Single at Heart

Where to Find Me Going Forward

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 22:20:58 +0000

A few weeks ago, when I learned that Psych Central was sold to Healthline, I published my thank-you note to my readers and to all the people who made Psych Central such a great site. Now that it is clear that Healthline is putting an end to all of the blogs, I wanted to let you know where you can find me and my writings going forward.

Studying and writing about single people is my life’s work, so I do a lot of it. If you want to follow just one thing, it should probably be my Living Single blog at Psychology Today. I have been writing it since 2008, when Psych Today invited their first handful of bloggers.

At my “Single at Heart” blog here at Psych Central, I have been writing about 2 posts a week for more than 9 years. That’s about 1,000 posts. Sometime after October, Healthline will be taking them all offline. I’m going to try to move some of them to Medium and to my personal blog and maybe some other places, but it will be a massive undertaking and I don’t know how long it will take.

Where to Find My Writings

My Living Single blog at Psychology Today

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single

My writings at Medium

https://medium.com/@BellaDePaulo

My All Things Single (and More) blog at my personal website, BellaDePaulo.com

http://www.belladepaulo.com/blog/

My monthly column for Unmarried Equality

http://www.belladepaulo.com/2015/05/my-monthly-column-for-unmarried-equality/

Sometimes I write for other places such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, CNN, and MSNBC. You can find those writings on this page. Going forward, I will add new ones there, too.

http://www.belladepaulo.com/singles-research-writing/op-ed-essays-and-other-articles/

I also organize my writings into collections of articles, by topic. You can find those collections here.

http://www.belladepaulo.com/2015/03/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-benefits-of-marrying-is-wrong-the-evidence/

The project I am most excited about is the new book I am working on now, about people who are Single at Heart. It will be a while until I have finished the writing and get it published, but I will share updates when something noteworthy happens.

http://www.belladepaulo.com/2013/03/single-at-heart-what-do-we-know-about-it/

My Books

Links to all my books are here.

http://www.belladepaulo.com/books/

MY TEDx talk

“What no one ever told you about people who are single”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyZysfafOAs

Where to Find Me on Social Media

Twitter: @belladepaulo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bella.depaulo

LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bella-depaulo/5/540/286

Thank you again, “Single at Heart” readers! It has been a wonderful 9 years.

The Single at Heart Blog Is So Grateful for Its First 9 Years Here

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 23:23:52 +0000

Maybe you heard the news today that Psych Central, brainchild of Dr. John Grohol, will now be in the hands of Healthline. Dr. Grohol has been devoted to this site for the past quarter century and has built it into something wonderful.

In October of 2011, Dr. Grohol invited me to write this Single at Heart blog for Psych Central. It was such a thrill and an honor to be asked. I’ve written two blog posts a week, occasionally more than that, ever since. That’s close to 2,000 blog posts.

As is true of all of my writings about single life, I talk about every aspect of single life except dating or other attempts to escape being single. I like to celebrate single people who live their single lives fully, joyfully, and unapologetically. I’m a social scientist, so I also like to back my claims with evidence.

A great perk of writing the Single at Heart blog is that I have had the opportunity to publish guest posts from a wide variety of other people. We single people are quite diverse, and my own experience is limited. I’ve loved amplifying other voices.

I don’t know for sure what the future of this Single at Heart blog will be with Healthline. I sure hope it continues, and in much the same way as it always has! You may have seen a lot of posts from me today. I had them saved up for the rest of the month, but I just published them all now in case things are in flux for the next few weeks.

I also don’t know when the transition will take place or what Psych Central will look like in the interim. But you can still find lots to read about single life, from an affirming and often research-based perspective. I have been organizing my writings from this blog and elsewhere into a collection of topics about single life. The link to the entire collection is here. Below are all the different topics you will find at that page.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading the Single at Heart blog for the past nine years. I have greatly appreciated your interest and your thoughtful and gracious comments. I hope this is the start of the next chapter of this blog and not the end of anything.

Myth-Busting about Single Life

HAPPINESS On getting married and (not) getting happier: What we know

PHYSICAL HEALTH and MENTAL HEALTH Getting married and (not) getting healthy

LONGEVITY Debunking the myth that married people live longer

RELATIONSHIPS, ATTACHMENT, CAREGIVING, VOLUNTEERING Single people are caring, connected, attached, and unselfish

SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES Single parents and their children: Don’t believe the prophesies of doom

NO CHILDREN Adults with no kids: Naming, shaming, and talking back to the shaming

SEX Getting married and (not) getting sex (and other sex-relevant topics)

MONEY Getting married and getting more money (and other articles about the economics of single life)

COLLECTION OF CRITIQUES What’s wrong with studies and claims about the supposed benefits of marriage?

