Dthemselves say that being a single woman – without a partner, without children, without even wanting them and, perhaps, never having had them – is beautiful, rewarding, gives back meaning and nourishes the soul, because it is an authentic existential conditionthe only one, perhaps, that allows you to realize yourself as the person you truly are.
Of this conditionincreasingly widespread and today even more claimed, a new book is about which encourages us to deconstruct the current, negative idea of women without relationship constraints. Stop telling us we’re not happy. A survey of single women (Enrico Damiani editor) by Gabriella Grassois an essay that interweaves research and real life stories – collected throughout Italy – of single women aged thirty to sixty-nine and fed up, at this point, of being defined in the collective perception by absence – without a boyfriend, without a husband, without children – and therefore sad and dry, unfulfilled, perhaps even problematic or, in any case, lacking that balance and completeness ritually recognized in those who are in a couple. And yet, no. They they are proud of their independence and they don’t envy married or engaged women anything.
Single women, time and space all to themselves
This life centered on the full availability of oneself and all one’s time, on the profound satisfaction of being enough, asks to be recognized today: it does not do so with the idea of flaunting a pride of belonging that no single person actually shows they have, nor of inaugurating yet another new category of identity, but with the desire to tell the world that they exist too, single and happy, or rather, happy precisely because they are single.
«The intent of my book is to change the social gaze on women who have chosen or found themselves not having a stable romantic relationship – although not all of them rule out finding a partner in the future – and who derive profound well-being from this situation. They are the women who are never listened to” says Gabriella Grasso. A journalist who has worked for women’s magazines for a long time, she has intertwined her work with the tumultuous evolutions of women in recent decades.
«The goal is to free all women without constraints from the stigma and make them feel authorized to escape the “normality” of the couple: ours is a world that still subtly convinces those who are not in a relationship that they are inadequate, wrong, even failedas if the couple were the only possible condition to which fulfillment and yes, let’s face it, happiness belong. Of course, none of the women I interviewed hide that they also experience moments of fatigue and disorientation, but they would certainly struggle much more to share space and time with a partner” adds Gabriella Grasso.
«In any case, a painful paradox persists: being autonomous and constantly relying only on oneself equips one with extraordinary existential – practical and emotional – skills, and yet the world struggles to recognize and validate them socially. A frankly incomprehensible waste of skill.”
The new normal
After all, Italy is slowly becoming a country of single people. Istat has just put in black and white that living alone is increasingly common: non-widowed singles now number 6.3 million and represent approximately one in four families and what is striking is that, according to forecasts, in 2050 41 percent of households – an enormous share, moving towards half of the total – will be made up of just one person.
It goes without saying that living alone is not the same as being single, or rather not having a love relationship (Istat takes a registry photograph, certainly not a sentimental one), but the demographic imbalance towards the so-called singlenesswhich Istat is also measuring so clearly, appears to be the prelude of something that is growing, of a trend, a new horizon in formation in the name of a life in the name of itself.
In Italy today singles make up one in four families (Getty Images).
From Istat surveys to Singles Studies
In several countries, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, we have been dealing with this for a while: Singles Studies, a current of sociological research Blessed are the singles! which focuses on divorced people, those who are widowed, those who have never married and who do not have a stable relationship, have for some time been exploring in depth the condition of those who no longer live without constraints.
At the head of a virtual ranking for authority and depth, there are the publications of the American social scientist Bella DePaulo, starting from her Single at Heart. The Power, Freedom and Joy of Single Life. To whom the Israeli sociologist Elyakim Kislev (his Happy Singlehood. The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living), the American sociologist from New York University Eric Klinenberg (Going Solo. The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone), the Indian sociologist Ketaki Chowkhani, who holds a course on Single Studiespodcaster Lucy Meggeson, author of Thrive Solo.
