Aging While Single: Why It Just Keeps Getting Better

Despite all the scaremongering about being old and single and supposedly alone — scaremongering aimed with special intensity at single women — for just about everyone who is single at heart, single life just gets better and better over time. Those hallmarks of the single at heart life — joyfulness, psychological richness and authenticity — become even more deeply experienced.

Sophia, 57, a science editor and writer from England, said, "I've been single for thirteen years, and I have never been happier. Ever. I'm having a great life, and I only wish I had started this journey with myself sooner."

There are more fellow solo singles in later life than there were when we were younger. As we age, fewer and fewer single people even want a partner. There's less pressure too. Those annoying relatives who kept asking if there is anyone special in our life have mostly zipped it. What's more, we no longer care what they think, if we ever did.

Throughout our adult lives we pursued the interests and passions that made our lives so rich psychologically and so consistent with who we really are. With no romantic partner at the center of our lives, we did not need to bend or deny our wishes or plans to accommodate a partner. Because we were not marking time, waiting and hoping for such a partner to appear, we did not put off living our single lives as fully and completely as our opportunities and resources would allow. We continued to learn and grow.

A study of US adults at midlife compared, over a five-year period, more than 1,000 people who had always been single to more than 3,000 who were continuously married. It was the single people who were especially likely to agree with statements such as "I think it is important to have new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and the world."

First, our numbers. Consider the results of a Pew Research Center report, based on a nationally representative sample of US adults in 2019, that focused specifically on solo singles — they were not married, not cohabiting, and they were not in a committed romantic relationship. Overall, 31% of Americans who were 18 and older were solo singles.

Age, though, mattered a lot. Among women in their thirties and forties, only 19% were solo singles, the lowest of any age group. But look what happens by the time they reach 65 and beyond — nearly half (49%) are solo singles. In later life, if you don't have a spouse or a serious romantic partner, you are no longer the outlier — you are practically the norm. (It is different for men. The percentage of solo singles decreases with age, from 51% for the youngest group, to 27% all through the thirties, forties, fifties and early sixties, and then down to 21% for those 65 and older.)

Second, our desires. Studies of more than 3,300 Dutch adults without romantic partners showed that all across their adult lives, from ages 18 through 75, the desire to have a partner kept declining. Tap into just about any random study and you will find the same thing.

Take, for example, that 2019 Pew survey. Across all ages, half of all solo single people said they were not interested in a committed romantic relationship or even a date. The youngest adults (18 to 29) were the most interested: 63% wanted a committed relationship or at least a date. But for the solo singles 65 and older, only 22% were interested in any of that.

Jane Gross, who founded "The New Old Age" blog for the New York Times, has never married. Throughout her twenties and thirties, she said, "all I wanted was joined-at-the-hip, happily-ever-after togetherness, with babies, even a mother-in-law."

By 65, though, she felt differently and considers herself single at heart: "I know that I'm greedy for the quiet of my own home at the end of a long day. And I'm grateful not to have to sit through movies I don't want to see, stay at parties longer than necessary, eat at 'proper' meal times, collect towels from the floor, or have someone follow me from room to room, expecting me to talk when I don't feel like talking."

Third, the pressures. The Pew researchers asked the solo single people how much pressure they felt from friends, family members and society to be in a committed romantic relationship. All three sources of pressure subsided with age. The oldest solo singles are the most blissfully free. More than half of those who are 65 and older say they feel no pressure at all from friends, family or society.

And fourth, the satisfaction. Studies of adults who do not have a romantic partner show that once they get to their forties and beyond, they just keep getting more and more satisfied with their single lives. One set of researchers discovered that when they studied German singles, and another set found the same thing when they studied Dutch singles.

People who stay single also become more confident about who they really are. In the midlife study that compared lifelong single people to continuously married people, it was the single people who were more likely to agree with statements such as, "I judge myself by what I think is important, not by the values of what others think is important" and "I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are different from the way most other people think."

As good as it can get for all solo singles, it gets even better for the single at heart. We've got this. We've been preparing for it for as long as we understood ourselves as single at heart and committed ourselves to the life we love the most.

Carla, who lives in Essex, England, was just 33 when she first shared her life story with me, but she was already planning for her later years. She told me, "When I renovated my house, I had quiet words with my builders and so now have a staircase which could easily be removed and replaced with a lift (elevator) and a bathroom which could be converted to a wet room with a sliding door. So hopefully I will be able to stay in this house, which I love, for most if not all of my life."

She also had a wise insight into the psychological dynamics of aging while single. "My actual experience of living single hasn't changed that much," she said. "It's always been good and I've always preferred living alone to living with other people. My perception of living single has changed hugely for the better, based mostly on listening to how I actually feel about it rather than how I am supposed to view it. I can't see myself changing it, now. Aside from my grief over [my] Dad, in the rest of my life I am the happiest I've ever been."

Getting to live authentically may be one of the most profound rewards of embracing our single lives. Ginny, 59, from Ontario, Canada, said, "As time passes, I feel as though I'm becoming more myself. I'm expressing opinions I would never dared have expressed before, accepting feelings that were quashed before, setting limits to human interactions that drain me."

Peggy, 67, from Atlanta, said, "I am more secure and know more who I am every day."

Editor’s note: Adapted from “SINGLE AT HEART: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life” (Apollo Publishers) by Dr. Bella DePaulo

Bella DePaulo Bella DePaulo (Ph.D., Harvard) has always been single and always will be. The Atlantic calls her “America’s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience.” She is the author of Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. Her TEDx Talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single,” has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.  Read More