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin, drew on data from the German Family Panel, tracking 2,930 never-married singles over eleven years between 2009 and 2021. Participants were divided into three groups based on the age at which they entered the study: emerging adults around 18, young adults around 26, and middle-aged adults around 36. The one non-negotiable requirement for continued participation was that they had to remain single at every annual check-in. This proved harder than expected for the older cohort. Only 14% of the middle-aged group qualified for the full study period, compared to 67% of the emerging adults, which tells its own story about the social forces at work as people age. Those who did stay single answered regular questions about overall life satisfaction, satisfaction with their singlehood specifically, sexual satisfaction, and their desire for a romantic partner. The headline finding was striking. Approximately 90% of singles across all three age groups reported life satisfaction above the midpoint of the scale, consistently, across the entire eleven-year period. This was a decade of data saying the same thing, year after year, regardless of what else was fluctuating in participants' lives. What did fluctuate was satisfaction with being single specifically, which varied more widely, and sexual satisfaction, which moved around depending on subgroup. But overall life satisfaction held steady with a robustness that surprised even the researchers, given that an earlier analysis of the same data, using less nuanced statistical modeling, had concluded that singles' life satisfaction tended to decline over time. When Hoan and her team looked at the range of individual life paths rather than a single average, a very different picture emerged. yanalya / Magnific (not the actual photo) Despite eleven years of data suggesting that long-term singles are doing rather well, the cultural assumption of unpartnered misery has proven extraordinarily resistant to updating. The experts we spoke to had several explanations for why, and none of them were particularly flattering to the cultural consensus. Cathryn Goldman, a New York-based clinical psychologist, reaches for the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain the reluctance. Generations of people have devoted enormous resources, time, money, emotional energy, and social capital to the pursuit of a partner, treating it as the primary organizing project of adult life. Accepting that long-term singlehood can produce equivalent or greater wellbeing requires those same people to reconcile that investment with evidence that it may not have been strictly necessary. "It is difficult to reconcile this history of commitment with newfound evidence to the contrary," Goldman told Bored Panda. The cultural narrative does not change because the people who built their lives around it are not emotionally positioned to let it go. Bradford Wolf, a licensed clinical social worker and Gottman-certified couples therapist, also spoke to Bored Panda and identifies the mechanism more bluntly. "Everywhere you look, the idea of being with a partner is romanticized over and over again. You see it in the movies, you hear it from your parents, and you hear it from your faith." He is seeing the narrative shift with younger generations but acknowledges that cultural change moves slowly. The infrastructure of adult life, from tax systems to housing costs to the assumption that illness and aging are navigated with a partner, continues to be built around coupledom. The data may say one thing. The world is still arranged around another. Linda Whiteside, a licensed professional clinical counselor and primary therapist at NuView Treatment Center, spoke to Bored Panda and put the cultural assumption in its simplest form: "We're taught to perceive marriage as a symbol of success. Singlehood, on the other hand, is seen as something needing to be fixed. What people often understand too late is that being in a relationship doesn't ensure happiness, and being single is not equal to missing out on life's pleasures." DC Studio / Magnific (not the actual photo) The fact that only 14% of the middle-aged cohort remained single throughout the study period, compared to 67% of emerging adults, is the data point that looks most damning for singlehood on first read. In reality, the experts suggest it reflects something more complicated than a mass conversion to happiness through partnership. Wolf identifies social pressure as a central driver. "Even though people might be happy with their lives, the pressure from families and friends can often lead to confusion and a lack of trust in themselves. If someone sees everyone around them in relationships, they start to question what is wrong with them. When, in fact, nothing is wrong with them." The pressure is not evidence of a problem. It is the problem. There is also the structural reality that Goldman names directly. Aging involves navigating illness, loss, retirement, and financial complexity, and partnership provides practical support for all of these. "An individual may readily rely on a romantic partner to accompany them to medical appointments following age-related diagnosis." This is not a romantic argument for coupledom. It is a logistical one, and it is worth separating from the question of whether single people are happy, because practical convenience and emotional fulfillment are not the same currency. Brad Reedy, a PhD-level clinical officer at Finding You Therapy Programs, offered Bored Panda the most psychologically nuanced explanation for why the numbers shift with age. He frames it as a developmental sequence. The first stage of adult development, in his view, is establishing a clear sense of self, knowing what you feel, what happened to you, and what you need. Only when that stage is genuinely completed does the next stage, intimate partnership with another, become something that can be entered into in a healthy way rather than reactively. "In a lot of ways, I think it's developmentally appropriate for young adults to develop a sense of self first," he says. The emerging adults who remain single may simply be doing exactly what their developmental stage calls for. The middle-aged adults who partnered up may have been ready to move into the next stage. Neither group is getting it wrong. marymarkevich / Magnific (not the actual photo) The study found that singles with lower neuroticism and higher extraversion reported the highest satisfaction across life, sex, and singlehood. This is the finding that could most easily be read as discouraging, suggesting that thriving alone is a personality trait you either have or you do not. The experts push back on that reading. Goldman explains the mechanism through which these traits protect. High extraversion facilitates connection-seeking behavior, the