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> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim

> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them. Relationships bring significant happiness. People who are in relationships self-report more happiness. They're richer. They live longer lives. You might say that I'm mistaking cause and effect: maybe happier/richer/healthier people are more likely to enter into relationships? This is probably part of the effect, but not the majority of it. If someone randomly ends up a widower from their partner experiencing a sudden, tragic accident, their happiness doesn't remain level. In fact, it substantially decreases: widowers have some of the highest suicide rates of any demographic group. Relationships aren't some crazy random idea that just happened to develop in 2020 USA. They exist universally, across all cultures and times. All of them consider a relationship as a good, important goal (even as the typical attributes of relationships do vary). It's hard to name any facet of culture as universal as that.

rafaelero 6y ago
Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic relationship to be happy is a little overblown?
- scarmig 6y ago
  Do you have a particular study you could point me to? I do find twin studies useful. I found https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/ which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.
  - rafaelero 6y ago
    Sure, here it is: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00355.x https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb... Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research. Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of our conversation I would say they are all close enough to what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other). Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be evidence that widowed and divorced people are more depressed, but not single people (compared to the baseline, married people). At least when running the regression with all the other important variables controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
    - scarmig 6y ago
      For the paper I found, I was looking at Table 4, which is of single never-married people comparing to the baseline of married people. Table 3 seems to correspond to what you're seeing. Skimming the discussion, they guess that the difference in depression and BMI scores between never married/married is due to health selection effects, although AFAICT there's not really a way to differentiate between health selection effects and marriage playing a causal role. I'll take a look at your paper later.
landryraccoon 6y ago
Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single. Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy! Way to dogpile on people when they're down. I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
- scarmig 6y ago
  I see far more people saying the opposite, that if you're single and unhappy, it's your fault for not trying hard enough to be happy. Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't. It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see a relationship as an important component of their path to happiness.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner." Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of control over all these things. I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more respected, having a partner, all those things can add amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it is.
  - scarmig 6y ago
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rafaelero 6y ago

Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic relationship to be happy is a little overblown?

scarmig 6y ago
Do you have a particular study you could point me to? I do find twin studies useful. I found https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/ which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.
- rafaelero 6y ago
  Sure, here it is: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00355.x https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb... Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research. Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of our conversation I would say they are all close enough to what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other). Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be evidence that widowed and divorced people are more depressed, but not single people (compared to the baseline, married people). At least when running the regression with all the other important variables controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
  - scarmig 6y ago
    For the paper I found, I was looking at Table 4, which is of single never-married people comparing to the baseline of married people. Table 3 seems to correspond to what you're seeing. Skimming the discussion, they guess that the difference in depression and BMI scores between never married/married is due to health selection effects, although AFAICT there's not really a way to differentiate between health selection effects and marriage playing a causal role. I'll take a look at your paper later.

landryraccoon 6y ago

Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single. Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy! Way to dogpile on people when they're down. I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)

scarmig 6y ago
I see far more people saying the opposite, that if you're single and unhappy, it's your fault for not trying hard enough to be happy. Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't. It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see a relationship as an important component of their path to happiness.
cushychicken 6y ago
Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner." Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of control over all these things. I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more respected, having a partner, all those things can add amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it is.
- scarmig 6y ago

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