They are Angry at You as you Choosing to Be Single

The fact that singles who said that they chose to be single elicited negative emotional reactions at all is notable, as it may explain the sense of competitiveness in current marital happiness research when the investigator is conservative or traditional anti-single. Whenever you read some findings of a conservative marital happiness researcher, there is an undeniable sense of competition and one-upmanship. The same sense of competitive one-upmanship exists in reportage of such research in most media.

A Living Single person who has always been lone emailed me to ask if I had some thoughts on why her single situation appeared to elicit such enmity from other people. It was her feeling that not all singles are targets of other people's anger. Did she have some role in evoking that kind of response?

It was an interesting question. I got an email from an Israeli scholar, Gal Slonim, who shared the results of a study he just presented at the 2010 Worldwide Association for Relationship Research.

Gal Slonim puzzled whether singles in Israel were also targets of the same types of negative stereotypes that other scholars have documented in places such as the U.S. and Germany. The short answer was yes. Participants read brief biographical sketches of other people that were identical except that the target person was sometimes described as single and other times as coupled. The single people were perceived as lonelier and more miserable than the coupled people, whereas the coupled targets were perceived as warmer and more sociable than the single targets.

Even more interesting, though, were the new questions the Israeli researchers added: What kinds of emotional reactions do singles elicit? And, does it matter if the solitary people say that they prefer to be lone or that they want to be partnered?

Oh yes, it did matter. The 479 Israelis who took part in the study were more likely to feel anger toward single people who said they wanted to be single than toward singles who were looking to become partnered. They also judged those who were single by choice as lonelier and more painful than the singles who wanted to become unsingle.

It was different for the singles who were hoping to have a long-term coupled relationship. They elicited more sympathy than did the targets who were single by choice. They were also viewed as warmer and more sociable than the singles who wanted to be single.

From the data they collected, the authors cannot know for sure why the targets who were single-by-choice elicited more anger from other people, as well as more damning perceptions. Their guess is that singles who like their single lives are difficult  social norms. In essence, they are rocking the boat.

I think the study also speaks to a talk we had previously about singles who are quirkyalone vs. single at heart. While Sasha Cagen introduced her readership to quirkyalones, she described them as people who liked their single lives but would still love to find that one person in a million to be their great love. The idea took off. Lots of people wrote about it and identified with it. Those of us who are "single at heart"  are possible to meet with much more resistance and even hostility.

There are more replies to the person's problem on why so many singles elicit more hostility and singlism than other people, but I believe we may now have a very telling piece of the puzzle.

As a life-long single at heart person, it is my opinion that this anger is coming from people who are not happy with their own choices to be married, yet feel they are playing by society's rules and resent those of us who recognize that we have the right to make different choices. The negative feelings seem to be coming from people who are not comfortable with their own choices and resent me for being comfortable with mine. If they can make the single person that bad guy or gal to be angry with, that serves as a rationalization for their own choices that have made them less than happy.

According to some cognitive therapy theories, the feeling of anger stems from the belief that an injustice of some kind has occurred. Perhaps people who settled for less than happy marriages and played by what they perceive to be society's rules feel it's unfair that some of us have chosen not to play by those rules and are happy, while they remain miserable due to their conformity which has resulted in being in a relationship they really do not want to be in.

Copyright by Lucy who likes shopping online, going fishing, often searches pink coach purse and fashion things on the Internet.