研究:單身沒什麼不好

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"You're so great -- why don't you have a boyfriend?"

This misguided compliment, often doled out to young successful women, has given birth to a new thought experiment: If a woman is great and no romantic partner is there to appreciate her, can she still lead a happy and fulfilling life?

Since 2000, the most common American household has been a person living alone. According to the 2012 census, 53.6 percent of American women over the age of 18 were unmarried. So why do singles often feel like the odd woman out?

We may be living in a post-"Sex And The City" era, but we're not as far from the conventions of "The Partridge Family" as we'd like to think (and it's worth noting that even SATC's cynical Miranda had her fairytale romantic ending when all was said and done). Over the last 15 years, we've watched pop culture heroines like Mindy Lahiri, Meredith Grey and Ally McBeal put their professional accomplishments on the back burner when things go south in the romance department. It's not hard to see where these television writers are getting their material: Women often feel bad about being single, despite how satisfying their lives are otherwise.

Turns out, there are a few reasons you might feel that romantic ennui:

You might be putting too much stock in one type of relationship...

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to devalue our platonic relationships when we don't have a romantic one (if we want one, that is), but that doesn't mean we're not reaping the psychological benefits of all of the platonic love in our lives. In fact, when it comes to happiness, it seems that love is blind.

The Harvard Grant Study, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies on happiness, followed 268 male Harvard undergraduates for 75 years to see just what brought them joy. After nearly a lifetime of tracking, researchers discovered that fulfillment was overwhelmingly found in one thing: relationships -- but not necessarily romantic relationships.

"Joy is connection," George Vaillant, the Harvard psychiatrist who directed the study from 1972 to 2004, told The Huffington Post last year. "The more areas in your life you can make connection, the better."

Great news, right? Unfortunately, this concept isn't exactly common knowledge, and single women often feel that their many loving, albeit platonic, relationships are discounted. Ann Friedman, a freelance journalist who pens a column for NYMag.comabout gender and has shared her adventures in being "deep single" in Marie Claire, told HuffPost Women that her attitude about partnerships -- one that eschews the "marriage o'clock" concept in lieu of a more laissez-faire approach to life and relationships -- has garnered such responses as: "You've given up on the idea of love"; "Wow, you seem so well-adjusted in other ways"; or even worse, "You've grown so depressed with the state of the American male that you've opted out completely."

"I was like, 'Honestly, I'm really, really cool with what I have going on right now,'" Friedman said. Her outlook is obviously not one-size-fits-all, but it's never a bad idea to stop and appreciate the wonderful relationships we do have in our lives, whether or not they fit neatly into a romantic box. Just ask Dr. Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out and a permanent Visiting Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"What people sometimes overlook when they say 'If you're single, you're alone' is the possibility that if you're single, you may have friendships that you pay a lot of attention to," DePaulo told HuffPost Women. "In fact, you might have more support than someone who gets married and only pays attention to their spouse and puts all of their friends on the back burner."

...or you may not be prioritizing what you really want.

Allowing what other people want for you to cloud your judgement can also send you down that dark, "I'm dying alone" spiral. Global surveys have found that cultural norms and expectations are what determine our self-esteem, even if we claim we're above the pressure. When it comes to single women, this dual mentality can get tricky. The (obvious) truth is that marriage -- or even long-term couplehood -- won't make everyone happier.

"I think that we are in a society that just so celebrates marriage," DePaulo said. "There's almost no voice for people who want to stay single and are doing just fine."

This "matrimania," DePaulo's term for the over-the-top hyping of marriage and weddings, can be especially problematic when you factor in all of the complexities of romantic relationships that can come before marriage. "The cohabitation gap," a term coined by researchers in 2011, describes the phenomenon of married couples being happier than non-married couples who live together. Why? Here's how the researchers put it:

"We can speculate that in such societies, people tend to believe that a woman lives together with her partner out of wedlock not because she doesn't want to marry him but because he doesn't want to marry her. The society's doubts in the commitment of her partner makes a cohabiting woman pitied and looked down upon, which could be detrimental for her self-esteem and psychological well-being regardless of her own perception of her partner's commitment."

Oy vey. Anecdotally, Friedman has experienced this condescending attitude towards single or unmarried women.

