More people are separating in Ireland. More live alone. Dating is changing, as are definitions of singlehood. A new ‘Irish Times’ series explores the sometimes lonely, sometimes liberating reality of single life
Are you single at heart? You can take an online test. It’s not a magazine questionnaire trying to fix your unattached soul.
No pharmaceutical company or self-help ego is trying to sell you a path to thrilling yet mature coupledom.
The creator of this test is Bella DePaulo, an American social scientist who believes singlehood is a sweet pleasure soured only by a type of interpersonal discrimination she calls “singlism”. I can see immediately how the sentence “That’s very singlist of you” has great potential to be deployed in everyday conversation.
“Humph. Incensed by patronising article in the paper by smug married journalist. It was headlined, with subtle-as-a-Frankie-Howerd-sexual-innuendo-style irony: ‘The Joy of Single Life’,” grumbles Bridget Jones in her eponymous diary. “They’re young, ambitious and rich but their lives hide an aching loneliness,” she quotes, disgusted.
The aching-loneliness genre is part of what DePaulo calls “the dark aura of singlehood”, in which single people are perceived as miserable, regardless of whether they feel that way. Single-at-heart people are not single because they have “issues” or just haven’t found a partner yet, DePaulo says. “Living single is a way for you to lead your most meaningful and authentic life.”