355 - Singlism and the Truth About Being Single
Myths about being single
Researchers like Dr. Bella DePaulo, who is mentioned in this episode multiple times, study how marriage and privilege intersect and how single people can be discriminated against. DePaulo was the one to coin the term “singlism” as a term to describe the discrimination single people face.
It’s important to stress that being single does not mean being alone. In fact, there are multiple surveys showing that single people have more friends than married or previously married people, are more likely to support and visit their parents and siblings, and even more likely to support neighbors or other non-related people.
Singlism has been shown in studies to be particularly problematic as opposed to other issues (such as racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) because even when it is pointed out and clarified to people, they still do not feel as though it is a problem.
Different types of being single
Legally single
This simply means you are unmarried. Some disadvantages include:
For some people, legal marriage is the only way to make the relationship “real.”
You don’t get the potential for paying less in taxes through marriage benefits (while still having the option to file separately). This never applies to single people.
You can’t share social security benefits.
You often can’t get added to partner’s health insurance or other benefits.
Can’t give each other large gifts tax-free.
No access to survivor benefits (from military) and pension benefits from companies.
Studies have shown that married men make more than unmarried men in the same positions.
You will have a much harder time adopting.
It can be harder to rent or buy property.
Single people have NOT been shown to be any lonelier than married or coupled people BUT single people do have a higher risk of poverty and hunger, exacerbated by the pandemic, because of the financial penalties and lack of government support.
Studies have shown that decisions about healthcare, organ transplants, and sexual assault favor married people over single ones.
Socially single
Socially single means you are in a relationship you do not deem serious for whatever reason. Some disadvantages include:
Health insurance and benefits that allow for certain types of domestic partners have stipulations (eg. you have to live together and intertwine finances).
Friends may ask when you’ll get serious.
Employers/managers may assume you can work more than others because you don’t have anything else important going on.
You aren’t entitled to the free “plus one” to events or you aren’t invited to couples events.
Personally single
This means you think of yourself as single, regardless of what others think or say. Usually if others think you’re partnered you will as well, but that’s not always the case. Some disadvantages include:
Many consumer goods and services are priced to favor couples (vacations, club memberships, groceries, etc.).
People expressing regret for your singleness.
People feel sorry for the person they see as your partner if you identify as single.
People assume you are sad.
Assumptions that something is wrong with you.
If you own pets you are a weirdo who is compensating.
Assumptions that you’re a workaholic.
The benefits
Although it might seem as though being single is all doom and gloom, there are benefits! Some of them include:
There is evidence that single people are more active and get more exercise than married or divorced people.
Women who have always been single have better overall health than married women.
Less likely than married people to have credit card debt (even without children), despite the cost of living being higher for single people and wages being lower on average.
Single people have been shown to score higher on measures of personal growth and betterment.
Being self-sufficient has been shown to decrease negative emotions in single people but actually increases them for married people.
How do we fight singlism?
Increasing awareness of singlism and fighting to reduce it is important if single people are going to have the same rights as married ones. Some ways we can do this are:
Fostering friendships, whether you are married or not.
Learning about relationship anarchy and re-evaluating the unconscious ways that we favor certain types of relationships over others because of their label rather than their actual value.
Joining a community of single people! Bella DePaulo created a Facebook group specifically for singles to support each other and NOT look for dates. It’s called Community of Single People and is open to anyone who identifies as single and agrees to follow their community rules, including not seeking dates.
Point out singlism when you see it.
Support people who are actively working to affect legislation and otherwise promote equality for single people by fighting for more rights for them.
Notice some of the hidden ways that your own singlism might show up and work to counteract that.
Share this episode with people as well as blogs and other writings on the subject.
There are legal ways around some of the issues previously discussed, like custom wills and trusts, beneficiaries, forming corporations, etc.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about being single. Specifically, we're going to be talking about some truths and some myths about being single versus being married or being otherwise coupled. As part of that conversation, we're going to talk about what being single even means because there isn't just one definition of that. We're also going to be looking at a lot of the ways that single people experience discrimination. Then what we can do about it, both to help fight that kind of discrimination, as well as how changing our thinking about being single can make our own relationships better.
For this episode, I just want to say this upfront here first, is that a lot of the information in this episode comes from the many, many, many, many blog posts by Dr. Bella DePaulo PhD. She's probably the foremost writer in doing research about singleness today. She's written several books on it. One called Singled Out, another called Singlism, another called How We Live Now. She also writes tons of blogs and runs a Facebook community that we'll talk about later. All sorts of things. It's a lot of research from her, as well as other researchers and writers who often collaborate with her.
I just wanted to give that big credit right upfront.
Dedeker: We wish she could be here.
Jase: We too, yes.
Dedeker: That would be cool.
Jase: Maybe in the future. I hope that in the future we could actually have her on for an episode. I think that would be really cool.
Emily: Yes. Dr. Bella DePaulo and these other researchers, Lisa Arnold, Rachel Buddeberg, and Christina Campbell, they all look at the many ways that married people experience this big privilege in our society, and how single people are actually sort of discriminated against in our society in certain ways. Dr. DePaulo coined this term, singlism. It is coined and created just to describe this discrimination that single people can experience. We have talked a lot on this show about being single. We talk a lot obviously about being in relationships as well, and we've debunked these myths out there that married people tend to live longer lives, or that they're happier. That they're healthier, that they're somehow more mature. Because they're married, they're more benevolent in some way.
Dedeker: We've reported on the debunking. We didn't do the debunking ourselves.
Jase: Yes, we can't take credit for that.
Emily: debunks.