ability to initiate and maintain social bonds across large groups and varied settings. Paired with low neuroticism, the result is someone who can find and create positive meaning in social interactions and in solitude, without being destabilized by either. She references the socioemotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as people age, they naturally prune their social networks to prioritize fewer, higher-quality relationships. Singles who are high in extraversion and low in neuroticism are essentially pre-adapted to this mode of living. "The quality of company one keeps, including one's self, is more important than the quantity of that company," Goldman says. But can neuroticism change? "Yes, they can learn to adapt for sure. This is part of the work we do in therapy," says Wolf. He points to cognitive behavioral therapy as the mechanism: reshaping the thought patterns and self-valuations that drive neurotic responses does not require a personality transplant. It requires sustained practice. "Personalities throughout your life change. Your personality in grade school is not the same one you had in high school or college. As an adult, your personality can be constantly changing." Goldman adds that while temperament remains relatively consistent, there is a natural maturation effect through which neuroticism tends to decrease, and agreeableness tends to increase as people age. For those who want to accelerate that process, distress tolerance skills, including breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, and intense exercise, can reduce both the frequency and intensity of neurotic distress responses. "The more an individual practices these skills, the more emotionally regulated they will become, and that emotion regulation will benefit the meaning-making they engage in regarding their singlehood." Reedy frames the neuroticism question through the lens of unprocessed trauma, which is one of the more uncomfortable truths people often shy away from. A committed relationship, he argues, requires giving up some of your own needs some of the time. For people carrying unhealed childhood wounds around not being seen or attended to, that experience of de-prioritizing their own needs will feel not like a reasonable compromise but like a replication of early trauma. "In some ways, it is less traumatic to be by yourself than to be in a partnership that is constantly triggering you with your undone work." He quotes Erich Fromm: "Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love." The single person who is thriving may not be avoiding intimacy. They may be doing the foundational work that makes genuine intimacy possible. lookstudio / Magnific (not the actual photo) The study found that sexual satisfaction varied considerably among subgroups, with highly educated singles reporting the lowest sexual satisfaction, a finding researchers tentatively attributed to study time crowding out social time. All work and no play apparently makes Jack a very sexually unsatisfied boy. But the broader question of how long-term singles navigate intimacy and sexual fulfillment across a decade or more is one the cultural narrative is very clumsy with. The default assumption is that sexual and emotional intimacy demand a committed partner. The experts are unanimous that this assumption is both limiting and wrong. "We need to drop the assumption that experiencing intimacy can only be found within committed relationships. You can build emotional connection and closeness with friends, family, and other meaningful relationships. Sexual fulfillment may look different depending on your needs, preferences, and values," says Whiteside. She adds the point that deserves more airtime than it gets: "It is perfectly okay to be happy while single, and still yearn for a partner to share your life with. Two things can be true at the same time." Wolf takes the sexual dimension head-on. "Sexual satisfaction and intimacy do not all have to come from the same person. Someone who is single does not need one partner to have their needs met." He also notes that communication, the same skill cited as essential in committed relationships, is equally critical for singles navigating casual or non-exclusive sexual connections. "Communicating what your needs and desires are with those individuals helps to avoid confusion and develop more secure connections." Goldman's framework is the broadest. Intimacy, she notes, encompasses emotional, spiritual, and intellectual connections, not only physical ones. "Intimacy can be found in sharing a new experience with a close friend, sharing vulnerable emotions, and even participating in a stimulating conversation." Furthermore, partnership does not automatically produce sexual satisfaction. Coupled people must also explore their own desires and preferences to achieve fulfillment. Singles are not excluded from that exploration simply because they are unpartnered. magnific / Magnific (not the actual photo) The study's most important finding is not that singles are happy. It is that they are happy despite operating in a social environment that consistently tells them they should not be, and that the happiness holds even as they continue to want a partner. These two things, desiring a relationship and reporting high life satisfaction, coexisted in the data for the majority of participants across the entire eleven-year period. This is the finding that the cultural narrative finds hardest to process, because it disrupts the story in both directions. It cannot be dismissed as the contentment of people who have given up on love, because most of the singles in the study had not given up on anything. They still wanted a partner. They were simply not miserable in the meantime, and the meantime, as it turned out, lasted a decade. Joseph Campbell hit the nail on the head when he said: "People don't realize what [marriage] is. They think it's a long love affair and it isn't. Marriage has nothing to do with being happy. It has to do with being transformed." The implication, which the study's data supports, is that the transformation required by genuine partnership is a specific kind of work, and it is not the only work worth doing. The single person building a full life on their own terms is also being transformed, just differently. The cultural machinery will take time to catch up with the data. The aunts at the family dinner, the rom-coms, the housing market designed for two incomes: none of these will update overnight because a study in Toronto tracked 3,000 Germans for eleven years. But the data is there. And for anyone who spent years wondering whether their contentment was real or just what resignation looks like after it has settled in, it turns out the contentment was real all along. So yes, she can live happily ever after. And so can he. And it doesn’t need to be with each other.