Totally off-topic

Here’s what I know about lying and detecting lies

What Is the Best Living Arrangement for You?

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 23:13:31 +0000

As the pandemic drags on, especially in places like the U.S. where there is no end in sight, lots of people are thinking about their living arrangements. Some are so very grateful to be living just as they are, whether that is alone (in my case) or in one of the many different ways of living with other people.

Others, though, are not so happy. It was like they were playing musical chairs, the music stopped, and they ended up in a place they never intended to be, at least not for the long haul, and not during a pandemic.

How should they think about this? How can they figure out the best way to live, for them?

A few years ago, I wrote a book relevant to that topic, How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21^st Century. Here’s what I had to say about finding the lifespace that is right for you.

So how do you know what’s right for you? Think about each of the different ways you’ve lived, and how you might answer some of my favorite questions that I put to the people I interviewed:

Did you get the amount of privacy and alone time that you wanted?

What about time with other people: Was it about what you wanted, or were you wishing for more or less of it?

What was the best experience you had while living that way? Any experiences that made you wish you were living some other way?

When you had been away for a while, how did it feel to come back?

Now consider all of your lifespaces at once and answer these questions:

Of all the different ways you have lived, what felt like the best fit for you?

What was the happiest time in your life?

How would you live if you could magically live any way at all? Pretend money is no object, and neither is anything else.

I hope that the many different stories you have encountered in this book have suggested that the universe of potential lifespaces is bigger than you realized and that even if money is an obstacle in your life and not the only one, there are still opportunities to find the place, the space, and the people that make your life the best it can be. Maybe you’ll even become one of the next lifespace pioneers, coming up with something so creative that even today’s dreamy innovators could never have imagined it.

Who Is the Romantic Partner of Your Dreams? My Favorite Real-Life Answer

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 22:51:16 +0000

If you are single, you have probably been asked all sorts of questions that are not always welcome or appropriate. Questions like, “Why are you single?”, or even worse, “Why are you still single?”

I’ve explained what’s wrong with those kinds of questions, in case it is not already obvious, and offered some of my favorite answers before. You can find them here.

Another question just assumes that if you are single, of course you fantasize about potential romantic partners. It is not just ordinary unmarried men and women who are subject to that childish, matrimaniacal way of thinking. Fully grown, tremendously accomplished adults get treated that way, too

And sometimes they come up with excellent answers! My favorite is from nearly a decade ago. It was February of 2011, when protests on the streets of Egypt were riveting the nation and the world. Piers Morgan was interviewing Barbara Walters, and somehow he found time to ask her about the men in her life. (He meant the conjugal kind, of course.)

PIERS MORGAN: Come on, which man, if you had five minutes to live, you would take —

BARBARA WALTERS: if I had five minutes to live, I wouldn’t want to be with any man.

PIERS MORGAN: Really?

BARBARA WALTERS: If I had five minutes to live, I would be with my daughter and closest friends. At this point in my life, I would not want to [be] with any one man.

Next, Morgan wanted to get the dirt on Walters’ dating life. She responded by describing what Henry Ford had said to her years ago when she asked him the same question:

BARBARA WALTERS: …he said that’s none of your business. I thought, why don’t more people say that to me? Fortunately, they don’t.

But I’m going to say it to you. I think you’re adorable. I’m so happy you’re here. I think you’re the most charming man. I wish you every success. It’s none of your business.

Meet the Man Who Wrote the Book on Happy Bachelors

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 20:28:16 +0000

I am happy to share the good news that Craig Wynne, friend of “Single at Heart” who has contributed previously as a guest blogger, has just published a wonderful new book, How to Be a Happy Bachelor. I asked him if he would answer some questions about his book, and I am delighted that he agreed.

Bella: Please give us a brief overview of your book.

Craig Wynne: How to be a Happy Bachelor is essentially a book on “how to be single” that is geared toward men. It combines a number of different genres. There’s a bit of memoir: I share some of my own experiences with singlehood, singlism, and matrimania; some self-help, in which I provide practical suggestions on how to overcome society’s stigma against singlehood and on how to live your best single life. I also provide critiques to the matrimaniacal messages our society promotes.