Dedeker: We've discussed some of our limited experience, yes.
Emily: We've discussed that in that debunking part, yes. It's really important to stress, right off the bat here, that being single doesn't necessarily equal being alone, even though so often I think many of us think of those words interchangeably, or they're used interchangeably.
Jase: Think about, how many articles or sentiments you've seen about, "I'm in this relationship, and it's not great, but it's better than being alone." There's this assumption that if I'm not in this relationship, then I'm alone. Like, totally alone, and that that's not what being single means. Single people are not alone. That's the other part of it, right?
Emily: There are actually a lot of national surveys out there that show that being single does not equal being alone. Because specifically, single people were shown to have more friends than married or previously married people, regardless of whether or not they have kids. They're more likely to support and visit their parents and siblings, and they've even been shown to be more likely to support their neighbors or other non-related people in their lives.
These myths and the stigma and discrimination that go with being single and all of those things that come with it, it ends up hurting the very people who are probably more likely to support all of us in our times of need because maybe they have more emotional bandwidth or a variety of reasons, more time. There are so many reasons why, perhaps, a person who is single in our society might actually get to be around people more than somebody who is coupled.
Dedeker: Yes, it's the flip side of that experience that we talk about pretty often on this show, about, " Oh, I have this friend that I'm really close to, but then the minute they get into a romantic relationship, they just disappear. I can't expect to reliably hang out with them, or call them for support, even see them around more than occasionally." It's a really common phenomenon that our culture supports as a good thing weirdly because our culture really supports, yes, once you get into a romantic relationship, or once you marry someone, or once you have kids with someone, that needs to be your whole world, and it leaves a lot of people out in the dark, unfortunately.
Jase: Yes. It makes me wonder because, with studies like this, you don't get to see causation. You can see a correlation where they found, I thought this was really interesting that, on average, when it comes to offering support to someone that is longer term, like three months or longer of someone needing continuous support in some way, that that's specifically where single people were much more likely to be the ones providing that support. Even to strangers, like community members, people they're not related to.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: It made me wonder though, like Emily said, maybe it's that they have more emotional bandwidth or something. I wonder if it's that, or if it's possibly that when we couple, society teaches us this is the only thing you should be focused on now, to the expense of our relationships with our family members, or other friends, like Dedeker mentioned, or even our community at large. Which is something else that came up in looking into this, was that some of the people writing about being single, bring up this thing of, isn't it weird that we define people who are not single as being in a relationship?
Or however we're going to define that. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. We talk about them, and then we talk about singleness as this weird other state that you really want to be coupled, that that's how we talk about it. That it's strange since single is our default state. They were saying, what if it was single and unsingled, right?
Emily: I like that.
Dedeker: Right. A quick caveat before we dive into this is it's important to remind y'all that it's not a competition. We have this term, singlism, that we're going to be exploring today, and that falls into a lot of the same camps with other -isms, like racism, sexism, ageism. When we're encountering these kind of -isms, the approach is not to just do a flip flop and try to say, "Oh, that means that this other race, or gender, or age is inherently better than another." The whole purpose of this is to identify and actively rectify the ways that our society, and our legal systems, and social systems at large, discriminate against certain groups.
When we're here debunking myths about married people living longer, or pointing out the privileges that married people or coupled people have, or when we're looking at the pervasive ways that singles are discriminated against, we're not suggesting that people shouldn't get married, or that couples are bad, or that single people are somehow just better people. Rather, we're trying to actively go against these deeply ingrained stereotypes and myths that most of us accept just as truth.
Jase: Yes. Yes, definitely. Let's talk about singlism. What this is, is it's basically a term-- This is actually worth clarifying a little bit because singlism is a term for the discrimination or stigma that's given to single people. An improper use of the word singlism is to say something like, "Oh, singlism is sweeping the nation. Way more people are not getting married." It's not about the state of being single.
Dedeker: Did you run into that when you were looking up stuff?
Jase: This is something specifically that, yes, some articles and things have come up trying to say that. It's something that DePaulo has very clearly been like, "That is not singlism." Singlism is like racism or sexism. It's that type of an -ism. It's not the state of being single. Just as a clarification so none of you go out there and make a fool yourself talking about singleism.
Something that I found really interesting in looking into this is that when it comes to singleism as a type of discrimination, it's been particularly problematic because a lot of studies, as well as anecdotal evidence, has shown that even when it's pointed out to people, there's this sense of like, "Yes, I see it, and yes, I agree that that happened, and no, I don't think it's bad," which is something we don't do as much with the other -isms. Right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: It's like, if something gets pointed out that's racist there's, if you accept, yes, that was discrimination then it's like, okay, that, we shouldn't do that.
In this, there's this weird mental gymnastics that we do. I think because this is just so in the air that we breathe, and we've so internalized these beliefs about single people that it's like, "Yes. Okay, that was discrimination, but sure, but that's fine because they're not in a couple, and so they don't need these things, or they don't deserve these things."
Dedeker: Right. Maybe there's a little bit about, "That's their own dang faults. They should hurry up and couple up if they don't want that experience maybe."
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Maybe, yes.
Emily: I think also this is something that I have come around and realized that I struggled with in terms of feeling like somehow coupling is the better option in regards to my mom because she has been single for basically my entire life, and for a long time, she was trying to find a father for me. Then finally we both collectively decided that that was not what she needed to be doing. I think that I always harbored this idea that maybe she's holding herself back in some way because she's not choosing to be in a couple or things like that.
