A full life, and room in it.
On being single in your forties: after a long relationship, by choice, or somewhere in between.
Questions we answer
Worth reading elsewhere
Full reading list →Single at 40Pew Research Center, 2020
A profile of single Americans (opens pewresearch.org)Shows who is single in the US, how many are not looking to date, and the reasons they give.
Post-breakup lonelinessCleveland Clinic
How To Get Over a Breakup: 11 Tips for Healing (opens health.clevelandclinic.org)Clinician-reviewed steps for handling the loneliness and identity loss that follow a breakup.
A full lifeGreater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley
One Key to Being Happy When You're Single (opens greatergood.berkeley.edu)Research on how social activity shapes happiness for single people, sometimes more than for married people.
How we work
- Sourced. Every claim links to the research or data behind it.
- Dated. Each article shows when it was written and last updated.
- Independent of ads. No ads, no sponsored rankings, no paid placements.
- Honest about limits. We say what the research does not show. Editorial standards
Tool: the 8-question pattern check
Eight questions about the last few people you dated. You get one of nine pattern cards. It runs in your browser and nothing is saved.