Bella: Your book is full of good suggestions at all levels, from very specific tips about getting practical things accomplished to more big-picture advice. I think the big-picture advice is about mindsets, or how you think about your single life. What is one important kind of mindset for men who want to be happy bachelors?

Craig Wynne: The big thing is to be comfortable in your own skin. Whether you’re single by choice or single by circumstance, it’s important to be the best YOU that you can be, without feeling the need for a partner. And be fully present for life.

Bella: One of the reasons I was so happy you wrote your book is that writings about single life are overwhelmingly dominated by women. They are typically written by women and for women. Why do you think that men are so underrepresented in books about being single?

Craig Wynne: I’m definitely generalizing, but on the whole, I think women are a lot more comfortable reading and writing about emotionally charged topics, particularly self-help. The machismo with which a lot of men have been raised prevents us from really embracing our emotions, including loneliness. Such loneliness is a result of singlism and matrimania, which affects men as well as women. Women are more apt to confront it; I’m hoping How to be a Happy Bachelor represents a step in helping men catch up.

Bella: You had an advantage in writing your book that very few people in the whole world have had: You have taught composition courses that included single life as a theme, and you really got your students involved in thinking about key issues. Can you give us an example of something one of your students said or wrote that you found especially enlightening – either because it was so on target or because it illuminated an important misunderstanding?

Craig Wynne: A lot of my students were happy to be opened up to the possibility that they don’t need to be coupled in order to live a good life. The thing that stood out to me most was the stigma my students feel. In an essay entitled “Would You Rather Be Single or Married at Age 30?” one student wrote, “I don’t want to be the old Dad at baseball games.” At the tender age of eighteen, this student’s already feeling the pressure to marry. In his end-of-semester reflection paper, he was open to the idea that one does not have to marry in order to be happy.

Bella: Some people will read about your book, but maybe they won’t ever actually read the book, or at least not right away. (Their loss!) What is the one thing you would most like those people to know?

Craig Wynne: It’s okay to be single. Don’t look at it as something to be fixed. Of course, my book does go more into depth about how to cultivate that mindset J

Bella: You give a lot of credit to the people the online Facebook group, the Community of Single People, for inspiring some of the ideas in your book. I told the group that we were doing this Q and A, and invited them to submit any questions they had for you.

Sushma Saroj had a question. I think it may refer to research showing that on the average, when people get married, they enjoy just a brief period of slightly increased happiness, then they go back to feeling as happy or as unhappy as they were when they were single. (And that’s only for the people who stay married! The ones who get divorced are already becoming less happy as the day of their wedding approaches.) The question is: How do you deal with married people who tell you that they are happily married and that they are still enjoying their lives even after the wedding?

Craig Wynne: I have to remember that everybody has their own reality. Some married people may really feel that way, and marriage may be a very good thing for some people. Others may not want to admit their unhappiness. I also have to remember that the way I live could be a threat to some people, and their need to defend their lifestyle could be a defense mechanism. A lot of people are afraid of what they don’t understand, so their first instinct is to criticize it. If I feel someone is “coming at me,” I’ll educate them on what singlism and matrimania are. But if they claim to be happy, I just let it be. I’ll advocate for my lifestyle, but I don’t criticize others. Come at me, though, and it’s on!

Bella: Thanks again, Craig, and good luck with the book!

To “Single at Heart” readers: I have now added Craig Wynne’s book to my collection of books, and discussions of books, for single people who are not about to apologize for being single. Enjoy!

About Craig Wynne

Craig Wynne is an Associate Professor of English at the University of the District of Columbia and the author of How to be a Happy Bachelor. He has a fervent interest in singlehood and has written several articles and presented at a variety of conferences on the subject. You can read more at his blog, The Happy Bachelor.

Solo Diners: The Place Where JFK Honeymooned Wants You

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 09:30:04 +0000

When it comes to dining out on your own, we are at an uncertain place. Some people have been doing it for ages and think nothing of it. Others think it sounds awful and can’t imagine ever trying it. (They should try it anyway. Research suggests they may be pleasantly surprised.)

For most people, regardless of where they fall on the openness to solo dining spectrum, the most comfortable places to dine on your own are the most casual and inexpensive ones. Fast food? Not even an issue. A sort of nice place? That’s harder. Upscale, expensive, fine-dining restaurants? That’s the most daunting option.

One of the challenges of going out on your own to a really nice restaurant is that those kinds of places do not advertise in ways that make you feel welcome. They often brag about what a great place they are for romantic dinners. I have never seen a solo diner featured in an ad for a restaurant like that.

