Marriage, as it turns out, is an extremely good predictor of happiness. Married people make more money per capita, eat better, live longer, have more sex and enjoy it more. In terms of comparisons of happiness, you’d need to be making $100,000 more as an unmarried person to be as happy as a married person. (On average, and your mileage may vary, of course. And please, keep in mind, this is Gilbert talking, not me.) Is this a causal relationship? Maybe happier people are simply more likely to get married? That’s true, but studies over time reveal a very common pattern — people are less happy before marriage, experience a happiness peak shortly after marriage, and become slightly less happy a few years into marriage, though remain significantly happier than before marriage.
Well, that’s better news than something about marriage, after all that, making you less happy. But please keep this from the folks who are happiest of all when they’re bugging singles to shack up.
My girlfriend and I are both interested in marriage and children, and find each other sufficiently attractive that we’re willing to consider pursuing those goals jointly. We’re both approaching 40. I’m very shy, so I’ve had only three serious relationships before. She is about equally shy, but has had a little more experience, because as a woman she hasn’t been required to take the first move in relationships.
The thing that worries me is that we share almost no common interests other than our common interest in making a family. Can such a relationship work? Are we just getting desperate, and trying to make a relationship work that really can’t?
One thing singles tell me a lot is that they enjoy singlehood, they really do — and that they would enjoy it even more if they knew, for super-sure guarantee, that it also had an end date. Well, one new movie — starring BG imaginary BFF Emma Caulfield as a gal named Oona — uses machine-as-metaphor to make that fantasy real. It’s TiMER, in which women and men may choose to be implanted with a device that counts down the days, minutes, and seconds until they meet The One. But Oona’s timer is blank. So what will she do? Like the rest of us in the real world, will she have to just “just know”?
From the trailer, TiMER looks like a sweet sci-fi wrapped in a chick-flick tied with a careful-what-you-wish-for bow. And since what we’ve been wishing for is the return of Emma Caulfield, we’re not gonna be careful at all. (Now if we could just know for sure when — or if — it’ll go into wide release.)
1. What’s up with all the wedding presents when — now that folks are marrying later — most spouses-to-be already have two of everything anyway? (Shouldn’t all-Freecycle weddings already be the wave of…right now?)
2. “Matrimaniacs” is the new “bridezillas.” Pass it on.
3. If we are going to reclaim the word “spinster” — Geller notes that it wasn’t always an insult — I vote for “noun: a female DJ.”
There’s much more: linguistics (“I don’t like the “single”/ “married” binary. It implies that any unmarried person is a fragmentary half-self awaiting completion in a spouse”), history (prehistoric prenups!), homosocial poetry!
Cliffhanger: In one of the next installments, Geller tells us what she writes on those medical forms that ask whether we’re single or married. (Perhaps she’ll also tell us how not to feel lame when it asks for “emergency contact” and we have to write in our parents?)
We trendsniffing BGers have pointed out lots of the ink that’s been spilled over Depression 2.0 and how it’s affecting the coupled-up:Â They’re having hope sex! They’re having no sex! They’re bemoaning lost billions! They’re the bargain-hunting betrothed!
And we thought the worst of it was the stories of divorced couples who’ve had to continue cohabitating in their homes lest they lose a bundle on the surreal estate market. But the Debbie Downers over at Alternet have hit upon something just as sucky: the increased likelihood of singles having platonic roommates well past their age-appropriate 20s and early 30s. Possibly even (dum-da-dum-dum!) for liiiiife!
And I read: “For many urban professionals — despite having a good job and a college education — the American dream has been seriously downsized. Instead of hungering for the house with the white picket fence, they fantasize of one day renting an apartment with no one else’s milk in their fridge.”
While the story cites historical contexts for the rise in roommate-dom — everything from the invention of TV dinners to the rise of women in the workplace — writer Nan Mooney really hits the nail on the head re: just what it is about being a grown man/woman with a roomie that makes one self-loathe:
“But at what point does having a roommate contribute to the fact that we’re still single and lonely? It’s all too easy to get stuck in that twentysomething, no plans, no worries, no furniture kind of lifestyle. The one where you go out for beers with your buddies every Friday night, crash on your futon and never get around to saving for retirement or contemplating a more permanent relationship.”
And, even more bitingly: “It can be hard to cultivate intimacy with someone when there’s a third party on the couch watching Jon Stewart. By our 30s and 40s, many of us are looking for either independence or intimacy instead of some limbo between the two.”
