A just-published study followed the lives of more than 2,700 Americans, all of whom who started out single and not cohabiting. By the time the study ended six years later, some of them had cohabited, others got married and still others stayed single.

In some ways,...

What were they thinking? Did Herman Cain really think he could keep his 13-year friends-with-financial-benefits arrangement with Ginger White a secret? Did Ginger White think that she would never have to tell her (now grown) children about the alleged affair? What about the plagiarists, fraudulent memoirists, fake warriors, and all...

Who lies? My best guess is that everyone does. That's what my research, and other work, too, suggests. For example, in one of the sets of studies that my colleagues and I conducted, two groups of people -- 77 college students and 70 people from the community --...

If you are an adolescent or a young adult, what could you do that could put you at risk for becoming more depressed, more sexist, and more likely to have problems with drinking and delinquency? If you are a young woman, what related experience might turn you off to science,...

A just-published article claims that people who stay single are headed straight to the grave -- and fast. Faster than people who are currently married. The media is already on it, as with today's MSNBC headline, "Single people may die younger, new study finds""and the many...

Credibility is a fraught issue these days. Playing out in one courtroom is the debacle of the discredited accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. In another is the Casey Anthony trial with its holiday parade of potential liars. Maybe you are confident that you are a terrific lie detector --...

No, that title is not my advice. It is my riff on Pamela Haag's provocative new book, Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules. The 21st century, she argues, is a post-romantic age of melancholy...

Christine Carter's recent post asked, "Does Marriage Make Us Happier?" Her answer is yes, and she refers to a published study to make her case. I'll explain why that study does not show that getting married makes you happier.

An Analogy

First, let's set aside the matrimania and...

"DePaulo says that 'singlism' -- a term she coined and for which we are prepared to forgive her -- is not just aimed at unmarried women." -Gail Collins, New York Times, December 4, 2008

That quote sums up what it has been like to be the...

Stop telling single people why they are not married. If you are so sure that becoming unsingle is the ultimate and tyrannically powerful life goal of most single people, you probably believe a lot of other things about singles that just aren't true. It's time for some debunking.

Here...

Have you heard about the latest survey of single people? It is based on a nationally-representative sample of more than 5,000 Americans, ages 21 to 65+, who are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. It has been all over the media, and I've gotten numerous emails about it from...

Larry King was absolutely obsessed with marriage. Not only did he marry time and time again, but he peppered just about all of his guests with a barrage of questions about their marital status and aspirations -- especially if they were single.

Now Piers Morgan has taken...

If you love food, friends, and camaraderie, and if you would like to hear the story of a club for singles that has nothing to do with dating and has lasted nearly four decades (and is still going strong), you are going to love this guest essay. It was contributed...

We do not honor a remarkable friendship by proclaiming that it has "all the best qualities of the happiest and most resilient marriages." We honor it by recognizing that it is its own special thing.

Midway through her New York Times review of Gail Caldwell's Let's...

Time magazine calls marriage a 'luxury yacht.' Remember what happened on the last cruise ship?

The cover of Time magazine asks, in big bold letters, "Who needs marriage?" Sounds skeptical, doesn't it? In many ways, the article is skeptical. But when I got to the end of...

Most headlines from the recent Pew and Time survey were some variation on "4 in 10 say marriage is becoming obsolete." The full report was titled "The decline of marriage and the rise of new families" and it described an American population not too rattled about...

Watching President Obama on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night reminded me of why I think so highly of him. In no particular order, my incomplete list of reasons includes the following:

• He takes the long view, in both directions. Challenged about the health care bill that passed,...

The word on the street is that the Facebook movie, The Social Network, ruins Mark Zuckerberg's reputation. I'm not so sure.

The review in the Los Angeles Times captured much of the apparent consensus about the movie, including the characterizations of Mark Zuckerberg as "extremely unlikable," "self-absorbed and...

Just how often do married people cheat on their spouse? For decades, social scientists have been asking a representative national sample of Americans to 'fess up to their own infidelity and to pass judgments on others who cheat. The results were published in a recent issue of the journal

A few days ago, a new Census Bureau report was released, and we learned the same thing we have been hearing for decades: the number of single Americans just keeps growing. There are now 106.4 million Americans, 18 and older, who are divorced or widowed or have always...