Now I really appreciate the fact that she holds a lot of conviction for the fact that I am single, and I want to be, and I don't want somebody else coming in and screwing up my peace and the life that I have created for myself. I think that that's incredibly valid, and I really applaud that choice that she has made for herself.
Dedeker: I think the tricky thing though is that I can call to mind so many romcoms where that's a part of the plot, is someone who thinks that they're happy being single. Someone who-
Emily: Sure, yes, and you're probably not.
Dedeker: -exactly- who puts forward, "No, I'm independent, and I don't need anybody. I'm too busy with my career," or with whatever it is, but then, of course, someone magical comes along, and it turns out, no, they needed them the whole way. It's like it's an unwinnable situation because even someone who professes to be happy to be single, there are so many stories in our culture that leads us to think, "Mm, but do they really feel that way?"
Jase: It's like we're taught that, oh, their happiness is some kind of a coping mechanism for the fact that they're really not happy.
Dedeker: Oh yes.
Jase: They found a way to , right?
Dedeker: What is that phrase? Their happiness is just a coping mechanism.
Jase: Right, yes.
Dedeker: It's so ridiculous.
Emily: These feelings that they're having, yes.
Dedeker: It makes sense though. I think about I've fallen prey to this as well, in the sense that I have close friends of mine, where, when they're single, and if they're single for a long period of time, especially years, I'm more likely to be, "Oh, I'm worried about them. Are they okay emotionally? I wonder if they're sad. I wonder if they're struggling." Then the minute that they get into a long-term relationship, I'm like, "Oh okay, great. I don't have to worry anymore. They must be fine." I definitely have that, and it most likely could be bullshit.
Jase: It's entirely possible it's because they feel that pressure and they're actually much less happy doing that than they were.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Not saying that's the case all the time, but that very well could be the case. You don't know.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: As an example of this really pervasive discrimination, I wanted to share with you a study. This is a study done in 2007 by Morris, Sinclair, and DePaulo called No Shelter for Singles: The Perceived Legitimacy of Marital Status Discrimination. This study was done where people would read a story about a landlord who had two applications to rent an apartment from them. Both applicants had steady employment and positive references from previous landlords.
One of the applicants has offered to pay slightly more each month than the other one. That applicant who offered to pay a little more was also single, and the other person was married. In this story, the landlord decides to rent it to the married person who's going to pay less than an equally qualified single person who's willing to pay more. They asked people essentially a bunch of questions to gauge how they felt about this. Did they think this was a legitimate reasoning on the part of the landlord? Was this discrimination? What was it?
Then, to put some context to it, they did the same study, but where they replaced the single and married parts of that story with other pairings like Caucasian versus African American. One applicant is a man, one is a woman. One is straight, one is gay. One is thin, one is obese. One is young and one is old. Of all of these scenarios, the single versus married was the one people were least likely to even say was discrimination at all even though it's clear there. It's right there on the page. They were the least likely to use the word discrimination, that that would come to mind to think about.
They were the most likely to say that that decision was justified. The only other one that came close was the ageism one. The one where they rented to a young person instead of an older person willing to pay more, which is also discrimination. That was the next to least to likely call it discrimination and the next most one they were likely to say was justified. Then race was the one that people were the most likely to say was discrimination and the least likely to say was okay. It's interesting that the single versus married, and the gap between the single versus married, and the old versus young, is huge.
They were in a whole other category than all the other types of discrimination, of people just, "We don't see it."
Dedeker: Did the study go into-- Did it give any examples of what people gave as the justifications for it?
Jase: Yes, like why.
Dedeker: I can imagine. I could probably dream up some of that, of maybe what the thinking might be, but I'm wondering if the study cited any of that.
Jase: My understanding of the study was that it wasn't a qualitative one where they interviewed them about it, but more asking different questions to gauge what they thought about it. I'm not totally sure. I could look into that more. The study is, of course, available for those who want to get access to it.
Dedeker: If I'm trying to think based on the assumptions that we have floating around in our culture, especially in this particular situation of renting to somebody, I suppose the landlord might think, first of all, might just assume the married person is more stable financially.
Jase: Exactly. That's one of them, yes.
Dedeker: Maybe potentially there's two incomes even though that information is not provided.
Jase: That's what thought too.
Dedeker: It could just be two incomes, and so that means financially maybe it's a little bit safer. Maybe there's assumptions around the single person, I don't know, they're going to bring in a bunch of cats and ruin my mental unit, or they're going to be a Tinder fuck boy and bring in a bunch of ladies.
Jase: Right, yes.
Emily: Amazing.
Dedeker: Somehow that's going to-- I don't know, they're going to bring sketchy people. I don't know.
These are not the things that I think, but I'm trying to think about how maybe our culture, at large, would extrapolate those.
Emily: I am thinking back to my panel discussion with people about de-nesting but not decoupling, and how Keyanah, a researcher who was also a part of that panel, talked about the fact that she was discriminated against because, in her first application, she was denied for getting an apartment even though she'd fit all the requirements and had enough pay and all of that, but yet she was still denied. Her broker said that they thought that the reasoning was because she was married but not getting this home with her husband, that that was confusing to them for a variety of reasons. Therefore, they just said, "Screw it, we're going to deny her."
Dedeker: Oh gosh. Oh my goodness.
Emily: That's another example of this, just another person choosing to live alone.
Dedeker: That makes a lot of sense that, I guess, to someone who didn't know anything else about the situation, they would automatically read, "Ooh, unstable relationship situation."
Emily: Yes, so, bye. Yes.
