The Singles Gym Blog

Being Single - Advantage or Health Risk

Is Being Single a Health Risk?

“A happy marriage lowers blood pressure.”   I read this headline as I sat in a warm sunny corner of the spa where I was staying at for a weekend to escape the windy, cold and snowy weather that had descended for the Easter weekend.

The study, being reported by David Gardner in the Daily Mail (28 March 2008), shared the results of a study that compared the blood pressure of 204 married and 99 single adults at random intervals throughout the day and night.  The conclusion of the study, as reported by Gardner, suggested that happily-married couples are more likely to live longer and be healthier and fitter than those who are single. 

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out what the solution being offered might be if you want to be healthy, fit and live longer – get married! 

Something, however, didn’t seem quite right to me as I re-read the headline. "Happily married have lower blood pressure than singles."

Commitment Phobia - A Modern Malady

As a psychologist, I get referrals to help people with all kinds of phobias.  I have, however, never, in all my years of practice, ever received a referral for anyone suffering a ‘commitment phobia’ yet this problem seems to have reached epidemic proportions and is causing untold heartache for so many people.

Sharon and John have been together for six years.  Sharon wants to get married, John doesn’t.  Every time Sharon brings up the issue John accuses Sharon of nagging.  He refuses to talk about the issue, except to rationalize his stance and to tell Sharon that she is being too ‘needy’ and demanding.

Sharon feels confused and frustrated by the mixed messages she gets from John.  On the one hand, John is always telling Sharon how much he loves her. He assures her that they will always be together and he tells her how utterly devastated he would be if they ever split up. On the other hand, John refuses to take their relationship one step further.  Likewise, John seems to prioritise his time at work and his time at social activities over his time with Sharon.  She seems to constantly come in at third on John’s priorities and if she didn’t arrange her timetable to fit in with John’s timetable, they probably wouldn’t spend much time together at all.

Single - Advantages to Travelling Solo

Have you ever wanted to book a holiday, gone online, only to find that most holidays cater for families with children or lovey-dovey couples?  You don't want the noise and activities that hotels and travel companies offer families and you also don't want to be the only single standing out like a sore thumb in a resort full of newly married, newly engaged or newly come together couples!

Well, things, thank goodness are changing.  More companies are catering for single travellers and without all the stigma that used to surround single people doing things on their own!

Jayne Clark, writing for USA TODAY notes that mainstream travel tour operators are increasingly, targeting singles-only itineraries.  The move, she writes, is designed to tap into a growing lucrative market – the baby boomers who are entering their retirement years.

According to Clark, a survey of 30,000 revealed that 25 million singles age 42 and older will spend $28 billion on travel this year. “This group,” she writes,  “is more likely to take weekend trips and spend proportionately more per person than other travelers.”

How (Not) To Find Love

Everyone spends a huge amount of their lives, tantalized by love, either by looking for it, trying to keep it, or trying to get over it. We have more opportunities to meet people, we have more disposable income, more leisure time than any generation before yet finding love seems so elusive to so many.

Martha Beck writing for Oprah.com (Living, November 2007) notes that today’s dating game is based on the concepts of scheming, flattering, and playing hard to get. These behaviours are all based on a model of love-seeking where the idea of romantic pursuit is a type of predation, a hunting experience – the goal of which is to capture. The predatory model of dating has even infiltrated the words we use. The kind of question you will most likely be met with when you next meet up with your friends is “Did you pull last night?” You might have also heard people talking about ‘dressing to kill.’