Until now.

Look at the picture at the top of this post. It is an ad that appeared in a recent issue of a local newspaper. The sketch of “Mr. Whistle,” smiling, with cool-guy sunglasses and drink in hand, sits next to the caption, “Mr. Whistle enjoying lunch on a sunny day outside on the patio at Stonehouse” at the San Ysidro Ranch.

The Stonehouse restaurant is in Montecito, California, one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. It is home to celebrities, millionaires, and billionaires. Oprah may be the best-known of them. (I live in the modest adjacent town of Summerland.)

The San Ysidro Ranch, where the Stonehouse is located, is where John and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned. Other famous guests have included Winston Churchill, Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Bing Crosby and Groucho Marx, Somerset Maugham, Sinclair Lewis, Vivien Leigh, and Laurence Olivier.

And now, the Stonehouse wants you, solo diner.

Was the ad a deliberate attempt to woo solo diners? Was it inspired in some way by the pandemic? I don’t know the answers, but I am going to declare the ad a big step forward. It normalizes and even celebrates dining alone. Not at McDonald’s but at a “hospitality haven for celebrities.” Now if only I could afford it.

Why Are People Mad at You If You Say You Are Happily Single?

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:30:57 +0000

[Bella’s intro: When I first started studying single people, there was something I found perplexing. It seemed to me that single people who were happily single and said so were viewed more harshly than those who were miserably single and looking to become unsingle. I only had anecdotes at first, but now there are several studies showing just that. In fact, that research shows that people are sometimes actually angry at single people who say that they want to be single.

Recently, Daz Pearce told me about his experiences along these lines and some of his thoughts about the psychological dynamics. He offered to share his thoughts with my “Single at Heart” readers. You may remember Daz from a previous guest post in which he introduced the charming term “solo birds” for those of us who love our single lives.]

So Solo Birds – Why Are They Mad at Us?

By Daz Pearce

Hello again – lovely to be back.

Something that struck me immediately when considering the issue of singlism was the massive (and therefore impossible not tot talk about) way in which two different types of people are treated. If you look at those who are single but express a clear wish to ‘meet someone’ and ultimately ‘couple up,’ you’ll see an unfortunate cocktail of conceited condescension, smug sympathy and patronising pity. Of course, I wish that would stop – they just told you that they are single, not that they’re about to die of some vaguely exotic tropical disease.

But this is nothing compared to what’s lined up for you when you insist, politely but firmly, that your single status is either a choice or a reflection of your ‘feeling like a Solo Bird’ on an emotional level, in much the same way as some, for example, have a deep desire to be a parent. I should stress that this isn’t all or even most people, but a significant minority will feel the need to aggressively challenge you on the matter. I wonder how they would feel were I haranguing them to ‘get a divorce’ as soon as possible.

There’s a really nice way to do this, but it never actually seems to happen with the people who are actually doing it. Let me explain. You could tell me that all you want is for me to have my very own personal ‘happily ever after,’ to which I would say thank you and reassure you that I’m already on my way towards mine, so don’t worry. Alternatively, you could suggest that it’s ‘a waste’ that I’m single and that ‘somebody out there needs you’ or something like that. Well that’s awfully sweet of you, but going out with somebody because ‘they need you’ sounds like a terrible move.

What do we get instead? Anger, rage, and passive aggressive behaviour. When I was in romantic relationships, I kept going after the wrong people and sabotaging myself; everything seemed to end up as some sort of disaster. When those relationships were over, I felt relief rather than pain. People like me are told things like, “you’re not the first person this stuff has ever happened to” and that you should get back in the “real world” which, coincidentally, only they live in.

So I wondered…why the anger? Well part of it surely comes from the removal of ‘superior status’ from those who are married or in ‘a relationship’ by those who are happily single or single of their own volition. Those who are happy and thriving tend to just want others to thrive as much as they are, whereas when you’re struggling, the concept of ‘someone to feel better than’ can motivate some rather toxic and hateful behaviour. Isn’t this the very concept on which racism, homophobia, and other prejudices are based? Hey, my own life may not be going too well but at least I’m superior to someone else.

‘Single but looking’ people facilitate this toxicity, sadly (although I hope every last one of you finds that right person soon enough; be assured the sympathy will stop immediately).

Happily single people turn the applecart upside down, change the rules of the game completely.