"Really great things happened to me in my life during this period when most people were kind of pitying me," she said of a being single -- a period during which her career took off, she took her dream vacation and her social life became more dynamic than ever. "But there was always this undercurrent of, 'Don't you want to meet someone?'"

This specific breed of patronizing led freelance writer Sara Eckel to pen a Modern Love column for the New York Times in 2011 (and eventually a fantastic book) on the topic, to explain to women what she says we essentially already know: that there's nothing to "fix" -- single women are fine as they are.

"I realized I was building up this resentment towards this condescension," she told HuffPost Women. "Because there was this very strong part of me that knew I'm just as good as married people."

And those fear-inducing headlines aren't helping.

"It's amazing how year after year after year, people are making this claim that if you get married, you'll get happier," DePaulo said.

She explained that many of those academic studies that make for splashy, fear-inducing headlines aren't procedurally sound (see: her review of 18 long-term studies on the topic). The main problem is that conditions in clinical studies have to be randomly assigned -- which isn't possible when you're researching single vs. married people. Another "methodologically shameful" tactic in these studies, she explained, is that many only compare those who are currently married to single people and completely ignore those who got married, hated it and got divorced.

Then, of course, there are media figures like "Princeton Mom," who shame single women for not prioritizing dating, husband-finding and the like.

"I find it so confusing that whenever someone has a message that makes women feel bad, they're immediately on 'The Today Show'; they immediately have a platform," Eckel said. "You don't see the narrative of, 'Yah, I had a wild time in my 20s and now I'm 35, married with two kids and really happy.' It's always the cautionary tale."

As a result, many women are put off by the public discourse on singledom and marriage -- and the Noah's Ark-like frenzy it's intended to spark.

"People would be like, 'Are you dating?' To me, that was like, 'Do I hike? Am I writing?' Is dating an activity?" Friedman said. "Going on a bunch of dates with random people doesn't seem like a smart use of my time. That made a ton of sense to me -- I realize that it doesn't make a ton of sense to everyone."

Moral of the story?

Yes, you're still "great" and more than capable of living a happy, fulfilling life, whether or not you're involved with someone romantically. But also know that feeling waves of self-doubt and insecurity are totally normal. You may never want to get married or even be monogamous -- or you may be open to the possibility of meeting someone without actively looking for a relationship.

With barely half of US adults married as of 2011 (a record low, according to the Pew Research Center) and delayed marriage on the rise (the median age for women at first marriage in 2011 reached 27, a record high), the conversation about singles is shifting. Considering the ever-growing population of women living abundantly happy lives without a partner, how could it not?

"All of this 'matrimania' isn't happening because we're so secure about the place of marriage in our lives," said DePaulo. "It's happening because we're so insecure."

Of course, downplaying the special role that marriage plays in many people's lives isn't the answer, either. Rather, it's important to recognize that some people find happiness with a partner later in life or in a more unconventional form of coupledom.

According to Pew's 2010 stats, 84 percent of unmarried people cite "love" -- rather than "making a lifelong commitment," "companionship," "having children" or "financial stability" -- as the reason to get married. Perhaps women are starting to feel empowered to only jump into matrimony on their terms, rather than relying on perceived cultural norms. Take a look at Hannah Horvath on "Girls" or Liz Lemon on "30 Rock," and you'll see that pop culture is already helping to redefine what it means to be single in contemporary society.

All of this awareness, however, won't always assuage all of your fears and insecurities, and that's OK. As Eckel points out in her book, "If you feel sad sometimes, it's not because you're single -- it's because you're alive."

Obviously, not every single woman feels bad about her relationship status, so this statement merely applies to those who do.

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「你這麼好，為什麼沒有男朋友？」

年輕的成功女性常常聽到這類虛假的恭維。但這恭維卻催生了實驗的新思路：如果一個完美女性沒有浪漫的伴侶欣賞她，她還能否擁有一個快樂完整的人生呢？

從2000年起，美國最常見的家庭就是一個人獨居。2012年的人口普查顯示，53.6%的美國成年女性未婚。那麼為什么女性單身卻總會被視作被「剩下」呢？

也許我們現在正處在「後《欲望都市》時代」，但我們並不像我們所想的那樣，離《鷓鴣家族》中的生活那麼遙遠。(值得注意的是，即便是《欲望都市》憤世嫉俗的米蘭達在一切塵埃落定後，也有童話般浪漫的結局。)在過去的15年裡，我們目睹了流行文化中的女主角，像《剩女的浪漫生活》，《實習醫生格蕾》,《甜心俏佳人》中的女主人公那樣，當她們情感受挫，就會將自己的事業成就擱置。不難看出，編劇們想表達這樣一個觀念：女性總覺得單身很糟糕，儘管從別的方面看，她們的生活其實一帆風順。

