Satisfied Staying Single Day

What the day is

Satisfied Staying Single Day is observed on February 11, positioned deliberately just ahead of Valentine's Day.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The subject has a research literature that has shifted considerably.

Older findings that married people are happier and healthier have been substantially qualified. Much of the early work compared married people against everyone else, lumping the never-married together with the divorced and widowed, which conflates being single with having lost a relationship. When those groups are separated, the gap narrows sharply. Longitudinal studies following the same people through marriage find a temporary lift around the wedding that largely returns to baseline, which suggests selection and adaptation are doing much of the work that was read as causation.

The stronger and more consistent finding is about relationship quality rather than status. People in unhappy relationships report worse wellbeing than single people, by a clear margin, so the meaningful comparison is not single against partnered but single against a specific relationship.

What does predict wellbeing for single people is social connection more broadly. Researchers studying long-term single adults find that those with strong friendships and family ties do well, while isolation is the actual risk factor, and it is a risk for partnered people too.

There is also a documented bias, sometimes called singlism, in which single adults are assumed to be lonelier and less fulfilled than they report themselves to be, and are treated accordingly in workplaces and social planning.

The number of single-person households has risen steadily across most wealthy countries, which makes the assumption increasingly out of date.

How to take part

• Invest in friendships, which is the variable that actually predicts wellbeing.
• Stop asking single friends when they are going to meet someone.
• Do the thing you have been postponing until you have somebody to do it with.
• Notice whether an invitation assumes a pair, and extend it anyway.
• Treat Valentine's Day as optional rather than as an exam.