Dedeker: I've run into that with Jase and with Alex. I think about times, pre-pandemic, when I do a lot of pet sitting, and staying in people's places, and where people would be asking me, "You're not staying with your partner when you do this? You're just staying alone? You're not going to stay with him? Why would you do that? Are you okay with that? Is he okay with that?" Just the gap to have to across to be like, "Yes, yes. 100%, yes."
Jase: Yes. What I found really interesting in reading about this study was just thinking about, if I wasn't reading it in the context of researching for an episode about discrimination against single people, I also might have felt more likely to think, "Oh, I guess they had their reasons," or "Oh, I guess they think maybe the married person would stay longer than a single person might," because that person will probably get married and want to move out. I could see making those justifications and not even thinking twice about it. It's just so pervasive. I'm like, "Yes. Yikes, I probably would have fallen guilty to this as well." I think that's the point of doing an episode like this, to really look into this.
Dedeker: Yes. It turns out there's a lot of different types of being single, specifically as identified by Dr. DePaulo. We're going to look at some of the specific ways that these different types of singleness can be a disadvantage.
Emily: We're going to go through legally single, socially single, and personally single. The first one is legally single, which just means that you aren't married. This is something that I am. This is something that the two of you are.
Dedeker: Yaay, the legal singles mixer.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: Welcome. Income welcome.
Emily: Actually, it's funny because whenever I have to answer this question on various things, like a census, or even when I was getting my COVID booster shot, it was like, "What are you?" I have to say-- It's Single, Married, Divorced. I'm like, "I'm none of those really, but I guess I'm single."
Dedeker: Was the question actually, "What are you? "
Emily: Yes. "Who are you? What are you?" Yes, exactly. This is interesting. There are just so, so many places where you have to an answer a question like this. Basically, when you're looking at this in the context of situations from a legal standpoint, it can extend even further perhaps to co-habiting monogamous couples. That they get privileges over those who are perhaps coupled, but maybe with multiple people, like in a non-monogamous relationship, for instance.
Jase: Right. I had a job, and we were talking about benefits. You could add a secondary person to your health insurance benefits and things like that. I asked that question of, "Okay, it doesn't say spouse here. Does that mean that this can be some other kind of partner or someone else?" The answer they gave, they're like, "Oh yes. No, totally. It can be anyone as long as you--" In this particular case, I don't even think they said you had to live together, although I think that was kind of implied. It's like, it has to be someone, and you're paying the premium for both of you, so, you're financially entwined.
That means you can't be married to someone else obviously.
Emily: Oh really?
Jase: Everyone had a good laugh. I was just like, "Hmm, interesting." This was my first day at the job so I didn't make a fuss. I was like, "Hmm, huh." Maybe once I'm more established here I could bring up that little tidbit where maybe that doesn't quite apply so universally as you think it does that it can be a joke.
Emily: Yes, Jase.
Dedeker: I can't share too much here, but I definitely ran into that in my process of getting a travel exemption to go to Australia to be with my partner.
Jase: Oh, it shows up in all kinds of ways like that.
Dedeker: All kinds of cases.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: It is the kind of thing where, I don't know, as more government entities and institutions are slowly, at a glacial pace, becoming more comfortable with people not being married necessarily, having different relationship situations, maybe just domestic partnerships or stuff like that, that does at least as a non-monogamous person, allow me to fudge some details and jump through some loopholes essentially.
Jase: Right, yes. I've noticed that for sure.
Dedeker: I guess keep that up if that's the best we can get for now.
Emily: Sure. There are some disadvantages if you are legally single and not legally married, for instance. For some people out there, and I feel like this is an internal thing, but it's something that I struggle with for sure, legal marriage, for some people, is the only way to make your relationship real. Especially from, as I just said, a legal standpoint, you don't have any rights to one another's money, or I guess if you're in a situation where one of you is really ill in going to the hospital, the right situation unless you're like Dedeker who decided to do something about that legally from--
Jase: You can only do so much.
Dedeker: You can only do so much, right?
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Yes. I got really freaked out about this a little while ago because one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, in her latest book, she actually explores that, where one of her characters in her book, his live-in girlfriend dies. But because they've chosen this, "We're not going to get married, and we're going to have a kid together but we're not going to get married," then after she dies, all of a sudden, there's all of these benefits that he can't take advantage of. Like all stuff from her workplace, and from the government, and visitation rights, and even dealing with custody.
That did really freak me out, and it also made me really angry at the same time. That there's just so not a lot of options for people who don't necessarily want to do legal marriage.
Emily: Yes. Another disadvantage is that you don't get the potential for paying less taxes through marriage benefits. You still have the option to file separately, but you can get a lot of advantages from a taxation standpoint the second that you get married. You can do a lot of
Jase: If you're a married person, you have the option to do what benefits you most. As a single person, there is no option that benefits you.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Jase: I didn't want to get into it in this episode, but there have been some wild articles where people have really gone through the numbers of how much more it costs you to be single than it is to be married in terms of taxes. It's like anywhere from $100,000 up to $1 million difference.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: It's big.
Emily: You can't do things like share Social Security benefits, which is--
Jase: Like Dedeker was saying, yes.
Emily: Yes, that's huge when you get older and when you start tapping into that. Also, you can't often get added to a partner's health insurance, like Jase talked about, or other benefits such as that.
Jase: Yes. Married people can give each other gifts tax-free, unlimited amounts of money to each other and not get taxed for it. Whereas if you give more than $12,000ish worth of gift to anyone, they have to pay tax on that gift that they received from you. If you're married, you get to combine your gifting. One of you could give like double that amount because it's from both of you because you now exist as one entity. Similar to what Dedeker was talking about, there's survival benefits or survivor benefits if your partner is in the military or something like that.