實際上，你可能因為很多原因厭倦戀人：

你可能會在一段關係上下太多賭注

不幸的是，當我們沒有對象時，我們總是太容易貶低愛情（如果我們想戀愛的話，就不是這個情況了），但那不意味著我們在戀愛中得不到好處。事實上，愛情總是盲目而快樂的。

關於快樂最全面的縱向研究之一是哈佛大學授予的一項研究。這項研究跟蹤了268名哈佛本科畢業生75年之久，旨在調查他們快樂的源頭。研究發現快樂的人生很大程度上取決於一件事：那就是人際關係——但這不僅僅指戀愛關係。

哈佛大學精神病學家喬治·瓦力恩特在1972至2004年期間指導了這項調查研究，他去年告訴郝芬頓郵報：「快樂是在與人交往的過程中產生的，人際關係越全面越好。」

好消息，不是嗎？不幸的是，這並不受大家的認同。很多單身女性認為她們的許多段感情，儘管是柏拉圖精神戀愛，都是打折扣的。安·弗裡德曼是紐約雜誌網站性別專欄的自由撰稿人，她分享了自己在《美麗佳人》雜誌社的單身經歷。她告訴赫芬頓郵報女性專欄關於她自己對伴侶的態度——伴侶是避開婚姻臨界點，從而可以使自己有放任自由的生活方式的人。但對這個態度，周圍的人卻這樣回答——「你已經放棄了愛情」；「哇，你真特別」；或者更糟糕的是，「你對美國男人都絕望了嗎，所以不想選擇和他們在一起嗎？」

弗裡德曼表示：「坦白說，我覺得自己這樣很酷。」她的觀念顯然不能被所有人接受，但這不失為一個好想法，那就是我們應該停下來欣賞我們在生命裡所擁有的美好人際關係，不管它們是不是戀愛關係。不妨看看蓓拉·迪波洛博士的說法。蓓拉·迪波洛博士是《單身，不是你想的那樣》一書的作者，同時也是加利福尼亞大學聖巴巴拉分校永久客座心理學教授。

「當人們說：『如果你單身，你一定很孤獨』時，他們忽視了單身人士可能將更多精力放在經營友誼從而獲得更多友情的可能性，」迪波洛告訴赫芬頓郵報女性專欄：「事實上，單身人士比起那些只關注結婚伴侶而忽視所有朋友的人，可能會擁有更多的依靠。」

或者，你可能不會優先考慮你真正想要什麼

成為一個別人希望你成為的人可能會掩蓋你自己的真實願望，也可能將你送入「我將孤獨終老」的黑暗漩渦。全球調查發現，即使我們聲稱自己並沒有受到來自傳統觀念的壓力，傳統文化規約與期望仍然是決定我們自我尊重的重要因素。對於單身女性來說，自尊與遵循傳統是兩難的。事實是，婚姻（抑或是長期的同居關係）並不會讓每個人更快樂。

「我覺得我們的社會還是崇尚婚姻的，」迪波洛說道：「沒有人是不想結婚並能過得很好的。」

「婚姻熱」是迪波洛對人們過度強調婚姻與婚禮的情況做出的定義，然而，當你婚前經營戀愛關係，應對各種複雜的問題時，這個定義就不太適用了。「同居缺口」是研究人員在2011年提出的概念，它描述了結婚夫妻比未婚同居夫婦更加快樂這一現象。這是為什麼呢？來看看調查人員是怎麼說的：

「我們很清楚的知道，在現在這個社會，如果一個女人與人未婚同居，人們傾向於認為是男性不願意結婚。這種對男性的疑慮會導致人們對同居女性的貶低輕視，不管女性是否相信自己伴侶的承諾，這種社會的普遍認識對女性的自尊和心理健康都是有害的。

