Chosen Singleness Is a Valid Life
Day 18 of the 30-day Relationships Series.
A message a lot of single women in my practice have absorbed, without ever being told directly, is that they are running behind. That partnership is the destination. That until it arrives, their life is in a kind of holding pattern.
This is worth naming and pushing back against. Not because partnership is unimportant. It is one of the most important experiences human beings can have. But because it is not the only shape of a full life. And a life not built around it can be complete, connected, generative, and joyful.
Chosen singleness — different from involuntary loneliness — is a valid, whole life. A rising share of adults are choosing it. And the research on their well-being is more encouraging than the culture usually admits.
Chosen Versus Involuntary
Two things get lumped together and should not be.
Involuntary singleness is being alone when you deeply want to be partnered. This is a real grief. It deserves compassion, not a lecture on how to enjoy singlehood.
Chosen singleness is being single as a positive orientation — because you like your life this way, because you have not found someone who genuinely improves it, or because you have deliberately organized your life around other central bonds.
Both are legitimate. The mistake is telling someone in the first camp that they should be in the second, or someone in the second camp that they must actually be secretly in the first.
What Chosen Singleness Can Look Like
A rich friendship life, deliberately tended. Weekly rhythms with people you love. Long-standing group meals, book clubs, walking partners.
A close family — parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins — kept warm through investment.
Chosen family. Godchildren, close friends' children, long-standing mentees. Being a beloved adult in a young person's life is one of the most generative roles humans have.
A faith or philosophical community. Belonging, meaning, accountability — the goods most people expect a marriage to deliver — are also available in a good community.
Work you care about. Not to escape into. To pour yourself out into.
Cared-for body, cared-for mind. Time and space for both.
A house or space that reflects you. Owned or rented, styled deliberately.
Adventure. Travel. Learning. Space to move where you want.
This is not a consolation prize. This is a whole life.
What Chosen Singleness Requires
It requires more work at the connection layer than partnership does, because you do not have a default person to belong to.
Deliberate friendship. Two hundred hours is what a real friendship costs. See Day 25.
Deliberate community. Repeat exposure, over years, in the same context. See Day 27.
Someone to call in a crisis. Please have this person, or two of them. Not a partner does not mean no one.
Financial planning. Marriage does some of this by default; single life requires intentional planning.
A plan for aging. Chosen family. Health advocates. Living arrangements. This is worth thinking about long before it is urgent.
None of this is unhappy work. All of it is what a rich single life is built out of.
The Data
Studies of well-being consistently find that partnered people report slightly higher life satisfaction, on average, than single people. But those studies also find:
Deliberately single adults score much closer to partnered adults than involuntarily single adults do.
Adults in bad marriages score dramatically lower than adults who are single.
The health benefits of marriage largely accrue to good marriages. Bad marriages carry health risks similar to smoking.
A good marriage is one of the best things in a human life. A bad marriage is one of the worst. A rich single life is safely in between and often better than the second.
A Word to Single Readers
You do not owe anyone marriage. You do not owe anyone children. You do not owe your parents grandchildren. You do not owe your friends coupled availability. You do not owe society a conventional life shape.
You do owe yourself a life full of love. That love can take many shapes. Marriage is one of them. It is not the only one.
Whole-Person Steps
Notice whether the singleness you are living is chosen or involuntary. Both are valid. They call for different plans.
If chosen, invest in the pillars of a rich single life — friendship, family, community, work, body, home, adventure.
Have your "call in a crisis" person. If you do not, name the closest three candidates and invest.
Plan for aging. Legal documents, financial planning, chosen family, housing.
Push back on the internal voice that says you are late. That voice is repeating an outdated map.
If You Are in Utah
At Integrative Mind Body Psychiatry, I take the whole picture seriously — the biology, the mental health, and the relational life you are building, with or without a partner. Telehealth for adults, adolescents, and women in hormonal transitions across Utah. Insurance accepted through Headway (headway.co/providers/beth-makar).
Tomorrow: Day 19 — Rebuilding After a Breakup. The neurobiology of heartbreak.
This post is educational and is not a substitute for individualized medical or mental-health care.
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