New Magazine Targets Successful Singles

Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times reports on a new magazine for unmarried people.

Now this 65-year-old divorcé is trying to help other unmarried people embrace their lifestyle and shed the stereotype that they're lonely bachelors or cat-loving old maids.

There are some men and women like that. There are people who are unhappily unmarried. There are people who are unhappily married. And yes, there are people who are happily married. Some people are happy people, whether they are unmarried or married. Some people are miserable either way (and should not subject someone else to themselves).

A serial entrepreneur, Wright recently launched Singular, a Los Angeles magazine for singles that doles out advice, travel suggestions and profiles of unmarried people who travel to Tonga, collect vintage sex manuals and play polo when not performing acupuncture.

It is a lot easier to travel and buy stuff when you're not supporting other people (aside from taxes), and your not accountable to anyone for your free time (save God).

Call it a reflection of our times -- or a response to them -- Wright's new enterprise might strike a chord with the growing number of Americans who choose to marry later or not at all. About 42% of people over the age of 18 are single, according to the Census Bureau, and the proportion of one-person households increased to 26% in 2005 from 17% in 1970.

Even people who want to marry should wait until after 25. There are a lot of people between the ages of 18 and 25. People are also living long as divorced or widowed. That contibutes to the number of "singles".

The magazine, which launched in September, comes at a time when the stigma around staying single is disappearing, said David Popenoe, director of the National Marriage Project.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being unmarried.

Some Smug Marrieds, as fictional character Bridget Jones calls them, didn't get the memo. They still barrage singles with questions about why they haven't married and suggestions about how to find a date, said Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and author of "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After."

Which is wrong. If you're happily married, live like it, and your unmarried friends who also want to be happily married will ask you for your advice or help if they want it. Those who don't want to marry don't need you tell them otherwise, any more than they should tell you how to become unmarried.

"We're creating a community of people who want to have their best life now," Calvert said from a plush red chair in the airy Westside living room that serves as the magazine's headquarters. She lives upstairs, with her parrot and three cats.

Three cats? Hmmm. While it may not be a problem to have that many cats, more often then not I say there's a "cat cycle"… someone is lonely, so they get a cat. That automatically reduces the number of people who would partner with them, which may, in turn, prompt the acquisition of another cat. So on and so forth. If you are an umarried woman, and want to get married, and have the impulse to add a third or fourth cat to your home, let it pass. Instead, think about what you are doing that is keeping you from attracting and keeping the right spouse.

Still, the website highlights the strange paradox of gathering singles together. While Singular emphasizes the idea that romantic relationships are not essential for happiness, it also facilitates dating and meet-ups.

Are you saying that the magazine has a financial interest in keeping reader single? Perhaps. In which case, I would be wary of partnering advice from it. But it could still be useful to unmarried people, because finding a partner is not their sole interest, or perhaps an interest of theirs at all.

A few matchmakers even crashed the party to find potential clients.

"Everybody wants love, attention and affection," said one matchmaker, Dianne Bennett, who runs millionaires-matchmaker.com. "People do want relationships."

Bennett has a financial interest in her assertion. Some people cant get those things without giving up being unmarried. Some people value their freedom more than those things.