A rewarding condition
It has something to do with this widespread atomization of life, of which single people are the most explicit embodiment the widespread instability of relationships and the post-romantic era that is reshaping love into new possibilitiesas Annalisa Ambrosio says in hers Love has changed (Einaudi). And mass subjectivity counts, as does feminism, the freedoms increasingly explicitly claimed by women, the professional careers that allow one to be self-sufficient, starting from an economic self-sufficiency that evolves into an existential one, and also the non-stop entertainment of the web, which truly never leaves one alone.
«I believe that in this historical moment it is becoming broader, more visible, aware and legitimized a phenomenon that has, in reality, been slow moving since the 1970sthat is, since young people began to question whether the couple and the family, as they have traditionally been understood, were the only dimensions of possible relationships” says sociologist Graziella Civenti. In 2015 he conducted a pioneering analysis on women who live alone, through which he concluded that those who choose to be self-sufficient and happy generally come from very rich and aware experiences, and all this puts into the background the conception, theorized in the past, which associated the stable absence of romantic relationships with trauma or emotional and psychological deficits.
Single women and loneliness
«Today a multiplicity of social networks nourish the experiences of those who, for different reasons, choose not to want to be a couple, as well as those who find themselves permanently and gratifyingly in this condition despite not having decided to do so. In my research conducted on women aged 45 and overI have found that while in the older ones loneliness is generally a condition suffered and, therefore, often painful, in the others a change of pace is felt more clearly as the age decreases.”
«I’m not saying that the choices are always clear cut: I myself have experienced two great loves, I was in love with romantic love and I tortured myself for a long time, when I no longer found myself in it because, despite everything, I persisted in wanting to portray myself in the role of a wife. Until I understood, also thanks to analysis, that being alone had become my story, and that this story was the only one that I had to grasp and recognize” concludes Graziella Civenti. And he quotes a US bestseller from 1938, The pleasure of living alone by Marjorie Hillis (published in Italy in 2008): “Living alone can be a tragedy at first and a great sadness for many years, but in the end it can become a passion.”
Looking at the world with empathy
In Stop telling us we’re not happy, Gabriella Grasso writes that these women are anything but aloneand anything but selfish creatures with sealed hearts. Indeed, for them “there is a world to be welcomed, embraced, made to flourish outside the traditional couple”.
Gabriella Grasso’s latest book, “Stop telling us that we are not happy. An investigation into single women” (Enrico Damiani Editore).
In short, they build relationships, all right, only that they redefine them in a completely new waystarting from putting oneself at the center of every choice. According to Bella DePaulo, they nurture a dense and emotional sociality. “While some complain that declining marriage rates are fraying the social fabric, national survey results show that such concern is misplaced. Compared to married and previously married people, singles have always maintained more contact with siblings and parents and socialized more with friends and neighbors” DePaulo wrote in the US newspaper The Atlantic.
“Singles are especially likely to be there when the needs of others are greatest. When aging parents need help, they are more likely to get it from their single adult children than from their married ones. And marriage is not a magic elixir to resolve social isolation: couples who move in together or get married become more isolated over time” writes the expert, who works at the University of California.
The priceless value of friendship
If it is true that the couple will lose its centrality, according to Elyakim Kislev, alternative ways of relating on an emotional and sentimental level will flourish, yet to be imagined and which the sociologist brings together under the umbrella name post-traditional intimacy. And, above all, “the institution of friendship will come forward to fill the void left by marriage” he writes, giving a glimpse of a rethinking of social structures, which overcome blood, kinship and marital ties.
Will individual people have a role in this transformation? «Single women have a strong propensity to socialize» replies Gabriella Grasso«because they have more time, more space within themselves and because they need it, and therefore they are extremely good at weaving networks, starting from proximity ones.
Listening to the stories of the many who have opened up and told themselves, the desire emerges to make communities of affections germinate, constellations of significant bonds based on friendship with which to share care, time, space, in a vision of transformation of relationships and social structures. A powerful change. It won’t happen tomorrow, it will take a long time, but already today when single girls talk about it they light up.”