The “addicted to love” refrain in popular music seems to describe some actual humans. Some people do seem addicted (in the informal sense of the word) to romance, seeking out the next object of their passion the moment the previous flame fades. I have often wondered whether the overuse of matrimaniacal themes in media aimed at grown-ups is partly to blame for the overvaluing of romance, relative to all of the other important relationships and pursuits that can define a life. Maybe I need to think more about the books and such marketed to younger crowds.

I am not a reader of YA (Young Adult) books, but I was not surprised to learn from YA blogger, and book critic Elizabeth Vail that that YA genre has gone all matrimaniacal. In “Lovesick and tired: Unnecessary romance in YA,” Vail bemoans the fact that all too often, “a romance or, worse, a love triangle is gracelessly shoehorned into a story that neither requires nor develops it. As a result, you get novels with underdeveloped characters, abbreviated plots, romantic progression that relies on irrational and often abusive behavior, and the dreadful phenomenon described by reviewers as ‘instalove.’”

One of Vail’s examples of a YA book with a gratuitous romantic plot is Gennifer Albin’s Crewel:

“an ostensibly ‘feminist’ futuristic YA about a heroine who can alter the fabric of reality. But what does it say about her when she spends the majority of the book whining and mewling between two equally bland and shallowly drawn love interests instead of actually, you know, changing the world or fighting The Evil Establishment?”

Vail is not arguing against all uses of romantic plots in YA books, just bad ones. In her essay, she describes some examples of romantic plotlines that were well-written and fit seamlessly into the narrative.

I especially appreciate her concluding words:

“What I’m ultimately saying is that romance is not intrinsic to the Young Adult genre, nor can you blindly play Pin the Love Triangle on the YA Plot Line without affecting the entire narrative. A romantic subplot requires just as much narrative investment as any other aspect of a novel. If a romance doesn’t directly contribute to your central narrative, don’t add one. In literature, as in life, you shouldn’t embark on a romance unless you mean it.”

Couple in love image available from Shutterstock.

Someone who has been thinking, writing, and talking about friendship for quite some time is Irene Levine, sometimes known as The Friendship Doctor. Recently, Dr. Levine shared with Marlo Thomas her “12 tips for making new friends at any age.” You can click on the link to read all of them. Here, I want to share a few of my favorites.

Dr. Irene Levine’s Tips for Making Friends

Engage With People

Pick up the phone at least once a day to speak to a friend. If you work, arrange to have lunch with someone at least once a week. If you work at home, arrange to have coffee or lunch with someone at least twice a week. Turn off all electronics for a couple of hours each day and see if you find yourself more engaged with people.

Don’t Take Rejection Personally

People need to overcome the idea that they are the only one seeking friendships and that rejection, if it occurs, is personal. Sometimes another individual’s dance card is simply already filled up with family, work and other friendships.

Take Things Slowly

Don’t fall prey to expecting too much too soon or acting too needy. Give friendships time to blossom by being open, honest and showing interest in other people.

Look For Acquaintances First

Every friendship starts off with the exchange of a smile, question or comment. Best friends don’t grow on trees and real relationships take time to nurture. As two people get to know each other, they will fall into a comfortable groove.

Turn Your Virtual Friendships Into Real Ones

Perhaps you are spending too much time behind your computer screen. Find out if any of your online friendships have the potential to be face-to-face ones. Do some of your Twitter or Facebook friends live nearby? As an added bonus, reducing the amount of time you spend online will give you more time and motivation for forming real friendships.

You can read the other 7 tips here. Dr. Levine’s blog is The Friendship Blog. Her book is Best Friends Forever.

Friends photo available from Shutterstock

#1

There are far fewer mothers than there used to be. The Census Bureau keeps track of birth rates, measured by the number of births for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. Between 1960 and 2011,

• For women with at least some college education, the number of births per 1,000 women dropped from 128 to 53.
• For women with a high school diploma, from 110 to 44.
• For women with less than a high school diploma, from 95 to 32.

#2

To be a woman in her 40s who does not have kids is not nearly as unusual as it used to be. In 1976, about 10% of women ages 40 to 44 had no children. By 2008, that number had nearly doubled, to about 18%.

