Bella DePaulo (1953, Pennsylvania) is a social psychologist, PhD from Harvard and author of numerous books, such as Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After ignored, and yet they live happily ever after) or the latest, Single at heart, which this year will be translated into Spanish. She has been defined as “America's leading thinker and writer on the individual experience of being single.” Her TED talk What Nobody Told You About Single People has almost two million views.
DePaulo draws on social science data to challenge stereotypes about singleness. He has offered seminars and workshops, has received awards such as the James McKeen Cattell and the Scientific Research Development Award, has more than 150 academic publications, and is a member of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara. She attends to us by video call, with a lot of energy, despite it being, for her, almost one in the morning.
What do you mean by the expression "single at heart", which gives the title to your book?
I am 70 years old, I have always been single and always will be. I love being single, I am totally happy, I am single at heart. Those of us who are single at heart live better this way, it is how we have a more meaningful, full, joyful and authentic life. For us, risk is not what we lose if we don't put a romantic partner at the center of our lives, risk is what we would lose if we had a partner. In other words, we are happy and flourishing because we are single, not in spite of it.
In Spain, single people over 50 are 36% of the population, 14.4 million people, three million more than 20 years ago... Do you think that the majority of mature people, 55 or 60 or older, who are Single, are they so by choice, or because life has led them to it?
It's a combination of both things and I don't know the proportion. One of the reasons we don't know the ratios is that this idea of being single at heart is fairly new. I'm 70 years old and when I was growing up, I never knew this option existed, to love, be single and want to stay that way. Even today, for many people, this is a revelation.
What do you think are the common misconceptions about being single in later life?
One of them is that you will end up alone, and isolated, and in fact, for those who are single at heart, it is quite the opposite: they love having time for themselves, they don't worry about whether they will be alone, they survive in their loneliness. I think of it as a superpower, because if you're comfortable in your own skin, you're very unlikely to feel lonely, you're not going to become a caricature of an isolated older person. Even single people who are not single by choice are less lonely than stereotypes, which are exaggerated. Although some people live alone—that's important and needs to be taken seriously—by focusing so much on loneliness we caricature single people in old age.
Does growing old as a single man or woman have benefits?
Yes, growing old single has benefits. Many do not feel alone at all, they worry about their connections with other people and themselves, because they never put a romantic partner at the center of their lives. They have always been caring and paying attention to the people they care about. Studies in the United States show that when people and couples move in together or when they get married, they become more insular, so they mostly pay attention to each other, but they don't pay as much attention to their friends, no. They call their parents so much... So their social lives become smaller, while single people still pay attention to the people they care about and that means that later in life, they are more likely to have those people there for them. they.
A widowed person, for example, may be single at heart, depending on you...
Yes of course. Some widows, for example, got married because they thought they should and perhaps stayed married because they wanted to honor their commitment. But in reality, deep down, single people would have had a better life. Sometimes people don't consider themselves single at heart until a marriage or committed romantic relationship ends and then they have time for themselves. You get to discover who you really are, aside from the wants and pushes of a romantic partner, and it can be almost like coming home to yourself.
Is it the same for men as for women? It seems that often, when a woman ends a long-term relationship in middle age, she feels relief...
At least in the United States, when women divorce or become widowed later in life, they find that they like their freedom. They like not having to feel responsible for doing more than their share at work, especially at home and in care, they like having their own space and being in charge of their own life.
What do studies say about happiness levels being single or married at a mature age?
My favorite studies are those that follow single people throughout their lives. Every year they are asked: are you happy? How happy?... After the age of 40, single people become increasingly happier. On the other hand, if you ask people who are married in adulthood if they are happy with the relationship, this does not happen, their happiness does not improve. In adulthood you can increase your happiness more if you do not have a partner.
Being “single at heart” means that you don't put a romantic partner at the center of your life. But that doesn't mean you never have a partner...
That varies from person to person. Some of them like to have dates, relationships, sex... But they don't want this to become a committed romantic relationship in which their lives become totally interconnected. There are ways to talk about it, to deal with it. They don't want to get on the relationship escalator: dating, moving in together, getting married, and all the rest. They want to stay at the lower levels of the ladder.
Today there are hundreds of types of relationships, monogamous and non-monogamous. Is it easier to be single today than it was a few decades ago?
Yes of course! People who like to have non-monogamous relationships fit very well with being “single at heart.” This is a time when people are exploring more different types of living; living alone, with friends, with family... More and more people of all ages enjoy living with their friends.
How is the experience of being single in later life different from that of being single at a younger age?
It's getting better every time. When you are older you are more confident, you are more sure of yourself and it is easier in some ways. First of all, there are more single people around you, especially if you are a woman. It's not that unusual to not have a romantic partner if you're older and single. Secondly, all those pressures that you may feel when you are younger to form a couple disappear. Single people in general are less likely to be interested in dating as they age. When you're young you make friends with single people, you're all together, everything's great. Then they start mating and abandon you, you hardly see them. In old age, you have more friends when you are single, a lot more people are single!
It also says that singles experience greater personal growth and learning throughout their lives. This may be positive in maturity and old age: it is good for the brain, for health...
Absolutely. If you're single at heart, you've probably had that mentality of wanting to keep learning new things and having new experiences. And then it's something that you've already developed when you get to a more advanced stage in your life. Although people who are not single at heart or people who have been married and are now single again, might start to discover that. You know, maybe before they mostly did... They did what their partner wanted or what they and their partner agreed to. And now they can look inside themselves and think about what they are really interested in, what they want to learn, what they want to do. And it can be wonderful.
What advice would you give to single people at this stage of their life, who perhaps don't really want to be single or who aren't single at heart?
I would say embrace your single life, make the most of it. Think about all the things you might not do if you had a partner. Think about all the things, especially if you were in a relationship before, and the things that you liked but your partner didn't. You can make the most of your life by doing all the things that maybe you couldn't do before. Really embrace being single, don't try to run away from it!