Thus my much-self-ballyhooed quest to “get New York-married” continues. Having become roommated in late ’08 at the age of 34, for the first time since college, I admit that this article has sent a shockwave through my social life. Not sure what to do yet, but I sure know where not to go looking…
They compared notes on their AP classes. He knocked her cavalry into the ocean. Their first date was at a book fair…Wii controllers topped their wedding cake. Monday’s Chicago Sun-Times tells the story of these — and other — geeks in love, all of whom met through Chicago singles group Nerds at Heart. By way of context, the piece notes correctly (though belatedly) that “niche dating — narrowing down prospects according to religion, say, or ethnicity — is on the rise, judging from the evidence online.” But what it glosses over is the fact that so many inherently, gloriously nerdy pursuits — multi-player games, sci-fi conventions, space travel — are inherently social. Groups like Nerds at Heart are great; may they proliferate like fractals in ChaosPro. But it’s not like geeks need them in order to get out.
Learning from our mistakes is an essential survival skill. Yet we are much better students in some situations (“Ow! Orange stove burner hot! … Do not touch again!”) than we are in others (“Ow! Man on motorcycle unreliable! … Date again!”). That said, the circumstances in the excerpts from the letters below –specifically, what Breakup Girl has put in blue should all be considered Bad Signs…
Christy: I have been seeing this guy for about 3 months now. Everything seemed to be really good between us…then he went away for a week to his hometown. He got back on Sunday and I still haven’t heard from him. I remember him telling me on the phone that he was bad at relationships, and when he starts going out with somebody he’ll avoid them and not call them, etc. Which is why we aren’t labeled as boyfriend/girlfriend…because all the label does is add pressure. I really want to be with him. Tell me what you think.
BG: Yo. When someone tells you they are “bad at relationships,” believe them. By saying so, they are writing themselves a permission slip to do exactly that. And yeah, the boyfriend/girlfriend label does add “pressure.” As well it should. As in “responsibility.” If two people willingly agree not to “label” their relationship, fine. But if you do want that label, then quit digging through the Irregular bin. Girlfriend’s gotta hold out for Armani. (more…)
Filed under: Advice — posted by Breakup Girl @ 10:14 am
Young singles searching for love in Boston, say, have it hard enough. Now — societal age preferences and demographic clusters being what they are — try being a 50-year-old single mom in a Granite State “bedroom community,” where much of the nightlife likely consists of driving two hours from Boston and going to … bed. With that, we bring you this week’s installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet “Searching in New Hampshire,” who, well, there you go.
She’s got two grown kids plus a 9-year-old — and room in her heart for a fella. Her hope both wanes — “I’m starting to feel that I need to move…as everyone around here is either married or in a relationship with women my age who don’t have younger kids” — and waxes: “I still feel that there must be men out there who like kids or have never had children and would like to experience them without the baby/toddler phase or miss having children around the house now.”
Yes, there must. And they are not made of wood. Or granite.
What suggestions — and reassurance — does Lynn have for Searching? Read the whole exchange, and then come back here to add your own!
* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up a few Mondays ago >sniff< ! Stay tuned for more!
News from The American Sociological Association: “For years, researchers have known that adults who have swapped rings say they are healthier than their never-married peers are. According to a recent study, though, singles are catching up when it comes to good health.”
Among self-reports by adults ages 25 to 80, never-married folks reported a quality of health close to that of all those hale and glowing married folks in the New York Times.
Last week we told you that the top five cities for meeting men over 35 were spread throughout the country (#1: San Jose, #2: Salt Lake City, #3: Raleigh). Now the New York Daily News suggests that landing a man on the Eastern seaboard isn’t as tough as all that. In fact, New York has been ranked the #2 state to land a single guy, edged out only by Washington, DC. (Hey wait! That’s not technically a STATE! No fair!) According to the News, “there are currently 3.9 million men in New York City, and 35% of them are single.†Too bad there’s also 4.3 million women also living in the city, with nearly 70% of them being unmarried. (So, um, why isn’t the article — or, like, any article ever — about the best region for meeting single WOMEN, hrmm?). Apparently, though, a little move upstate will do some additional good to your odds: in Albany, 75% of men — and 75% of women — are single. (Now does someone want to do a study on why political cities are such singlesfests?)
Meanwhile, over at CNNMoney.com: Hoboken, NJ shows the most single people with 57.7%, followed by Cambridge, MA; Somerville, MA; Berkeley, CA; and Boston, MA (hello, college town). Albany appears at #15; New York City doesn’t show up at all.
Man. If only there were some sort of map. Oh, wait.
Breakup Girl
is the superhero whose domain is LOVE or the lack thereof!
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We trendsniffing BGers have pointed out lots of the ink that’s been spilled over Depression 2.0 and how it’s affecting the coupled-up:Â They’re having 
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