#3

Over time, marriage and motherhood have increasingly gone their separate ways. In 1970, only 3.4 million mothers were living with their children (not counting grown children) and did not have a spouse. By 2012, that number was 10.3 million. Yes, I’m talking about the rise of “single mothers” here, though I have reservations about that term.

#4

Married-parent households are on the decline. The drop has happened at every economic level. Between 1968 and 2010, the percentage of married-parent households:

• Declined from 96% to 88% in households with the most income (top third)
• Declined from 95% to 71% in households in the middle, with regard to income
• Declined from 77% to 41% in households with the lowest incomes (bottom third)

#5

The trend toward having children without being married is not specific to any one racial or ethnic group. For example, “single motherhood” is growing among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics.

Just for fun: In 2011, the most popular baby names for girls and boys respectively were Sophia and Jacob. No word on whether the popularity differs for children of mothers who are or are not single.

Note: These facts are from the Census Bureau’s 2013 “Facts for Features” report for Mother’s Day and from Derek Thompson’s article in the Atlantic, “How motherhood is changing dramatically – in 11 graphs.”

Mother and daughter image available from Shutterstock.

Suppose you are simply going to attend a wedding this year. What will that cost you? Business Insider claims the average is $539, up an astounding 59% in just one year. You will probably spend more than $100 just on gifts. Often hotel stays are involved, as well as transportation costs. Don’t forget the price of dining during your travels. Then there are the clothes, shoes, and bling.

Of course, if you are actually in the wedding party, you will cough up even more. The same article puts the estimate at $577. (I’m surprised there isn’t more of a difference between mere guests and members of the bridal parties.)

I guess the first step toward being the person celebrated at matrimaniacal events is attending a prom. The New York Times reported that families this year will spend an average of $1,139 on prom expenses. That’s for one event, for one person, in high school.

I’ve been rolling my eyes at the costs of weddings for a long time, so I’m no longer surprised by those figures. In 2012, the average wedding tab was $28,427.

The real costs of matrimania, though, are not the dollars, but what those dollars represent and where the money is not spend.

What does it say to high school students when they and their parents spend so extravagantly on an event celebrating coupling? What does it say that other achievements (in academics or the arts or outstanding community service, for example) are not commemorated in comparable ways?

No, I don’t think we should up the ante on all realms. I think we should scale back on the message that what matters more than anything else when you are in high school is your prom. We should respect the values of students who are just not into prom night. We should also be sensitive to the students who may love the pomp but can’t manage it, financially. When I was in high school, one of my classmates, for long stretches of time, had exactly two outfits. That’s all her family could afford.

As for the weddings, imagine the possibilities if less were spent on a big wedding blow-out. The money could go toward the cost of further education, or a down payment on a home, or job training, or toward some worthy cause or persons other than just the couple. The possibilities are endless, and many of them offer more enduring benefits than just a day of self-celebration. Your marriage might end after a few months, but that degree after your name is forever.

I think the costs to guests – especially if they are single – of attending weddings has become increasingly hard to justify. There, too, I think it would be a good thing if norms and expectations got tamped down. (Check out this discussion, “Should newlyweds get all the loot,” with Jaclyn Geller, author of Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique.)

Another cost of all of the splurging on proms and wedding parties and weddings is to our valuing of all of the other important people in our lives. Our friends, colleagues, mentors, siblings, parents, cousins and many other relatives and non-romantic relationship partners can matter to us more than we ever acknowledge.

There is, though, something truly instructive about the contemporary wedding scene. When you analyze it closely (as I did in Singled Out), you will end up totally disabused of the myth that it is single people who are self-centered.

Wedding present photo available from Shutterstock

In the research, a nationally representative sample of adults, ages 25 through 75, were interviewed in 1995 or 1996, then again a decade later. Data from more than 4,600 of them were analyzed for this study.

During the first interview, participants indicated their marital status. They were also asked about their relationships with friends, family, and their spouse or partner if they had one. To get a sense of whether the participants might qualify as isolated by certain objective measures, they were also asked whether they lived alone, and how often they were in contact with family members, friends, and neighbors.

Negative aspects of relationships were assessed with questions about how often the person in question makes too many demands, criticizes you, lets you down, or gets on your nerves. Positive aspects were measured with questions about how much the person in question really cares about you, understands how you feel, can be relied on, and is someone you can open up to.