If you're not married, no, not for you. There have been studies that show married men make more money than unmarried men in the same positions.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: These are studies in different countries. I saw some ranging from 2% to 3% more, to some as high as like 25% or more for married men than unmarried men.
Dedeker: Often, it is an influencing factor in salary negotiations, right?
Emily: Huh.
Dedeker: That if you're like, "I have a spouse and we're starting a family," or, "We just started a family," or, "We just bought a house," or whatever, that people do use that sometimes. Or sometimes it depends on the workplace culture, but that does factor into people's decision-making, versus, "You're just a single dude, so what do you need?"
Jase: Right, yes. If you want to adopt, you're going to have a much harder time If you're not legally married, like Emily pointed out with Keyanah's story, renting. I guess in her case, being married was part of the challenge there, but, if you're single, it's harder to get a , right?
Emily: Being married but not living with them.
Jase: Yes. While we mentioned before that single people have not been shown to be actually lonelier than married or coupled people, that's been disproven. Like, during COVID, there have been studies about, but are the single people okay? The studies all came back being like, "Yes, they're not lonely, but they are at a much higher risk of poverty and hunger during the pandemic, especially." In general, they're always at higher risk as well, and then the pandemic has exacerbated that.
Emily: Yes. It's so expensive to be single though.
Jase: Right.
Emily: Like to live especially in a place like Seattle or Los Angeles, my goodness, yes, it's so much easier to be coupled, or be with a roommate, or someone than live alone.
Jase: Yes. Then, last thing like Emily mentioned going in for her COVID booster shot and having to answer questions about her marital status, which, how is that relevant?
Emily: It's not.
Jase: It's not, exactly, but dome studies and investigations have been done into things like decisions about what kind of care people get for COVID, or who gets prioritized on organ transplants, or who gets taken more seriously when they're sexually assaulted, favor people who are married over people who are single.
Emily: Jeez.
Jase: Yikes. Yikes, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, eesh. Eeesh, eesh.
Emily: Some real bullshit.
Dedeker: Yes. That's all the wonderful things that can come along with being legally single. We're going to talk about being socially single. The way that we distinguish that is that socially single refers to when you're in a relationship but other people don't count it as "serious" for whatever reason. Factors for why people may or may not see a relationship as serious include things like, "Is it monogamous?" That's a huge one. How often do you see each other? Are you cohabiting or not? How long have you been together? Is your partner married to someone else or not? So many factors.
I think we're really swimming against the tide here because it does seem like the definition of what counts as a real or serious relationship is surprisingly narrow in mainstream culture. For any of us who are outside of that very, very narrow window of what counts as a serious relationship, I think, count as socially single. Again, this can vary by social setting from the macro-culture of our society at large, to the micro-culture of the community that you grew up in, or even your immediate family, your co-workers, your friend groups, things like that.
Jase: I think this is so interesting, is that being single or not, even though we try to make it a binary, it's not even because it can vary by the setting. In this group, I'm treated like I'm single, and in this one, I'm not, for example. That's wild to me to think about.
Dedeker: Yes. For instance, there is health insurance and benefits that will allow for certain types of domestic partners, where it's like, "Okay, if you don't want to get legally married, great. But if you want these benefits, then you have to live together. You have to intertwine finances in some way." That was something I really ran up against with a lot of this government paperwork was, "Sure, you don't need to be legally married, but you have spent money together, right? You've made some huge financial purchases together, right? Because that's really the only way that we can track that you're actually serious-
Emily: It's fascinating, wow.
Dedeker: -is how much money the two of you have spent together," which is just, don't even get me started. At the time I was going through that, I was just way too distracted and stressed to even think about this, but in the subsequent months, it's been percolating through me, where I'm like, "That's messed up."
Emily: That is definitely messed up.
Dedeker: It really shows where our priorities lie.
Emily: Capitalism, baby.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: It's such a funny thing though, because, like in that type of example, when it comes to things like citizenship, or benefits, visas, stuff like that, it's this thing of, I find myself asking that question of, "Sure, but how else are they going to tell that you're actually in a relationship." Then it's like, "Wait a minute, we got to take another big step back and be like, why is that the important question here?" It is just so ingrained that it's like we don't even think of that second question right away.
Dedeker: Yes. It could be something like your friend group, people around you, family members asking when you'll get serious if they perceive that the relationship is not serious by whatever arbitrary criteria that may be. Whether it's, when are you going to live together, or when are you going to get married, or when are you going to do this, or when are you going to be exclusive or any number of things. Employers and managers may assume that you can work more than other people because you don't have anything else important going on, or you don't have any clear obligations that might get in the way of working.
You may not be entitled to bring a plus one to events, or you may not be invited to events that are oriented towards couples. Or if you're in a situation where your relationships are not considered serious because you have more than one relationship, you may still be expected to have to choose one person to always bring to the plus one events.
Jase: Yes, for sure. It's just, this one, to me, is really interesting because it overlaps in certain areas like with the benefits, with legally single, but also, it has a lot of these social ramifications. The work one is especially interesting because that came up a lot in the stuff that I was reading while researching this episode, was people being treated with this expectation of, you're always going to be the one to work overtime because what else are you doing? That kind of thing. Then the third category and these are all categories that DePaulo came up with, is being legally single, socially single.
Then the last one is being personally single. This one is interesting in the way that it overlaps with the others, because this one is, if you think of yourself as single, regardless of what other people think. She was saying that usually, if other people think you're partnered, then you probably think that about yourself too, but that's not always the case. People could see you as being part of this couple, and you could see yourself as being, "No, I'm a single person. They're a single person. We have some kind of a relationship, but my identity is more about being single."
