Are Couples Jealous of Single People?

Some of the first studies I ever conducted on people who are single were about how people perceive them. It was disappointing, but not really surprising, to find that many of the perceptions were negative. For example, many think single people are less happy and less mature than married or coupled people. That’s also how many single people feel that they are treated in their everyday lives. They are not believed when they say they are happily single. They sometimes get “the kids’ treatment,” as when they get the couch in the living room instead of a bedroom with a door that shuts when they visit other people, or even more literally when they are assigned to the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.

When the topic of the disparaging perceptions or treatment of single people comes up in online discussion groups, a popular explanation is that coupled people put single people down or try to put them in their place because they are jealous of them. University of Denver law professor Nancy Leong proposed that possibility, too, in an article on “negative identity”—“identity marked by indifference or antipathy to something that much of society considers fundamental.” Single people who choose to be single and who want to stay single are an example of a negative identity group, as are asexuals, childfree, and atheists.

One possible explanation for the negativity such groups endure, Professor Leong proposes, is that the identity “is so far outside a person’s understanding that they fear, distrust, and dislike people with that identity.”

That’s not the jealousy explanation. Something more like jealousy comes into play when “a particular negative identity hits uncomfortably close to home.” When that happens, “The particularly vicious animus directed at negative identity is a way of people persuading themselves that their own lifestyle really is the right one.” It’s a defensive reaction.

When people in romantic relationships feel jealous of single people, they are feeling threatened. Here’s how Professor Leong describes what happens with regard to single people as well as the other negative identity groups she discussed:

“Encountering someone who is content with her negative identity forces positive group members to contemplate what life might be like without religion, without sex, without a partner, without children. Perhaps it forces positive identity group members to admit they are a little bit curious, or a little bit jealous. Or it might force them to convince themselves that they are not curious, or not jealous. The intensity of the attraction manifests itself in overt revulsion.”

When people insist that married people or those in committed romantic relationships are superior to single people, that belief may come from a place of insecurity. A study demonstrated that participants who were insecure about their “personal ability to have a good, healthy, and positive committed relationship” were especially likely to believe that married people, and people in committed romantic relationships, have better lives than single people do. People who were more secure about their own romantic relationship abilities were less likely to put single people down.

Sometimes coupled people feel that single people have better lives than they do, but not because they are at all threatened by single people. Instead, they genuinely admire single people and long for the lives they have. I discovered that in my explorations of people who are “single at heart”—people who live their best lives, their most authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling lives, by living single. At first, I thought that people who see single life as their best life would all be single. But then I started hearing from people who are in a committed coupled relationship or even married who insist that they, too, are single at heart.

There are several different versions of coupled people who identify as single at heart. One clear example includes the people who loved being single but got married because they thought they should—isn’t that what everyone is expected to do? Marriage, to them, was disappointing, but not because of any fault of their spouse. Every single day, they fantasize about how great it would be to be single again. But they stay married to honor their vows. They still feel very positively toward the person they married, that person has done nothing wrong, and so it would seem unfair to walk away. But wow, do they wish they could.