At the 10-year mark, participants were asked standard interview questions designed to determine whether they had experienced a major depressive episode during the previous year.

The question motivating the research was: Which of the relationship experiences, if any, is linked to a major depressive episode a decade later? Did marital status matter? What about objective measures of social isolation? How about having a spouse or family members or friends who interact with you in negative ways or fail to provide positive support?

The implications of marital status were biased to favor marriage because those who were married or partnered were compared to all unmarried people, regardless of whether they were divorced or widowed or had always been single. The implications of getting married are more accurately determined by comparing all those who ever married to those who stayed single. This is especially important because if there is a difference in mental health among people of different marital statuses (and there isn’t always), it is the people who got married and later divorced or became widowed – and not those who stayed single – who are most likely to report negative health or well-being.

Nonetheless, even with this pro-marriage bias built into the design, the group of unmarried people was no more likely to experience a major depressive episode a decade later than was the group of people who were married.

Guess what else didn’t matter? Living alone. Also: not having a lot of contact with family, friends, or neighbors.

The people from the mid 1990s who were especially likely to experience major depression a decade later were those with demanding, critical, and unsupportive spouses, romantic partners, or family members.

Having a negative and unsupportive friend did not predict depression. The authors did not speculate about that but perhaps if your friends prove to be annoying, you spend less time with them or they cease to be your friends. Family relationships are more obligatory.

Of course, spouses who are chronically critical and uncaring often end up as ex-spouses. Guess what researchers – including the authors of this paper – do with those ex’s? They pretend they never got married. The negative effects of having had an undermining spouse are removed from the married group and assigned to the unmarried group. I know I mention this all the time, but all this cheating never ceases to amaze me. And yet, despite the rigging of the analyses to advantage the married group, they are still no less likely to be depressed than the previously-married and the always-single combined.

Reference:

Teo, A. R., Choi, H., & Valenstein, M. (2013). Social relationships and depression: Ten-year follow-up from a nationally representative study. PLOS One, 8, e62396.

Depressed woman photo available from Shutterstock

Why Are Arguments for Marrying So Hedonistic? 

Guest Post by Alan

We’ve all seen marriage being promoted as some sort of cure-all, like the ideal diet or exercise program.  It’s supposed to improve your health, happiness, and sex life, among other things.  But marriage is different from a diet or an exercise program:  It involves another person.  And should your marriage end in divorce, it will negatively affect both you and your now ex-spouse (should your diet or exercise program fail, on the other hand, it affects only you).

Given this fact, you would think that those who promote marriage would emphasize the need to be committed to marriage, to really believe it’s one’s true destiny, before walking down that aisle.  You think they’d focus on the hard work and commitment necessary.

But instead, we hear far more self-centered and hedonistic arguments from the marriage promoters.  “You’ll have great sex!”  “You’ll be happy” “You’ll have more money” “You’ll be healthy” “You’ll have more friends”.  Little or no discussion of the responsibility, for the sake of your partner, to insure the marriage is a success. It is all too easy to imagine someone saying, “Well, I don’t really want to marry, but since the benefits are so great why not?”  And it’s also all too easy to see how likely such a marriage would be to fail.

Indeed, if the marriage promoters are right and marriage is a cure-all, then those who suspect they are better off single are the heroes of the story, forgoing the potential benefits of matrimony in order to spare their partners the pain of divorce!  But of course, as nice as it would be to be heroes, we know that marriage is no cure-all, no golden gift that we have to forgo.  We single-at-heart people know we are at our best just as we are.  If only the marriage promoters knew this as well.

About the Author: Alan is an insurance case manager who has also been a nurse and a researcher.

Wedding photo available from Shutterstock

Social scientists writing journal articles typically start with a prediction – about, for example, how much different groups value a high pay over other aspects of a potential job. Regardless of what they actually find, they are supposed to discuss different possible meanings of their results. When it comes to studies comparing married and single people, though, too often that professional standard gets tossed. It is instead replaced (probably without awareness) by the heuristic that whatever married people do is the right and noble thing.

In the study in question, the author analyzed responses to a question in the General Social Survey, which is a survey of American households conducted nearly every year. Participants are shown a list of five job features and asked, “Which one thing on this list would you most prefer in a job?” Then they are asked which thing is next most important, and so on.

