People who are married with children have a life path with conventional milestones such as marrying and having children.

Without a romantic partner at the center of their lives (and for some single people, without children either), single people are free to design their paths through life. Although that can be daunting or even dispiriting to the reluctantly single, it can be thrilling to single people who embrace their single lives.

1. The joy of following your passions and building a life of your own

In her book, When the Church Burns Down, Cancel the Wedding, Sara Braca described how she felt while she was married and then when she became single again. Here’s the marriage part:

“Over time, I had lost touch with anyone my husband didn’t like, which was pretty much all of my friends and most of my family. I lost my confidence as I grew more and more dependent on him and his friends. I lost my passions as I stopped doing many of the things that mattered to me, even traveling less to appease his worries about being away from home for too long and spending too much money.”

Surprise! Her husband left her for a younger woman after she had supported him while he built his career. Newly single, she went back to traveling, which she had always loved. Here’s her report from her stroll along a canal in Amsterdam:

“I felt pretty and vibrant and fully alive like I hadn’t felt in years. And I realized why. I was exactly, precisely where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, and I had made all that happen through my own efforts . . . I felt empowered. Independent. Free. It was like a simultaneous flashback to the old adventurous, pre-marriage me, and a flash forward to the new me I could be . . .”

As Sara Braca discovered, single life can be joyful, fulfilling, and psychologically rich.

 2. The joy of sexual freedom

In one of their studies, Kolehmainen and her colleagues interviewed bisexual women who had recently separated, and in another, single heterosexual men, ages 32–52, wrote about their single lives. In the interviews with the bisexual women, Kolehmainen and her colleagues said, “There was an exhilarating feel to participants’ experiences of sexual encounters with more than one partner, which had often not been possible in their previous, monogamous relationships.”

The same theme showed up in the writings of some of the single men. For example, a man who did not have one committed sexual partner and enjoyed sexual experiences with several women said, “Life without a steady relationship has been the happiest time of my life ... I have female friends with whom I can live out both emotional intimacy and erotics very well.”

For other newly single people, one of the joys of single life is the freedom from feeling obligated to have sex they don’t want, or kinds of sex they don’t like. Similarly, lifelong single people who are not all that interested in sex enjoy the freedom not to have it. 

 3. The emotional depth afforded by solitude

In my study of people who are Single at Heart — whose most authentic, fulfilling, and meaningful life is single life — I found that just about every person who fits that description love their solitude. You can’t scare them by telling them they are going to end up spending a lot of time alone or that they are going to be lonely; they savor the time they have to themselves, and they are rarely lonely.

Time spent alone, for those who like having time to themselves, can be relaxing and calming, a chance to read or watch TV or play video games. It can also be an opportunity to go deep, to access emotions, and to think about what you want from your life. It can also be good for creativity, productivity, and spirituality.

 4. The joy of deciding for yourself who matters, rather than defaulting to a romantic partner

People who are single at heart love their solitude, but most of them love having other people in their lives, too. The joy of not building a life around a romantic partner is that you get to decide for yourself how many people you want to have in your life, how much time you want to spend with them, and how meaningful a relationship you want to build with them. 

You can do that without worrying whether your romantic partner might not like them or might feel threatened by the time you want to spend with them or the deep affection you feel toward them.

I’m not (just) talking about potential romantic partners. The important people in our lives, such as our friends, can be people with whom we develop deep attachments and close emotional bonds — or they can include people whose company we enjoy more casually.

 5. The feeling of pride for living authentically, despite all the pressures to couple up

It is relentless, that messaging that insists that romantically coupled life is normal and natural and superior to being single. The single at heart who resist that messaging and embrace their single lives are living authentically. For that, they can enjoy another very positive emotion: pride.