Dedeker: It feels similar to the ways that I think a lot of people define and practice solo polyamory.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Right. It reminds me of that, yes.
Dedeker: I can be in these relationships and connected to people, and maybe even have a particular amount of commitment to more than one person, but I still see myself as single or solo. We're not trying to create this central unit.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Right, or you also could be single and you're dating, but not dating in an effort to try to become part of a couple as an identity, but more just, "I'm dating because I like dating. That's what I'm doing, but I see myself as single and other people may not." That one is this interesting one that can overlap in different ways with the others. In terms of some of the areas where you can encounter discrimination here, is, Emily mentioned this before, but a lot of consumer goods and services are priced to favor couples. Things like vacation packages are built around two people.
Club memberships are often cheaper for couples than for individuals.
Emily: Gym memberships sometimes.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Yes, for sure, all those things.
Emily: Family plans. I guess you can do that with other people, but still--
Jase: Even in buying groceries, I've found during the times when I'm living by myself, versus the times when Dedeker is living with me, it's harder to find groceries in acceptable sizes that I'll actually use.
Emily: That's true. Everything is like bulk. It's like, what the hell am I going to do with five stalks of romaine?
Jase: Exactly, yes. Especially when it comes to produce or things like that, things that go bad, it's like, "Yikes, this is hard," so, unless I'm able to--
Emily: That's why I love the single carrot that you can find sometimes at Whole Foods.
Jase: Right. That it's kind of like the single person is the afterthought. That everything is made for the couple or the family even. The single person is sort of like, "You're lucky if you get some scraps here."Another one that can show up is people expressing regret for your singleness. More of a social one, where maybe you have several partners, but you identify as single. If you call yourself single, people go, "Oh, you know what? I have a friend, let me try to hook you up." Or, "Oh gosh, I hope you're okay." That kind of pitying.
Emily: Yes, and also pitying on the other end. If you are partnered in some way, but still consider yourself to be single, those out there who are looking at your partner may feel like, "Oh, I feel sorry for that person. Oh, they must be feeling so shitty because this dude doesn't want to make it official with them," or something along those lines.
Jase: You're stringing them along or something.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Always a dude, right? Just?
Emily: No, sure, but whomever it might be, yes. Also, people might assume that you're sad, or that you're depressed, or like I did, unfortunately, with my mom for a while, feel like, oh, maybe there's like a block holding this person back from wanting to get themselves out there. Things like that. It's just like blanket statements that may have no basis in reality. Also, maybe assumptions that something is wrong with you, or if you own a bunch of pets, for example, like that familiar trope of the old cat lady. That you're compensating in some way with other beings in your life as opposed to a human being.
Dedeker: Oh, I've seen it even when people have a pet, an animal, and they're single, there's still that narrative.
Jase: Oh, I see. You've got a pet because you're so lonely, yes.
Emily: Yes, and then also assumptions, like both of you were talking about, that you're a workaholic, or that you can just do work all the time because you're a single person.
Jase: Yes. This might seem like a bummer so far, but there's not all bad news when it comes to being single. It's not all doom and gloom, and that's what we're going to get to next. First, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show. If this is information you find valuable, and you want to help spread the word and get that out there, we would love it if you take a moment to check out our sponsors and support us on Patreon.
Emily: Welcome back, everyone. A lot of this first part of this episode was doom and gloom, and sadness regarding all of the ways in which single people are discriminated against, and how our legal system isn't helping single people out in any way, really. However, there are a lot of great things about being single. There are a lot of studies out there that have also shown benefits to being single. We're going to talk about some of that. There is evidence that single people are more active and that they get more exercise than married or divorced people.
Jase: This one was interesting too because, specifically, it was that single people who had always been single got the most exercise.
Emily: My mother, 1 million %.
Jase: People who were divorced got the next most. People who were married got the least of the to the study.
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Emily: Fascinating, wow. Women who have always been single have better overall health than married women. That's really interesting.
Jase: Yes, including fewer sick days from work.
Emily: Single people are also less likely than married people to have credit card debt, even without children, despite the cost of living being higher for single people like I talked about earlier, and wages being lower on average. That's really interesting. Less people to maybe spend money on, I don't know.
Jase: Yes, this one I did puzzle about. This was something that in helping out with the research, Keyanah pointed out. With this, she's like, "I don't think this overrides the financial disadvantages you have, but it is interesting that there's less credit card debt."
Emily: Yes.
Jase: This was another one where, in the study, they had single people, married people without kids, and married people with kids, as three groups. Single people had the least credit card debt on average, people without kids had the next least, and married people with kids had the most, which is not surprising, I guess.
Emily: Yes, that makes sense.
Jase: It's also interesting though since the people who are married with kids have also been shown to make the most money in equivalent positions and have all these other benefits. It is interesting.
Emily: Yes, single people have also been shown to score higher on measures of personal growth and betterment. They're looking for ways in which to better themselves in a variety of fashions. Also, being self-sufficient has been shown to decrease negative emotions in single people, but it actually increases them for married people. Wow, that's really interesting. In other words, the more somebody likes to do things on their own, the more likely they are to have negative feelings regarding that if they're married, so, that's really interesting.
Dedeker: I feel like that speaks to the linchpin of a lot of relationship conflict. Maybe not necessarily conflict all the time, but a little bit of a relationship paradox that a lot of us face. I think especially those of us in non-monogamous relationships, we tackle this question all the time of, "How do I combine being attached to someone, entangling with someone, whether that's financially, or cohabiting or not, just emotionally entangling with someone, and at the same time maintain autonomy, and individuality, and giving my partners that autonomy and individuality as well?"