Here are the five options:

• High income
• No danger of being fired
• Working hours are short, lots of free time
• Chance for advancement
• Work is important and gives a feeling of accomplishment

The author was interested solely in the value that different groups placed on high income, so her analyses focused on how people rated that option, relative to the other options. She found that generally (averaging across all of the groups), people rated high income somewhere between their second and third choice among the five choices.

The key finding was the one she predicted: currently married people valued high income more than always-single people did. This could not be explained by differences in whether the married people were more likely to have children. Parenting mattered, but even when parenting status was controlled for statistically, married people still valued maximizing their pay more than single people did. In fact, the difference between married and single people in that preference was even greater than the difference between people with and without children. (Divorced and widowed people did not differ from always-single people in their valuing of high income when differences in parenting were accounted for.)

In the survey, men valued high income more than women did. Again, though, the difference between men and women was smaller than the difference between currently-married and always-single people.

So how does the author interpret her finding that married people (both men and women) value high income more than single people do? Here’s an excerpt from the “Conclusion” section of the paper:

“If married men and women feel more strongly about pay and are less content with their financial circumstances, they are likely to be more alert to opportunities to enhance their incomes. As part of this more general orientation, they may be more motivated to perform their jobs well in the hope of a greater reward. They may also feel greater organizational commitment.”

Let me summarize: If married people value making money more than single people do, it is all good.

There are lots of studies of the potential risks of focusing on extrinsic factors such as money, as compared to intrinsic ones such as the meaningfulness of the work, but none of that research gets a nod in this article.

Imagine if the results had been the reverse, and the single people valued money more? How many nanoseconds would it take for social scientists and the press to lunge to the conclusion that single people are materialistic? I wonder, too, in this hypothetical reversal, if we would hear about the supposedly narrow lives led by single people, as compared to the married people who want more time to devote to other interests, perhaps involving giving to others?

The closest the author comes to suggesting a bit of materialism on the part of married people is when she says this:

“These results are consistent with the argument that marriage increases the value that individuals place on outcomes that pay enables them to attain. Married people are likely to assign greater importance to material well-being for themselves and their families. The competition for power at home may also be more salient for married individuals. Earnings are a useful means to both ends.”

My argument is not that people should be criticized for valuing high pay. It is instead that it is important to be even-handed – especially if you are a scholar.

Single people, by the way, do value meaningful work. That has been suggested not just in the study I just described, which was subject to all of the interpretive messes of comparing people of different marital statuses at one point in time (you can never figure out causality that way), but also in a long-term study. As I discussed elsewhere, the beginnings of singles’ valuing of meaningful work can be traced as far back as high school.

Woman with money image available from Shutterstock.

One of the most important predictors of whether people will commit suicide, Durkheim thought, was the degree to which they were integrated into society: those who are more integrated will be less likely to kill themselves.

I don’t read French, so I’ll quote secondary sources. Matt Wray and his colleagues, in the article “The sociology of suicide,” describe integration in society as:

“the sense of social belonging and inclusion, the love, care, and concern that can flow (or not flow) from social ties. Well integrated groups…enjoy stable, durable, and cohesive ties. Individuals in such groups are supported in their lives, particularly during times of personal crises, thereby reducing their vulnerability to suicide.”

Social ties, Durkheim believed, were not just important for the support they provided. They also offer something else that deters suicide: regulation, including “monitoring, oversight, and guidance.”

If social integration and regulation are important, Durkheim argued, then factors such as religion, social change, and marital status should be among the important determinants of whether people kill themselves. A contemporary sociologist, Augustine Kposowa, explained the significance of marriage in Durkheim’s model:

“…married life provides a sense of cohesiveness and support that is not available to single, divorced, or widowed persons. Divorce disrupts this cohesion, and accordingly…increases the risk of suicide.”

Single people, in this theory, are susceptible to what Durkheim called “egoistic suicide,” which results from low levels of social integration. “Anomic suicide” can be triggered by too little social regulation or “a sudden and unexpected change in a person’s social standing, for example, a shift from being married to being divorced or widowed.”

