填空题
There Is Nothing Wrong with Being Single
A. "You"re so great—why don"t you have a boyfriend?" This misguided praise, often made to young successful women, has given birth to a new thought experiment: If a woman is great and no romantic partner is there to appreciate her, can she still lead a happy and fulfilling life?
B. Since 2000, the most common American household has been a person living alone. Statistics showed that 53.6 percent of American women over the age of 18 were unmarried in 2012. So why do singles often feel like the odd woman out?
C. Over the last 15 years, we"ve watched pop culture heroines put their professional accomplishments on the back burner when things go south in the romance department. It"s not hard to see where these television writers are getting their material: Women often feel bad about being single, despite how satisfying their lives are otherwise.
D. The Harvard Grant Study, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal (纵向的) studies on happiness, followed 268 male Harvard undergraduates for 75 years to see just what brought them joy. After nearly a lifetime of tracking, researchers discovered that fulfillment was overwhelmingly found in one thing: relationships—but not necessarily romantic relationships.
E. "Joy is connection," George Vaillant, who directed the study from 1972 to 2004, told The Huffington Post in 2013. "The more areas in your life you can make connection, the better."
F. Great news, right? Unfortunately, this concept isn"t exactly common knowledge, and single women often feel that their many loving, although nonsexual, relationships are discounted. Ann Friedman, a freelance journalist who pens a column for NYMag.com about gender and has shared her adventures in being "deep single". She spoke of her attitude about partnerships—one that avoid the "marriage o"clock" concept instead of a more laissez-faire (自由放任的) approach to life and relationships—has gained such responses as: "You"ve given up on the idea of love" or even worse, "You"ve grown so depressed with the state of the American male that you"ve opted out completely."
G. "I was like, "Honestly, I"m really, really cool with what I have going on right now,"" Friedman said. Her outlook is obviously not one-size-fits-all, but it"s never a bad idea to stop and appreciate the wonderful relationships we do have in our lives, whether or not they fit neatly into a romantic box. Just ask Dr. Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out and a permanent Visiting Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
H. "What people sometimes overlook when they say "If you"re single, you"re alone" is the possibility that if you"re single, you may have friendships that you pay a lot of attention to," DePaulo told HuffPost Women. "In fact, you might have more support than someone who gets married and only pays attention to their spouse and puts all of their friends on the back burner." Or you may not be prioritizing what you really want.
I. Allowing what other people want for you to cloud your judgment can also send you down that dark, "I"m dying alone" spiral (漩涡). Global surveys have found that cultural norms and expectations are what determine our self-esteem, even if we claim we"re above the pressure. When it comes to single women, this dual (双重的) mentality can get tricky. The (obvious) truth is that marriage—or even long-term couplehood—won"t make everyone happier.
J. "I think that we are in a society that just so celebrates marriage," DePaulo said. This "matrimania", DePaulo"s term for the over-the-top claims of marriage and weddings, can be especially problematic when you factor in all of the complexities of romantic relationships that can come before marriage. "The cohabitation (同居) gap", a term coined by researchers in 2011, describes the phenomenon of married couples being happier than non-married couples who live together. Why? Here"s how the researchers put it:
K. "We can speculate that in such societies, people tend to believe that a woman lives together with her partner without being married not because she doesn"t want to marry him but because he doesn"t want to marry her. The society"s doubts in the commitment of her partner make a cohabiting woman pitied and looked down upon, which could be damaging for her self-esteem and psychological well-being regardless of her own perception of her partner"s commitment."
L. Friedman has experienced this condescending (显得高人一等的) attitude towards single or unmarried women. "Really great things happened to me in my life during this period when most people were kind of pitying me," she said of a being single—a period during which her career took off, she took her dream vacation and her social life became more dynamic than ever. "But people always ask me "Don"t you want to meet someone?""
M. This specific breed of condescension led freelance writer Sara Eckel to pen a Modern Love column for the New Fork Times in 2011 (and eventually a fantastic book) on the topic, to explain to women what she says we essentially already know: that there"s nothing to "fix"—single women are fine as they are.
N. Yes, you"re still "great" and more than capable of living a happy, fulfilling life, whether or not you"re involved with someone romantically.
O. With barely half of US adults married as of 2011 and delayed marriage on the rise, the conversation about singles is shifting. Considering the ever-growing population of women living abundantly happy lives without a partner, how could it not? Of course, downplaying (对……轻描淡写) the special role that marriage plays in many people"s lives isn"t the answer, either. Rather, it"s important to recognize that some people find happiness with a partner later in life or in a more unconventional form of coupledom.
P. According to Pew"s 2010 statistics, 84 percent of unmarried people cite "love"—rather than "making a lifelong commitment," "companionship," "having children" or "financial stability"—as the reason to get married. Perhaps women are starting to feel they should get married on their terms, rather than relying on perceived cultural norms. Take a look at Hannah Horvath on "Girls" or Liz Lemon on "30 Rock," and you"ll see that pop culture is already helping to redefine what it means to be single in contemporary society.
Q. All of this awareness, however, won"t always relieve all of your fears and insecurities, and that"s OK. As Eckel points out in her book, "If you feel sad sometimes, it"s not because you"re single—it"s because you"re alive." After all, pain is part of life.
R. Obviously, not every single woman feels bad about her relationship status, so this statement merely applies to those who do.