single woman

This is the second part of my interview with social psychologist Bella DePaulo, PhD, author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.

Do single women have more or less problems making and maintaining friendships? Explain.

From a scientific perspective, the answer is unknown. That’s something that is very frustrating to me as a social scientist. There is a very lively field of study about personal relationships, but the vast majority of studies are about romantic relationships. Yet, there are many more adults who have no spouse in their lives than who have no friends. And, the relationship that is likely to last the longest is not the relationship with a spouse, but with a sibling.

Although there is no systematic research that answers this question, there are several qualitative studies of the lives of single women. These suggest that single women can be very adept at making and maintaining friendships. One of my favorites was based on interviews of 50 women, ages 65 to 105, who had always been single. Of those women, exactly one was socially isolated. The other 49 had a total of 47 friends with whom they were in contact every day. In 16 instances, those friendships had lasted more than 40 years!

There are other indications, too, that single people are hardly flying solo. Kay Trimberger and I wrote about this for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about single women and friendship?

Yes. After doing the research for my book, Singled Out, I was struck by just how important friendships are in our lives, and how undervalued friendships often are in our culture. Think of the phrase, “just friends.” I think that for our closest friendships, that sentiment is exactly wrong.

And on this point, there is scientific evidence. A few years ago, two scholars reviewed every study ever published on what contributes to people’s well-being in later life. They found that one of the best predictors of good feelings was time spent with friends.

One other thing. Because friendships are not valued in our society the way that some other relationships are, people often do not find the support or concern they would like when things are going badly in their friendships. I remember one person commenting to me that when she had boyfriend problems, sympathy arrived promptly at her doorstep. But when she tried to tell some of the same confidants about her problems in a close friendship, they would give her this funny look, as if to say, “So?”

That’s one of the reasons I so appreciate this blog. When it comes to friendships, with all of their intense ups and downs, there is no dismissiveness here.

Earlier today, I was very pleased to interview Dr. Bella DePaulo about friendship and the single woman.

Dr. DePaulo is a social psychologist living in Summerland, CA., and the author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. She blogs for the Huffington Post, and has published op-ed pieces in newspapers such as The New York Times, Newsday, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

I'll post the second part of her interview tomorrow.

How are friendships among single women different than those among married women? Are friendships any less or more important to single women?

Most Americans believe in a hierarchy of relationships, in which the marital relationship comes before all other peer relationships, even with the closest of friends. For those married women who believe in this ranking, their female friends will always come in second (at best). Single women have more freedom to value their friendships with one another more than any other relationship – if they wish to do so.

Because so many Americans (myself included) are so ahistorical in their knowledge and outlooks, they are often surprised to learn that the prioritizing of the marital relationship in our affections is not timeless and is not universal. Historians such as Nancy Cott and Francesca Cancian have pointed out that in other times, such as the late 18th and 19th centuries, intensely close friendships between women flourished. In fact, women often expected to find their only truly equal and reciprocal relationships with other women.

So, in the big historical and cross-cultural picture, people who deeply value their closest friendships, and find more emotional closeness there than in other relationships, are not at all unusual.

Are there any special pressures that single women feel? (For example, one woman told me that she felt like she had to spend every Friday night with her girlfriend)

Friendship is such an individualized relationship. People differ tremendously in how close they need to feel to someone in order to consider that person a friend. The norms for friendship are less clear than they are for some other relationships, too. So you can end up with a friend who expects you to spend every Friday night with her. But I’m not so sure that things are all that different for couples. There are many couples who seem to feel obligated to spend every Friday night with another particular couple or two. There can be something unfortunate about this tendency: Sometimes a person only likes one of the two people in the couple, but they don’t get to spend their valuable leisure time solely with the one person they really do like. The person they like “comes with” a boring or annoying partner.

Visit Dr. DePaulo's website at www.BellaDePaulo.com.