Single people enjoy more connected social lives. "When people marry, they become more insular," DePaulo tells us. "Single people have bigger, broader meanings of relationships and love, so single people are actually more likely to be connected to their friends and siblings and parents and neighbors." Rather than investing the vast majority of their time and energy in "The One," unmarried people tend to invest in "the ones." They have more friends and form genuine attachment relationships with multiple people instead of a single person.

Single people experience more psychological growth. DePaulo points to research that suggests that unmarried people are more likely to experience "a sense of continued growth and development as a person" than married people, and that they value meaningful work more — a difference that one study showed existed even before any subjects married. "Single people get to design their own lives more," DePaulo says — and people who prefer to design their own lives are often those who prefer to not marry. "There’s such clear frameworks for what your married life is supposed to be like, but when you’re single, we get to define our lives for ourselves."

As many a single person can attest, though, our society's faith in the superiority of marriage to the single life is deep-rooted. "People want to think that if only they get married, then all the other pieces of their life are going to fall into place and they’re going to be happier and healthier and live longer and be more connected," DePaulo states. "If you arranged your life around that assumption, why would you want to give it up?" One possible reason: realization that the single life could be the best, most authentic, and most meaningful one for you.