噢，有趣的是，弗裡曼自己也經歷過人們對單身或未婚女性的貶低態度

「當大多數人同情我單身的時候，我的經歷其實非常棒，」她說起自己的單身時期——那是她事業騰飛的時候，她在自己夢想的領域大展拳腳，同時，她的社交生活也豐富多彩，「但總有人問我，你不想找個對象嗎？」

這種特別的自豪感使得自由撰稿人薩拉·埃克爾於2011年就這個話題為《紐約時報》寫了一個「現代愛情」專欄（後來出版成書），她向女性解釋了一些我們現在已經知道的事：沒有什麼是一成不變的，單身女性也可以過得很好。

「我意識到我對別人的憐憫感到越來越憤怒，」她告訴赫芬頓郵報女性專欄：「因為我真的認為我和那些結婚的人過得一樣好。」

迪波洛說道：「很奇怪，年復一年，人們仍然宣稱結婚能讓人變得更快樂。」

她解釋說很多學術研究只是為了製造引人注目、讓人心驚膽戰的新聞頭條。但從研究的程序來說，這些調查並不可信。（她評論了關於這個話題的18份長期調查報告）。這些調查存在的主要問題是：臨床調查必須是隨機的，但調查單身人士和已婚人群時，這種隨機顯然無法實現。她還提到：「另一個方法上的錯誤在於很多人僅僅將剛剛結婚的人和單身人士作對比，而完全忽視那些曾經已婚，後來厭惡婚姻，到最後離婚的人。」

當然，有些媒體比如「普林斯頓媽媽」會為單身女性不約會，不找對象諸如此類的行為感到羞恥。

「我覺得很疑惑，不管什麼時候只要有人得到可以讓女性覺得很糟糕的信息，他們就立即放在《今日秀》節目中，他們立即就有一個平臺可以大肆宣揚，」埃克爾說道：「你不明白諸如『我20歲時有著瘋狂的歲月，但是我現在35歲了，結了婚，有兩個孩子，我過得很快樂』的敘述對別人的警示作用有多大。」

因此，很多女性被一些關於單身與婚姻的公開演說及演說想到達的「諾亞方舟」似的狂熱所阻礙。

「人們總是會問『你約會了嗎？』但對我來說，更應該是，『我有沒有爬山？我有沒有寫作？』約會是一項活動嗎？」弗裡曼說道：「和隨便什麼人約會會佔用我大量的時間。那些時間對我來說很重要，但我也意識到很多人並不是這麼看的。」

本文的意義

是的，不管你有沒有男朋友，你都很出色，並且有足夠的能力過一個很快樂，很完整的人生。但是自我質疑和缺乏安全感是很常見的。也許你從沒想過結婚甚至是過一夫一妻制的生活——也許你不排斥與某人約會，卻不主動建立關係。

2011年僅僅一半的美國成年人結婚（皮尤研究中心的研究數據顯示，這項紀錄達到新低），同時，初婚年齡也在往後推（2011年女性第一婚的年齡中值在27歲，這個記錄比以往高），對單身的態度也在快速改變。鑑於越來越多的單身女性過著快樂的生活，這個轉變再正常不過了。

「婚姻狂熱」現象的出現並不由於我們多能保證婚姻在我們生活中的重要作用，」迪波洛說道：「相反，這是因為我們不確定我們能否脫離婚姻獨自生活。」

當然，忽視婚姻在許多人生活中的重要角色也是不對的。但對人們來說，重要的是他們能夠意識到有些人可能比較晚才能遇到心儀對象，有些人可能不喜歡以傳統的婚姻方式生活，但是他們仍然過得很快樂。

皮尤研究中心2010年的數據顯示，80%的人用「愛」，而不是「一生的承諾」，「陪伴」「有孩子」，「經濟穩定」作為結婚的理由。也許女性已經開始意識到了是否結婚是由自己決定的，而不是受傳統的規約驅動。看看《都市女孩》中的漢娜·霍瓦特和《我為喜劇狂》中的利茲·雷蒙，你就會發現流行文化已經在重新定義什麼是現代社會的「單身」了。

然而所有的這些不會永遠緩解你的恐懼和不安全感，但那是正常的。就像埃克爾在她書中說的那樣：「如果你有時感到難過，這並不因為你單身，而是因為你活著。」

顯然，不是每個單身女性都覺得自己很糟糕，糟糕只能用來形容那些確實很糟糕的人。

（譯者 lcwujing 編輯 丹妮）

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