.png)
Smug and married? You need to think again, says single academic Dr Bella DePaulo. We want your tax breaks not your pity, she tells Hilary Rose
DePaulo is an academic whose life’s work is changing the way we think about singleness, starting with the idea that it’s sad. For the single at heart, she argues, being single isn’t just their relationship status, it’s their identity. And while they might resent some of the perks that society bestows on couples, they very much don’t want your pity.
“Single life is not a lesser life,” DePaulo explains over Zoom from her home near Montecito, California. “For people who are single at heart, single life is their best, most meaningful, fulfilling and joyful life.”
“Some people are better suited to being single. People take it as scientifically established fact that if you get married you’ll be happier and healthier but, actually, there are now dozens of studies which find that married people end up being about as happy or unhappy as they were when they were single.”
This matters, DePaulo believes, not just because society “fetishises” marriage and romance but because it diminishes, if not demonises, singleness: on screen, single women are sad or dangerous. Single men can be perceived as loners who sit in their parents’ basement playing video games. Humans have evolved to be social animals but you can be a social animal, she points out, with your friends and relatives. Evolution isn’t about wedding rings, she says, though she is not anti-marriage, far from it. Whatever floats your boat. What frustrates her is the unfairness and statutory discrimination faced by the single, or as she puts it: “Giving people special privileges and rewards and perks just because they’re married.” In America, she says there are “hundreds” of federal laws benefiting married couples. In Britain being married can have positive implications on tax, savings, pensions and private healthcare, where spouses can sometimes share provision but friends or parents can not. You could argue that married couples get those breaks because they’re deemed to be the bedrock of civil society, so worth encouraging. She disagrees.
“What would happen if we reversed everything and gave all those benefits to single people? What would happen if single people were the ones that get the tax breaks and married people pay supplements for vacation packages or insurance. Take everything and flip it and see who would be doing better and whose kids would be doing better. There’s a whole system of inequality.”
It's so weird when people use "she can't get a man" as an insult as if male attention isn't literally freely given. It's like saying "wow she's so poor can't even afford McDonald's" when she's giving herself hearty and nutritional homemade meals.
It's all a brainwash to make women feel like it's their fault that the vast majority of scrotes in millennial generation are failure to launch mommas boys with no father involved because the mom was a pick me. Since the father was not in the picture this usually means the scrote will have no access to any generational wealth and unfortunately inherits the emotionally immature pick me as his forced emotional "wife" as a child. These scrotes become extremely damaged from this process and end up lying about their identity for years due to their overbearing moms never allowing them to be a kid but expect their own kid to be their fake husband. It's disturbing and disgusting.
Mentally ill /cluster b pick me boy moms and their psychopathic absent scrote baby father's need to be studied. Is this the effect that the boomers had on Gen x effectively causing multiple generations to fail? It's what I've wondered.
As for taxes and laws it makes sense that they allow husband and wife certain privileges in society because their status is combined in a true legal sense. Like a boyfriend wouldn't be allowed to see you in the hospital but a husband is. I think this is also protective because no mistress or side guy wouldn't be allowed during real crisis events like these and it would make their status crystal clear. This can be a wakeup call to pick mes dating men for over ten years just for him to get into an accident and she's treated like a friend in the hospital because she has no status with him legally.
I want to preface this by saying being single is morally neutral and I have no qualms with people who want to be. But it's kind of dense to suggest that there aren't obvious reasons that systems want people to be married, like increasing the likelihood of having kids, and reducing the odds of folks quitting a job without a new one secured. People aren't magically better at knowing how to be happy when they hop into relationships than they can intuit outside of them, so it's easily apparent that marriage doesn't immediately and universally lend itself to happiness.
Some restructuring would be nice, though. It would combat the housing crisis in my area at least to choose to live with other folks, so I would love to see tax breaks for cohabitation. A lot of the difficulty with marital versus single benefits with friends and family could be improved. But some of the benefits are because of a clear present trust implicit to the concept of marrying someone, which make it difficult for non-legally bound folks.
I am more productive when I'm single, actually get stuff done and am able to think more clearly. Whenever I was involved with some dude, they ended up destabilizing me with their inconsistent and ambivalent behavior. Being single definitely beats having anything to do with LVM scrotes.