From American Sexuality Magazine, via Alternet: Psychologist Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, takes time out from her busy, fulfilled single life to re-examine the pileup of studies informing the accepted wisdom that married people are happier than unmarrieds. Re-crunching the numbers — such as they are — she finds that while many married people are quite content, it may not be marriage that makes them that way (and vice-versa); at the end of the long, not-so-lonely day, there’s really not much difference in the happy factor between singles and marrieds at at all. To the degree that there is, DePaulo writes, “Single people are not as happy as married people in part because they are targets of stereotyping and discrimination.” Also, zombies.

The Last Single Man on Earth is not alone … he has Breakup Girl!

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Soulmate, schmoulmate? FOBG Lori Gottlieb has created a bit of a stir with her piece in the current Atlantic Monthly, wherein she urges women who want to get married to consider taking their lofty lovey lerfy lurvy expectations down a notch or five. In other words, ladies, she’s saying you should settle. Yes, SETTLE.

Okay, now you settle down. The real issue with the piece is that according to Gottlieb, women who want to get married are … all women. If you say that’s not you, she says you’re in denial. “Take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous,” she writes. (“I took Gottlieb’s advice, and my face does look silly. But that’s just because I’m making gagging faces and pantomiming a stabbing motion to my throat,” Broadsheet’s Sarah Hepola responded, adding, “Maybe I swallowed my panic and desperation. Though it tasted, for all the world, like a delicious cheese blintz.”)

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