Yes, I think it makes sense that we grow up in a culture that doesn't really support us wanting to hold both of those things at the same time. It's like, if you want to be autonomous, be single, and if you want to be attached, be married or coupled. There's not a lot of social script--
Emily: Interchange, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, or encouragement for holding both of those at the same time.
Jase: Yes, this particular study got mentioned in a lot of different articles, some of which mention the findings of the study, and then drew totally incorrect conclusions from it, which was interesting. I just feel like the concept of it is just a little hard for people to wrap their head around because we think being self-sufficient is a good thing, but then it's like, but in a certain situation, it's negative. How does that work? Why is it negative? Is it because they hate doing stuff on their own when they're married? It's like, no, no, no, it's saying the opposite thing.
It's saying they would like to do stuff on their own, but they feel like they can't. That's what made me wonder, with all these things, we have to keep in mind with any kind of study, period, is about averages, and about trends. Not about each individual. You could have a single person who never exercises, they hate exercise. None of this is saying, this is always true.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: But with this particular one, it made me wonder. If you had people, say you did the same study with Multiamory listeners, who are maybe a little bit more aware of if you are in a couple, maintaining some sense of individuation between the two of you and not just giving up your own identity because so much research has been done to show that that really helps your connection rather than hinders it. It makes me wonder if you were studying those people if you wouldn't see this same trend. I don't know, just some interesting questions. Really depends who the people are, and this is all about averages. Right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: The day we can get all of our Multiamory listeners into the Love Lab, then maybe we could track some of these things.
Jase: Right, yes.
Emily: I would love that.
Dedeker:
Emily: We got to do a study. We got to do a study.
Dedeker: Yes, someday.
Emily: So many studies.
Dedeker: Okay. Ultimately, what can we do about this? What can we do to just increase our own happiness as either single people ourselves, or just living in community with single people? How can we fight singlism, and how can we make the world a better place for everyone, regardless of their relationship status?
Emily:
Dedeker: I'll tell you, we have it all figured out.
Jase: My friend--
Emily: Enlighten us.
Dedeker: Of course, we don't have the airtight answer, but we have a couple of things that we think would probably help. First and foremost would be encouraging people to just foster your friendships, whether you're married or not, whether you're monogamous, non-monogamous. It really doesn't have to do with what kind of relationship you are in, or want to be in, but just fostering connections with the people around you. I think we have to be very intentional to do that because we do live in a culture that doesn't really want us to foster friendships.
There's a reason why everyone complains about how hard it is to make friends when you're an adult. That's because we live in a culture that really is not set up for that. It's really set up to funnel us into these little micro family units, and these two-person dyadic relationships and to just focus on that. Anything that you can do to foster those friendships is actually a little bit revolutionary, considering the culture that we live in and the systems that were living under. Part of that may include things like learning about relationship anarchy, for instance.
Go google The Relationship Anarchy Manifesto, listen to our past episodes about it. That may include re-evaluating the unconscious ways that we favor certain types of relationships over others because of their label rather than their actual value. Again, this is something that I would encourage everybody to do, whether you're monogamous, non-monogamous, interested in polyamory at all, or if you feel like you're very traditional. If you want to be single, if you don't want to be single, I think learning about maybe a slightly different value set in a different set of core beliefs can be really helpful here.
It can also be good to join a community of single people. Dr. DePaulo created a Facebook group specifically for singles to support each other and not look for dates. I think that's the problem, and why honestly, even saying the word singles, always makes me feel a little bit averse because--
Emily: Singles going to mingle.
Dedeker: Exactly, single going to mingle, singles night, a singles cruise. It's all dripping in. You got to go find someone to hook up with or in some way.
Jase: Can you imagine though? Can you imagine a singles cruise where it's just all about everyone getting together to talk about how much they love being single?
Emily: And doing other…shit.
Dedeker: Ooh, it's the single support ship.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: That's what it is.
Jase: Okay, that's good. That's good.
Dedeker: Yes, the SSS.
Emily: Just a bunch of buds.
Dedeker: The SSSSSS, reporting for duty. Anyway, Dr. DePaulo's group is called A Community of Single People. It's open to anyone who identifies as single and agrees to follow their community rules, including not seeking out dates, which I think, this is a fantastic idea. Again, I can see how people would have such a hard time wrapping their brains around this, but I think this is something that's so needed.
Jase: Yes, and just as a quick note for those of you who are listening who are some kind of mental health professional, or maybe even a community leader, that that is the one exception. That it's for people who identify as single, or people who work with single people in some sort of a helping way. Actually, that's how I joined the group, so I could see some of the stuff in researching this.
Emily: Oh cool.
Jase: Was saying, "Hey, I help lead this community and offer resources for people on this." One of the questions is, are you going to look for dates? I said, "Heck, no."
Emily: No.
Jase: Don't do it. Don't do it, they'll kick you right out, and you deserve to be kicked out because that's against the rules. Another thing that you can do here, and this is one that's interesting. It's basically pointing out singlism when you see it. Something to be aware here is that, like we talked about, that even when this gets pointed out to people, they will often still think, "Yes, but so? That's okay." Or the other reaction we didn't talk about before is people will get very angry and very defensive. If you think about the reactionary laws and policies that have been passed any time something seems to remotely threaten marriage, like the defensive Marriage Act that was passed when Hawaii was trying to legalize same-sex marriage.