Using the data and methods available in the late 1800s, Durkheim claimed support for his predictions. The key question for anyone interested in the link between marital status and suicide is whether the finding that unmarried people kill themselves more than married people holds up to the superior data and analytic methods available in the 21^st century. (Of course, the actual link between marital status and suicide could also change over time.)

It is easy to find 21^st century claims – both by journalists, and sadly, some social scientists – that marriage protects people from suicide. I described the evidence in more detail elsewhere. The bottom line is this: When the most rigorous statistical analysis is applied to high-quality data, there is no link whatsoever between marital status and suicide among women. Whether they are currently married, divorced, widowed, or have always been single, their suicide risk is about the same. For men, only the divorced have a higher suicide rate than the currently married.

It is not the fact of being unmarried that mattered. Those who had always been single – both the men and the women – were as unlikely as the currently married to kill themselves. It was only those who were once married and then divorced, and then, only the men in that category, whose suicide rates were higher than the currently married.

Outcast photo available from Shutterstock

What is striking about all of these offerings is just how stunningly limited the components of a good life seem to be, in the eyes of these self-appointed sages. The conversation is all about three domains: work, marriage, and children.

For those of us who are single-at-heart, there is potentially so much more. I think that even for people who care most about the tired three, there is more about life that attracts their interest and maybe even their passion.

First, consider the people part of the equation. A spouse and offspring are fine for those who want them, but what about all of the other people who matter? What about friends and siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and grandparents? What about mentors and teachers and other special people who helped us and believed in us all along the way? What about colleagues and neighbors and fellow members of groups that welcome us, be they political or religious or civic or educational or athletic or artistic?

How about the draw of time away from people? We who are single-at-heart cherish our solitude. It refreshes us, offers us space to be creative or contemplative or to pursue what interests us, on our own terms and in our own time.

How can we talk about work without recognizing its many forms, from the onerous to the exhilarating? There’s the work we do to pay the bills and the work we might do even if we were not paid for it.

Where, in the tripartite equation, is a place for contributing to a cause that reaches beyond your own nuclear family? Where does volunteering fit in, or spirituality, or pursuing social justice, or creating works of art or encouraging thoughtfulness or working toward a more sustainable planet? What about those who want to lead a more expansive life? Or those who like to focus intently on one particular passion? How about those who want to live a simple life – why isn’t that a valued choice?

I’m sure there is much more that could be added to my list. I’d like to hear about what I missed. Mostly, I’d love to see our high-profile conversations steer themselves out of the marriage-kids-work rut and soar into more imaginative spaces.

Friends photo available from Shutterstock

There is research showing that as people become more serious about a romantic relationship, they spend more time with each other and they sideline their friends. In the jargon, that’s called “dyadic withdrawal.” I think there is another dynamic, too, though the definitive research has yet to be done: Coupled people spend more time not only with each other but also with other couples; at the same time, they marginalize their single friends.

I wonder about the psychology of this process. Do new couples happily join in with the other couples, proud to be part of the Married Couples Club and to leave their single friends behind? Or do they want to include their single friends, at least at first, but get pressured to exclude them by other couples who want to socialize only with other couples?

My guess is that it is different for different couples. (And that some couples do not engage in singles-ostracism at all.)

A lively area of research has shown how painful it can be to be ostracized, even in trivial ways (as, for example, when other participants in an online cyberball game stop throwing the ball to you). Now there is new research showing that people who are pressured to exclude other people – and who comply with that pressure – suffer too. Call it karma, if you wish.

In a pair of studies, some participants were told to exclude another player from a cyber ball-tossing game. If they complied, those participants ended up feeling more negative emotions than other participants who were not given any special instructions as to how to play the game and who did not exclude other players.

In one of the two studies, the experiences of those who were instructed to ostracize another player (by not tossing the ball to that person) were compared to the feelings of people who were ostracized. Remarkably, the people who went along with the instructions to exclude another player felt just as distressed as the people who were excluded.

The profile of the particular negative emotions differed for the two groups of people in ways you could probably predict. The people who went along with the ostracizing experienced more shame and guilt, whereas the people who got ostracized felt more anger.

Something else happened that the authors probably did not predict. Some of the participants who were instructed to ostracize other people just wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t it be nice to learn more about them!

Outcast girl photo available from Shutterstock