It’s worth asking…do they really want you to ‘meet someone’ or just wish that you would? Is it your refusal to consider yourself a loser in the game (in which they apparently won) that they have such a problem with?

The second part of the answer is this: What someone says they are isn’t necessarily what they are.

So…is it just possible that some of the singlists amongst us are actually ‘repressed Solo Birds’ themselves? Could their anger be based on a mix of their own misery and a curious form of jealousy, perhaps a wish that they’d had the ability and/or courage to go down the solo-bird route but couldn’t? Perhaps parents, nosy neighbours, someone in church, the knowledge that being married is good for your career or just all the relentless matrimania got in the way? I’ll say it again – happy, thriving people just want you to thrive too – and don’t care how you got there.

I won’t lie – I ask all this at least in part because I have sound reason to believe that in the case of one of my antagonists this is EXACTLY what was (and still is) going on. It makes me wonder how many repressed Solo Birds there are out there, soldiering through soulless and miserable marriages (I very much doubt a natural Solo Bird could EVER be truly happily married). They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into the ‘real world’ and can’t quite fathom how you managed to escape from it. Jealousy, anger, bitterness and rage kick in accordingly.

The thing that always struck me about the ‘real world’ was how fake it was.

I’m not sure what the answer to this conundrum might be, but understanding, empathy and compassion rather than ‘meeting anger with anger’ probably has to be part of it.

Thanks for reading and much love. Do your thing and be yourself.

About Daz Pearce

Dazza is a musician, poet and writer from Preston, UK. After several (by his own admission) disastrous attempts to start relationships with ‘the wrong people’ he finally began to ask himself if this was all ‘subconscious but deliberate’ and he was actually a solo bird at heart. His other interests include sports, psychology, and philosophy.

Single People, Beware of Grudging Praise

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 08:30:48 +0000

“Well, at least it is better than being in a bad relationship.” If you are single, maybe you’ve heard that one from friends or family members who are coupled. Sometimes that offering is well-intended, but it is also grudging. People who say things like that make single life seem like the sad, pitiful choice you would make only if your only alternative was a lousy romantic relationship or marriage.

For plenty of single people, such as those of us who are single at heart, that’s not at all how we feel. Single life is our first choice. Committing to a conventional marriage or romantic relationship would be our idea of settling.

For single people more generally (not just the single at heart), being single isn’t just better than being in a bad romantic relationship. Research shows it is also better than being in an ordinary relationship – one that is not bad at all.

It is not just the people in your everyday life who offer reassurances about single life that sometimes ring hollow. So do credentialed people with platforms, people who should know better.

Consider, for example, a blogger who wanted to reassure single people that they should not feel shame about their single status. He made some arguments that could have been reasonable – for example, pointing to the value of friends. But I cringed at the way he did it. Here’s an example of something he said:

“The learning, growth, and joy of a marriage or partnerships can offer extraordinary blessings. But whether or not we’re in a partnership, friendships can add an important dimension of satisfaction to our life.”

Reading that did not assure me that he truly values single life. If it is not clear why, try one of my favorite ways of revealing the assumptions behind a claim – reverse it. In this case, switch “marriage or partnerships” with “friendships”:

“The learning, growth, and joy of a friendship can offer extraordinary blessings. But whether or not we’re in a friendship, marriage can add an important dimension of satisfaction to our life.”

Do you think a happily married person would feel flattered by that sentiment?

I have spent the last several decades of my life standing up for single people. I don’t think our lives are second best and we should not accept those kinds of depictions. I’m a social scientist, so it is important that my position is not just my personal opinion but is based on scientific research. (Even if research did not affirm the strengths of single people, though, I would still want single people to be treated fairly and respectfully.)

Reading that blog post about the “extraordinary blessings” of marriage, compared to the “important dimension of satisfaction” added by friendship, inspired me to put together a collection of my favorite research-based arguments for single people and single life. If you click “The benefits of being single – for single people and for society,” you will find articles, blog posts, books, podcasts, talks, and other resources that offer affirming, empirically-grounded, perspectives on single life. Take a look and maybe bookmark it for the next time someone says something condescending about single people.

That collection is on the same page as dozens of other collections on various aspects of single life. The most recent ones in addition to that one include “Gender differences in living single, marrying, divorcing, remarrying, bereavement, and living arrangements” and “Personalities and types of single people.”

The Upside of Being Old During a Pandemic

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 09:30:51 +0000

Because Psych Central blogs will be discontinued once Healthline takes over, I have updated this post and published it here.

...

