Liv TRecently I have seen countless comments, claims, and arguments that “marriage harms women” and as a coach that SPECIFICALLY works to support women into building their best, happiest, most fulfilling life I had to dive into the research and ask: are unmarried women really happier?
Anecdotally, I felt that the answer was a big fat NO. After all, I am much happier as I build my life with my husband than I was when I was single (and btw I was happy when I was single!)
My clients also seemed to be happier in their relationships/marriages than they were single.
BUT I do know many happy single women, and many miserable married women. Strangers on the internet have recently started accusing me of being “toxic” for promoting marriage for women, and I was ready to see if something has CHANGED to make women less happy in marriage.
After all, our biology indicates that both men AND women are happier, more fulfilled, and satisfied with their lives when they have committed, life-long companionship (with the same person) and having kids.
So did something change in our evolution?
Have we created a society where marriage hurts women?
Have we evolved beyond needing partnership?
I went online and did some digging. I expected to see several studies confirming that after all these years, after the feminist revolution and all the work by our sister suffragettes–women had learned how to be happier without men.
AFTER ALL…that’s the current mentality.
However, I couldn’t find any. Literally, not a single study confirming that women are happier single than they are married–OVERALL. Of course women in bad marriages are not going to be happy; especially compared to single women. But as a whole, there is NO study that confirms that women’s happiness decreases with marriage as compared to their happiness while they were single.
The article which all these women have been quoting comes from The Guardian (which has been recycled by several other popular news outlets) and doesn’t actually cite a study. Rather, it quotes an “expert” who says it’s HIS OPINION that unmarried women are happier, based on an unrelated study he looked at.
**Also am I the only one who finds it ironic that women are based their opinion that they’ll be happier unmarried because a MAN told them so?**
There are studies that show that single women are generally happier being single than single men…
However, the General Social Survey—the nation’s preeminent social barometer—reveals that marriage and family are strongly associated with happiness. The GSS shows that a combination of marriage and parenthood is linked to the biggest happiness dividends for women. Among married women with children between the ages of 18 and 55, 40% reported they are “very happy,” compared to 25% of married childless women, and just 22% of unmarried childless women.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that unmarried mothers are the least likely to be very happy: with just 17% of them indicating they are very happy. These results parallel findings from 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic that we reported last year in The Atlantic. In earlier surveys, we found that women who were married with children were generally the happiest and the least lonely.
Which comes as no surprise considering the mountains of evidence from research studies and biological indicators that ones overall quality of life is determined largely by the amount of closeness in relationships a person feels. (Per the NIH)
Upon diving even deeper to avoid writing a flimsy article based on ONE study as I am remiss to call out The Guardian for doing, I want to quote to you an article from the American Psychology Association which states:
“Women who are in satisfying marriages have a health advantage over unmarried women or those in unsatisfying marriages, according to a study published in the September issue of Health Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA).”
Ironically, it’s only UNMARRIED women who are proclaiming that they are happier than married women–while married women IN HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS consistently confirm they are happier in their marriage than they were when they were single…
Sorry but the bias of unmarried women gets trumped by the women who can compare their single life with their married life and women who are satisfied with their marriages ALWAYS prefer to be married.
The Institute for Family Studies also found: “People who are married are happier than those who are not, based on Gallup surveys of more than 2.5 million U.S. adults collected between March 2020 and November 2023.
Married adults are 20% more likely to be thriving than adults who never tied the knot.
For the survey, adults were asked to place themselves on a ten-rung ladder representing their best and worst possible lives now and in five years. More than education, race, age or gender, marital status was the strongest predictor of an individual’s wellbeing.” (Per Spectrum News)
So…are unmarried women really happier than their married counterparts?
Unmarried women tend to be happier than married women with dysfunctional relationships. However, I can’t find any confirmation (other than very loud comments) that being single is better for women than being married…
Women in general feel safer, happier, and more fulfilled inside aligned marriages where they build their own homes and families with a trusted partner than they do being single.
Which obviously is NOT to say all single women are miserable. If you’re single right now, I HOPE you are, genuinely happy and having fun out there.
This article isn’t written to rag on single women or to shame them into marriage…
INSTEAD, my intention is to point out the LIE you’re being sold that you’ll ALWAYS be happier on your own, and should reject marriage/family indefinitely. I WANT you to go out and live a fabulous, fulfilling, fun single life. I want you to discover yourself and make your own money. I want you to find success and friends and experiences that you’ll cherish forever.
AND THEN, when you feel like you’re ready and excited to take the incredible life you’ve built on your own and share it with someone as equally incredible…have the CONFIDENCE and REASSURANCE that your life will literally just get freaking better!!
My job is helping you receive more than you could possibly imagine out of life, boo.
And because I take my job seriously, I need to make sure you know that you’re being lied to when articles say to stay single forever.
You’re being lied to when society tells you your job will be MORE fulfilling than the home life you’ll build.
You’re being lied to when society tells you you can heal ENOUGH that you can evolve above the BASIC HUMAN NEED for companionship and committed connection.
And I say this as a woman with a DEEPLY fulfilling job that I love dearly!
But without my husband to share it with…it definitely wouldn’t fill me up as much as it does. Without the ability to be me OUTSIDE of my job and live life with someone who sees me and loves me and wants to explore life together–I know my business would EVENTUALLY reach a point of diminishing returns.
That could be 20-30 years into the future, but I think that’s where women are becoming so short-sighted about rejecting marriage. I didn’t get married at 30 because I thought there was something wrong with me or because I was unhappy and wanted a man to save me. I got married because I met my best friend and I realized that I wanted to see him and talk to him and laugh with him every single day.
I WAS HAPPY. I was dating up a storm. I was having guys literally fly out to meet me from across the country, and I was getting invited to exclusive rooftop events and meeting HIGH POWERED leaders in DC.
But when I started getting to know my husband, I knew that I would have more fun with him. I knew I didn’t want to live my glamourous single life MORE than I wanted to come home after a hard work day and be held by him while he told me how much he believed in me.
And I want you to feel that, too. It’s the most indescribable thing.
I promise, it’s available to you…if you’ll open yourself up to it<3
Xo,
Liv
Data shows that women (and men) who are married experience an increase in overall happiness that lasts a year, and then decreases to their pre-relationship levels of happiness shortly after. Also, relationship satisfaction decreases with relationship length in general. That’s not to say that seniors aren’t satisfied in marriage- just that their satisfaction is less than their younger years (this being a statistic, of course, with countless exceptions, and a likelihood of compounding variables such as happiness decreases with aging in general).
It is true that most married women are happier than unmarried women, but that’s because they were happier people to begin with and have positive characteristics that make them desirable to a partner but also more likely to have good mental health. Also, there is a great deal of stigma to being single, and while I have no data, I expect this stigma might decrease happiness.
It is further true that unmarried women are happier than unmarried men, and this is probably because they have more, closer platonic friendships (than do unmarried men and married women, according to statistics).
What I would like to see is a comparison between the happiness of women pre-relationship with their later selves post-relationship when they are single mothers. I suspect that these women might be less happy than before they were married, due to financial and time stresses.
I would also like to see the happiness levels of divorced women vs their pre-relationship selves. After all, half of marriages won’t last.
There is remarkable stability in happiness over the lifespan, and I don’t think there is evidence to show that marriage increases or decrease happiness generally (with the exception of newlyweds, where happiness increases). There are many benefits and many drawbacks that hold varying levels of influence over the marital lifespan.