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This chapter explores the dynamics of choosing partners, dating, singlehood, and cohabitation. It delves into the factors that influence marriage choices and the challenges faced by singles. The chapter also discusses the myths and realities surrounding singlehood and offers insights into initiating and dealing with breakups.
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Chapter 7 Singlehood, Pairing, and Cohabitation
Chapter Outline • Choosing partners • Dating and romantic relationships • Singlehood • Cohabitation
Marriage Marketplace • Selection activities when sizing up someone as a potential date or mate. • Each person has resources, such as social class, status, age, and physical attractiveness. • Men offer status, economic resources, and protection. • Women offer nurturing, childbearing, and physical attractiveness.
Marriage Squeeze • Gender imbalance reflected in the ratio of available unmarried women to men. • There are significantly more unmarried women than men, but in the age group of 15 to 39 years, there are significantly more unmarried men than women. • Marital choice is also affected by the tendency for women to marry men of higher status.
Field of Eligibles • Consists of those of whom our culture approves as potential partners. • Limited by the principles of endogamy and exogamy. • Further limited by the tendency to choose a mate whose individual or group characteristics are similar to ours.
Reasons Heterogamous Marriages Might be Less Stable • Their values, attitudes, and behaviors, may be considerably different. • They may lack approval from parents, relatives, and friends. • They are probably less conventional and less likely to continue an unhappy marriage for the sake of appearances.
Stimulus-value-role Theory • In the stimulus stage, each person is attracted to the other before the actual interaction. • In the value stage, each weighs the other’s basic values for compatibility. • In the role stage, each person analyzes the other’s behaviors in roles as lover, companion, and so on.
Initiating a Breakup • Be sure you want to break up. • Conflicts or problems, instead of being a reason to break up,may be a rich source of personal development if they are worked out. • Acknowledge that your partner will be hurt. • Not breaking up because you don’t want to hurt your partner may actually be an excuse for not wanting to be honest.
Initiating a Breakup • Once you end the relationship, do not see your former partner as “friends” until considerable time has passed. • Being friends may be a subterfuge for continuing the relationship on terms wholly advantageous to yourself. • Don’t change your mind. • Ambivalence after ending a relationship is not a sign that you made a wrong decision; neither is loneliness. Both indicate that the relationship was valuable for you.
If Your Partner Breaks up With You: • The pain and loneliness you feel are natural and they will eventually pass. • They are part of the loss of an important relationship, but they are not necessarily signs of love. • You are worthwhile, whether you are with a partner or not. • Keep a sense of humor. It may help ease the pain.
Singlehood • According to the 2000 Census, 24% of the U.S. population, 18 and older, had never married. • Over 68 million adult Americans (18 or older) are unmarried (divorced or never married). • When we include the 13.6 million widows and widowers, the number rises to over 80 million Americans.
Unmarried Lifestyles • Never married • Divorced • Young • Old • Single parents • Gay men • Lesbians • Widows and widowers
Factors in Rising Number of Single Adults • Delayed marriage - The longer one postpones marriage, the greater the likelihood of never marrying. • Expanded lifestyle and employment options currently open to women. • Increased rates of divorce and decreased likelihood of remarriage.
Factors in Rising Number of Single Adults • Increased number of women enrolled in colleges and universities. • More liberal social and sexual standards. • Uneven ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women.
Four Types of Singles • Ambivalents: voluntarily single and consider their singleness temporary. • Wishfuls: involuntarily and temporarily single. They are actively seeking marital partners but have been unsuccessful so far.
Four Types of Singles • Resolveds: Regard themselves as permanently single. A small percentage are priests, nuns, or single parents who prefer rearing their children alone. • Regretfuls: Prefer to marry but are resigned to their “fate.”
Singles: Myths And Realities • Singles are dependent on their parents. • Few differences exist between singles and marrieds in their perceptions of their parents and relatives. • Singles are self-centered. • Singles value friends more than do married people. • Singles are more involved in community service projects.
Singles: Myths And Realities • Singles have more money. • Fewer than half the singles interviewed made more than $20K/ a year. • Singles are happier. • Singles tend to believe that they are happier than marrieds, whereas marrieds believe that they are happier than singles. • Singles view singlehood as a lifetime alternative. • The majority of singles expected to be married within five years.
Characteristics of Singlehood • Singles don’t easily fit into married society. • Singles have more time. • Singles have more choices and more opportunities for leisure activities.
Characteristics of Singlehood • Singles have more fun. • Singles engage more in sports and physical activities, and have more sexual partners than do marrieds. • Singles are lonely. • The feeling of loneliness is more pervasive for the divorced than the never married.
Reasons to Cohabit • Temporary casual convenience • Affectionate dating or going together. • Economic advantage or necessity. • Trial marriage. • Respite from being single. • Temporary alternative to marriage. • Permanent alternative to marriage.
Legal Rights and Benefits Only For Married Couples • File joint tax returns • Automatically make medical decisions if your partner is injured or incapacitated. • Automatically inherit your partner’s property if he or she dies without a will. • Enter hospitals, jails, and other places restricted to “immediate family”. • Create a marital life estate trust.
Legal Rights and Benefits Only For Married Couples • Claim the unlimited marital deduction from estate taxes. • Receive survivor’s benefits. • Obtain health and dental insurance, bereavement leave, and other employment benefits.
Legal Rights and Benefits Only For Married Couples • Collect unemployment benefits if you quit your job to move with a partner who has obtained a new job. • Live in neighborhoods zoned “family only”. • Get residency status for a noncitizen partner to avoid deportation.
Gay and Lesbian Cohabitation • Between 600,000 and 1.5 million gay men and lesbians cohabit. • Whereas heterosexual cohabiting couples tend to adopt a traditional marriage model, lesbians and gay men utilize a “best friend” model that promotes equality in roles and power.