It was like, "Wow, we're under attack. We need to do this thing." That people get very upset about this, so, just a word of caution that if you're someone who is in enough of a position of privilege that you're not as afraid of these negative consequences coming to you for pointing these things out, or in certain situations, if you're someone who's not single pointing out things like, "Hey, COVID testing site, this question has nothing to do with my getting this booster shot. How about you stop asking that or I'm not going to answer this question, and I'm going to write in, none of your business," or whatever it is.
Emily: Yes. It's a demographic thing, but still, it doesn't matter. Yes, give me the jab. Give it to me.
Jase: Right, it's that thing. Like, if someone asked, "Okay, you're going to come in for your booster shot, what's your race?" There's always that thing of, this is optional, but that question about whether you're married or not, doesn't have that little optional thing by it.
Dedeker: I think you're right.
Jase: Again, it's not a type of discrimination that's protected against really. Some examples of this, and DePaulo writes about this in the book, Singled Out, I think is the one where she gives some examples of people wrote into her with stories of how they've tried to fight singlism. Some examples that she mentions are things like writing into a company to point out that their only marketing to couples or families, and wondering if you should take your business elsewhere. That some have actually seen changes in copy from companies because they've brought up these complaints. That was interesting. Like, "Hey, I'm a single person who loves your product, but I think I should look somewhere else now."
Emily: Cool.
Jase: Stick it to them there.
Dedeker: You get them where it hurts, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes, or like I said, refusing to answer a question that's not relevant to something, like in a medical setting potentially. Or if you're someone who has any sway at your workplace, and you see some of these policies in place, or just even questions that are not really appropriate, bring them up. See if you can do something about that. If you have other ideas, we'd love to hear about those. Mention those in the Discord or in the Facebook group. It'd be really interesting to see if people have found other, especially effective ways of fighting some of this and bringing this up.
Emily: Also, you can support people who are actively working to effect legislation and otherwise promote equality for single people by fighting for more rights for them. That can look like a variety of ways. You can call into a Congressperson, for example, or even just fight with the dollars that you spend. If you know of specific places that cater to single people or don't at least discriminate against them, then you can take your business there because capitalism matters in terms of things like that.
Jase: Yes. There's also a lot of nonprofits and advocacy groups out there for rights for single people, for healthcare for single people, things like that. You can just google that, look into that. Look at DePaulo's writings, she works with a lot of those groups and talks about them on her site. There's a lot of resources out there that you could help support.
Emily: Also take some time to examine yourself and examine the ways in which singlism comes up in your own life. I know for myself being in a monogamous relationship, I struggle sometimes with the fact that I am legally single, and that I am not legally married, for example, and all of the things that come with being married that I'm not afforded that. I think that it causes me to feel as though, "Oh shit, I should be trying to move in this direction of being a non legally single person." I think that a lot of that just is my own internal bias regarding being single and regarding the legality of all of that.
Also, in looking at the single people in my life, like I've talked about throughout this episode specifically my mom, and my own personal bias when it comes to that. Examine those things in your life because I think that it can come out as perhaps micro-aggressions to the single people in your life when that's not deserved, or merited, or that shouldn't be occurring. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Also, share this episode with people, as well as the variety of blogs out there. Look up the writings of DePaulo and the other people that we discussed on this episode, and just all of the different things out there on this subject.
Dedeker: Last but not least, I'm never going to encourage to anyone to do anything illegal, at least not in a recorded medium.
Jase: You sure?
Dedeker: However-
Jase: That's the only way you can put that, "But."
Emily: But?
Dedeker: -there's a lot of, I'll call it legal tomfoolery, that you can do, in the sense that our culture has this bullshit of, we have like the one state-sanctioned form of relationship, and we're going to give all kinds of benefits, and tax cuts, and all kinds of legal and financial validation to that form of relationship. I'm all about using those tools to your own advantage in order to get the legal protections that, unfortunately, we're not given quite yet as a right. As either single people or people who are not married or not monogamous in some way.
The way that looks, some of the kind of legal tomfoolery I've played around with in my life is stuff like creating a really custom last will, for instance. That includes not just-- I'm not married to anybody. It includes the people that I name in it that I want to be my beneficiaries. That does take time and money. That's not accessible to everybody. Same as, some people will do something like form a corporation together, and this could be with multiple partners. It could be with friends.
Emily: Multiamory? No.
Dedeker: It could be like what we did with Multiamory, where obviously we're not in a romantic triad or anything like that, but we are legally, financially entangled through this business that weirdly gives us a lot of strange protections that you wouldn't expect. Something that is free to do is if you have a retirement account or a bank account, you can list people as beneficiaries on that so that if you die, that money goes to the people that you want, instead of going into probate, or automatically going to a spouse or whatever it is, automatically going to your parents or things like that.
I really encourage people to do your research. Of course, legal stuff is going to be different depending on where you're living, and so, of course, always defer to any experts or any expert advice that may be out there, but just, there are ways to use the tools that were given in maybe a way the tool wasn't meant to be done, but we're-- I don't know. I get a lot of joy about beating them at their own game whenever I can. That's what I would encourage people to do.
Jase: If you're able, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, if you're able.
Jase: All right. We're going to go on and record a bonus episode where we're going to look at a list of checking our marital privilege. While none of us are married, I actually think a lot of the things on the list still apply. I think it's a fun list that basically turns all of these ways that single people are discriminated against, on its head, and says, "Imagine if it were a world where it were the other way around? Where you were discriminated against for being coupled or married, and how absurd that would feel," as a way to illustrate this. We're going to take a look at this list, go through it, talk about it in the bonus episode.