At seventy years old, psychologist and author Dr. Bella DePaulo has been happily single her entire life.
Having never felt the need to couple up, DePaulo describes herself as “single at heart” and says her solo status allows her to live her most “joyful, authentic, and meaningful” life.
“People who are single at heart find that single life is their best life and I’m one of these people,” she tells Róisín Ingle on The Irish Times Women’s Podcast.
DePaulo, who has been described by The Atlantic as America’s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience, is on a mission to change the way society views single people and to present singledom as a valid and fulfilling lifestyle choice.
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“There is so little awareness that single life can be something that you can aspire to and love and want to sustain, because the assumption that everybody wants to be coupled is so ingrained in fairy tales, in TV shows and movies and song lyrics,” she says.
“It’s just hard for people to even imagine that wanting to be single and wanting to stay single could be as the kids say ‘a thing’.
Speaking about what drew her to the single life, DePaulo says, “I just love being the captain of my own ship. I like the freedom to arrange every aspect of my everyday life, from when I get up, what I eat and what I listen to and what temperature the house is and whether the toilet seat is up or down”.
In her new book Single at Heart, DePaulo speaks to other women and men who are single and thriving. Through her research, she aims to show that a powerful, healthy, happy life is possible not in spite of being single, but because of it.
In this episode of The Women’s Podcast, DePaulo talks about the joys of staying single, the common misconceptions surrounding it, and why she’d rather spend her life with ‘the ones’ than ‘the one’.
You can listen back to this episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
