There's 2-3+ groups of unpartnered people though. - Wanted to be partnered - unsuccessful at finding that long-term partnership. - People who didn't want to b

There's 2-3+ groups of unpartnered people though. - Wanted to be partnered - unsuccessful at finding that long-term partnership. - People who didn't want to be partnered - and there's likely subgroups here: - People who aren't desiring of much social contact at all. - People who are highly social but not desiring that long-term romantic partnership, and have a lot of relationships of varying degrees of attachment throughout their lives and strong social ties to others - including close friendships. ------ Most literature I've seen on the "unmarried people die younger" doesn't really seem to look at anything beyond maybe splitting the never married | divorced | widowed groups. It can be a true statement for that as a whole but not necessarily true for the "unmarried by choice with an extensive network of close friendships + social connections" group being suggested by the article and by most "learn to love being single" people. They likely don't look a whole lot like the lives of the "unsuccessful at finding a partner" or "dislike social contact" groups. ------ To counter-argue myself though - the average number of close friends + social connections has been shrinking overall in the population. I don't know if it's great advice for the average person, since they're objectively doing worse at building those possible alternative connections than prior generations. And I'm not sure it's because they're too laser-focused on a partnership.