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.
I met this guy in my home town through a radio dating service. The quintessential blind date, but wait, here’s a bonus: he’s adorable, has his own business, has no children, no ex-wives, no psychological problems to speak of but … he has zero sense of humor. He is about as dry as a piece of wheat toast. I think I intimidate him because I got about an inch over him in the height department. And I have a strong personality. Okay, here comes the problem: I blew him off a couple of months ago because it was too difficult being witty all by myself. But get this: I get a call asking how I’ve been and all that — and that now he knows it’s me he wants to be with. And that he has had this soul-searching revelation, and he doesn’t want to grow old alone, blah, blah, blah. But he still hasn’t acquired any personality traits that I can see. What should I do? I mean he is terribly sweet, and a kind person, but just as dull as a board. Am I a shallow person? I mean the usual dregs that I fall for have me grabbing my side with hysterical laughter — and later clutching my heart trying to keep it from falling to pieces because they have dogged me out. Help me please — all my girlfriends think I’m crazy, and that I should lock him up and keep him to myself. What do you think? Am I crazy?
I am currently single after three and a half long years (and proud of it dammit:). Well, I have a long time friend of ten years who just got married and has a newborn child. After flirting for all this time, we finally did the deed and slept together. It was so good that we just can’t seem to stop. My question is, should I be the mature one and say “hello! You’re married?” or should I just go eith the flow, I mean, I’m not the one cheating! Or am I?
— Friendly Luva
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Dear Friendly,
“I’m not the one cheating!” Nice try, Luva. The “sound” of “one person cheating” is a concept far too Zen for Breakup Girl. If you’re so “friendly,” do no more deeds. Instead, help the new mom find someone to talk to about post-partum blues.
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.)
— I swear I did not know that DePaulo was gonna name-check that same baby-shower “SATC” ep as I linked to in my most recent post. All the same, I will take this opportunity to remind you what great minds do.
— In other tried-but-true cliches (including the use of “tried and true,” shame on me), Geller eloquently discusses how those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. (Translation: She recommends all those entering marriage to read up on its history.)
— If a Mormon can decide to take the Sarandon-Robbins alternate route to happiness, then change is inevitable.
Filed under: News,Psychology — posted by Rose @ 12:32 pm
Last we left our whatevs-to-marriage heroines — authors Bella DePaulo and Jaclyn Geller; the former is running a three-part Q&A with the latter on the Psychology Today blogs — the discussion dwelled on the inequities of wedding registries, “single” v.”married” vocab and the notion that spouses trump friends any day of the week (and, I’m guessing, twice on your anniversary).
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?)
Filed under: Animation — posted by Chris @ 8:43 am
Breakup Girl is the superhero that saves love lives the world over! But what about her own? When she meets the mighty Man-Guy, you will believe that sparks can fly.
DISCLAIMER:“Fear of Flying” was animated in the more innocent time before September 11th, when crashing-planes, though a questionable source of humor, was not yet completely off-limits.
Unlike our two-minute advice-centric shorts, this 7-minute cartoon — a pilot for a proposed second season of cartoons on Oxygen — accurately renders Breakup Girl’s comic adventures. Tragically, our team was laid off before this cartoon could even air, and it did not resurface online until 2003, when we reclaimed the the rights to BG.
BG is loving the single moms on American Idol right now (thanks to all-time fave Fantasia — and Nikki McKibbin, too — for paving the way!). I also just happened to e-meet this single momma, who (a) moved to Kentucky for love, but (b) hasn’t forgotten where she came from; she founded and runs the social network i heart single parents, which you should definitely check out. Searching in New Hampshire, I’m talking to you!
e-mail to a friend in need
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