"Ah, That's Why They're Single": 35 Times People’s Single Status Made Absolute Sense

We managed to get in touch with TakinShots, and the Redditor told Bored Panda that the idea for the post "came about when a friend told our friend group that guys and girls can't be friends. At that point, I was curious about what other silly things people have heard being said to them."

"I would say most of the answers are based around specific things being said on actual dates," the author of the post added.

"A lot of the answers involve people saying something sexist or doing something really awkward on a date. There's a wide variety of responses that are all entertaining to read, but some, like the fake bomb story, are really scary too!"

This makes sense. Samantha Joel, who is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Utah, focuses her research on how people make decisions about their romantic relationships.

She scheduled a talk in October 2019 at the University of Waterloo in Canada with the straightforward title: "Can we help people pick better romantic partners?"

To answer that question, she teamed up with 85 of the world's most renowned scientists, combining data from 43 studies, mining hundreds of variables collected from more than 10,000, and utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning models. And the answer was no.

The number one—and most surprising—lesson in the data, Joel said, is how unpredictable relationships seem to be. She and her coauthors found that the demographics, preferences, and values of two people had surprisingly little power in predicting whether those two people were happy in a romantic relationship.

TakinShots believes that society's perception of being single depends largely on who you ask. "I would say most people are fine with being single, and a lot of people don't really care. Perhaps in certain social situations, the question of whether someone has a partner may come up, and there might be a certain 'expectation' that a person with X job or Y personality should have a partner. At that point, there might be some surprise. As for judging others who are single, it can happen, but this is a minority population; it's very immature and reeks of insecurity."

Geoff MacDonald, a psychologist at the University of Toronto whose lab studies the well-being of single people, agrees.

"There seems to be evidence that around the world people are staying single longer and sometimes staying single permanently," he said.

MacDonald's research found that those who are most unhappy about being single and who have the lowest overall satisfaction with their lives are people who crave connection. He describes them as "anxiously attached" individuals. And those who are happiest with being single tend to be more independent people who are comfortable being alone.

"There's actually not a lot of difference between the kinds of people who are happy single, and the kinds of people who are happy in relationships," the psychologist explained.