Should You Be Able to Opt Out Even if You Are Not in a Risk Category?

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 20:09:10 +0000

Some kinds of jobs, such as teaching, can potentially be performed either in person or online. But if schools don’t offer all teachers the option of working from home, then who will be granted that privilege and how will that be decided?

The issue has gotten a fair amount of attention lately as it pertains to higher education. Colleges and universities are on the cusp of reopening for the fall term. According to data published in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few days ago (July 29, 2020), nearly a quarter of the colleges and universities in the U.S. (23.5%) are planning to have courses that convene primarily or fully in person. Another 16% will use a hybrid model, with some in-person teaching and some online teaching.

Plenty of faculty members are scared. They don’t want to take the risk of getting infected by the students in their classrooms. A spate of articles has appeared, expressing their concerns. Some professors have a spouse whose health, disability, or age puts them at special risk for contracting the virus; they don’t want to bring COVID home to them. Others have sick children and worry about them. Still others are caregivers for vulnerable relatives.

The faculty members worry about themselves, too. If they have conditions that render them particularly susceptible to the coronavirus, they have made that known in their writings or social media posts, or in conversations with reporters.

They are scrambling to find ways to justify staying home and teaching remotely, and still get paid. Sometimes their issues are covered by existing laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Most often, though, they are not. In those cases, it is up to college and university officials to decide who will be allowed to teach remotely.

Single People Often Care for Others, but Those People Aren’t Valued as Much as Spouses

My concern is for professors who are not married, especially if they also do not have kids. Research shows that unmarried adults do a disproportionate amount of the work of caring for aging parents and other people who need help over an extended period of time. But if they are caring for a cousin or sibling or friend, will they be taken as seriously as someone who is caring for a spouse? In laws such as FMLA, those categories aren’t covered at all.

Some professors may be scared enough to consider not showing up, even if that puts their pay or even their job at risk. That’s a more daunting option if you are unmarried, though – you don’t have the possibility of back-up income from a spouse.

Why Should You Have to Disclose Personal Medical Information?

Another issue that is not specific to single people is privacy. Why should anyone have to disclose personal medical information about the people in their lives, or about themselves, in order to be allowed to teach online? It is an argument that is gaining traction, as the New York Times pointed out:

“Many professors are calling for a sweeping no-questions-asked policy for those who want to teach remotely, saying that anything less is a violation of their privacy and their family’s privacy.”

However, those demands do not always result in the desired action. As the Times added:

“But many universities are turning to their human resources departments to make decisions case by case.”

If Decisions Are a Matter of Personal Judgment, Single People Are in Trouble

For single people, case by case decision-making is disturbing. We already know that the stereotype that single people “don’t have anyone” is pervasive, and that it is internalized even by some people in the helping and medical professions. We also know that single people are considered less worthy of life-saving transplants. Are they really going to get fair consideration from the personnel in human resources?

Suppose you are a single person who is not caring for another vulnerable person. Suppose, too, that you are not in any of the categories recognized as putting you at special risk for contracting COVID-19. Does that mean that your concerns about your health should not matter? I’m at risk because of my age, but even if I were younger, I don’t think I would want to take the chance of being exposed. No one is totally immune.

I agree with the professors who want a no-questions-asked policy. No one should have to justify wanting to be cautious when the risks include disease and even death.

Other Workers Are in Much More Difficult Positions

College professors are privileged. They are paid well, and they have some bargaining power – especially if they are tenured. Many other people on college campuses, such as staff, custodians, and food service workers, have little choice about showing up if they want to get paid. Beyond college campuses are millions of other workers who have minimal say in the conditions of their employment even if they are described as “essential.”

Are the unmarried workers in all those jobs treated less fairly than the married ones? My guess is yes – they, too, are subject to singlism. But it is the elite workers, such as the university professors and the professional athletes, whose opt-out dilemmas are getting spotlighted. They are the ones who have dilemmas. Too often, the other workers only have mandates.

[This post was adapted from a column originally published at Unmarried Equality (UE), with the organization’s permission. The opinions expressed are my own. For links to previous UE columns, click here.]

Single at Heart

Where to Find Me Going Forward

The Single at Heart Blog Is So Grateful for Its First 9 Years Here

Myth-Busting about Single Life

Other Topics

How we live now

The best of single life

Some basics about single life

Singlism and matrimania, and why we need advocacy for single people

Singles in different domains and different places

We need to rethink these matters

Resources: Books, talks, discussion groups, advocacy groups and more