Join Peter McGraw, fresh off his TEDxBoulder talk “Stop Telling Single People to Get Married,” as he sits down with Mary Dahm in the Solo Studio. They preview the talk, explore the process of crafting and delivering it, and share behind-the-scenes insights, including the challenges of speaking to a large, live audience.
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Listen to Episode #229 here
TEDxBoulder Recap: Stop Telling Single People To Get Married
Welcome back. I am joined by my good friend Mary Dahm, a familiar guest to many of you on the show. Welcome, Mary.
Thank you. It’s good to be here.
You were very kind to come out to Boulder from the big city and support me from big city LA at TEDxBoulder in which I gave a talk titled?
Stop Telling Single People to Get Married.
That’s right. We thought we’d have an informal recap of the experience. We’ll start by talking about the process that I went through to prepare this talk, which you got to witness up close.
Including giving the talk to me approximately fifteen times.
While driving, while walking, and while sitting in the living room. I want to talk a little bit about the process. People will get a sense of what goes into giving a TED-style talk. I’m going to ask you to weigh in on your overall reaction as someone sitting in the front row, and then we’re going to go through the talk passage by passage. I’ll read it and perform it, and then we’ll talk about that element.
I get to hear it again.
The Bones Of The Talk
One last time. I was very flattered. I was approached by the organizers of TEDxBoulder because they were interested in this topic. I had some conversations and I ended up filling out a formal application for this. I’ve been angling to give a TED-style talk about solo. I had submitted an idea to the overall big TED event, which is a little bit of a Hail Mary to get there.
I had done a TEDxBoulder talk many years ago, the first year that TEDx launched in Boulder. I gave a talk called What Makes Things Funny. It went very well. It has about a million views on YouTube. It never made it onto the TED site because I made a joke about jokes that you shouldn’t joke about. It was really fun to be back and to especially see how the night has progressed. It’s a professional group of organizers. It’s incredibly well-run. It’s in this beautiful venue called Chautauqua in Boulder that seats about 1,700 people. It was not a sellout. I would say it was mostly full. The first time I did it, it was sold out.
They have a fairly rigorous coaching process, should you want it, about 7 to 8 weeks leading up to it. There are speaking coaches who volunteer. Shout out to Erin Weed, who was my speaking coach and someone I’ve known for years. She does this professionally and generously gives her time. She was one of the advocates for getting my talk in.
I’m indebted to Erin. I’m also indebted especially to Andrew Hyde who runs the event and has been running it for fourteen years. He’s a class act. He’s got the perfect demeanor for this, which is that he’s highly organized and on top of things but very calm. He’s never agitated. That really helps when the person at the top feels in control of it all.
There are a dozen or so speakers. These are about ten-minute talks. They’re impressive people. These are people who are living remarkable lives. Some of them work in the industry as speakers, but most of them are academics, athletes, scientists, doctors, advocates, and activists who are passionate about particular topics, and it addresses the breadth of topics that night.
I had written an op-ed in response to these cries that I’ve been noticing in the media urging people to get married. Every time one of these articles came out, I would submit this op-ed to the publication, but nothing. No response. No one wants it. Maybe people in the Solo community won’t see it this way, but in some ways, the piece is rather radical, and the message is rather radical for the culture, which is still a world built for two, which we live in.
There’s a particular reaction happening because the birth rate is so low among Millennials. We’re having fewer kids. There’s a reaction against that, too, in trying to get people to get married and have kids.
I like to point out that many years ago, we were worried about the opposite problem about the population. Now, we’re worried about not having enough people on the planet for growth, humanity, and so on. I have dubious beliefs about both of those concerns, but you’re right. There is something that’s happening where the projections from demographers are going to show a drop off in world population. There’s some hand-wringing that’s happening. The solution is to get people married and get them to have kids. We need to do that.
The Economist did a podcast about it about what happens when the population isn’t replacing itself. The irony is that they both have fears that there are not enough people and that more people would contribute to climate change. You can’t win. That’s a tangent, but that’s the world we’re in.
I’ve said this a number of times and I will continue to say it. I don’t believe that it is an individual’s responsibility to save civilization. We should not be doing harm, but it’s a big ask to have someone who doesn’t want to have kids to have kids because of this global problem. I am pro-choice broadly, not just in the limited way that we talk about reproductive. I’m pro-choice very broadly as long as it lives in a world of no harm. I don’t believe that we can make the case that any individual who decides not to settle down and have kids is doing harm because it’s easy to point out how settling down and having kids harms consumption, climate change, and so on.
I’m agnostic as to whether people settle down or go solo. I want them to be able to have the individual choice to do it. I couldn’t get this op-ed published. I gave it to Erin and she said, “This is the bones of a good TED Talk. You need some personal stories.” I felt very fortunate that I had a blueprint of what I wanted to say, which made it a lot easier to prep.
There are two types of speakers. There are speakers who write, and there are writers who speak. You need to write it down in either case, but the process is very different. I’m a writer who speaks mostly. I thrive in improvisational or impromptu speaking. I was told I give a good panel and the show. When it comes to giving a talk, I like to write the entire talk, build the slides, and then memorize it. I would describe myself as a writer who speaks.
What I did with this was I had the op-ed written, and then I started adjusting the op-ed and making it more conversational. I had to trim it because I had about ten minutes, which ended up being about 1,100 words, so I could hone the message, add a few punch-ups to it, and, in some ways, make it feel a little more emotional and a little more celebratory because it was a talk rather than an op-ed. It went down to the bitter end. I was, two days out, still revising and still cutting. At some point, I had to say, “This is it. It’s lost. I’m not making any more changes to it. I need to start memorizing it so that I can deliver it with some gusto.”
I figured this out during my first experience giving a TEDx Talk, which is that you start with the first passage and memorize it so that you can recite it without looking at a piece of paper. You then memorize the 2nd passage so that you can then give the 1st and 2nd without looking at a piece of paper. You then memorize the 3rd and keep going. For me, it takes hours because I’m not a good memorizing kind of person.
What you do once you have the whole thing memorized word for word is you start practicing it and purposely adjusting some of the words you use and some of the phrasing you use so that when you’re on stage, you don’t get tripped up because you can’t remember the exact word. You remember the spirit of the word. I cut it a little bit close in terms of memorizing the whole thing.
Frankly, I was a little bit nervous because it felt like the stakes were high. You feel like you have one chance to get a TED-style message out. With this movement, I want to help as many people as possible. That is why I wanted to do a good job. It was not for me but for the solo movement. Plus, I was the last speaker. I gave the talk. I was a bit nervous. It didn’t help sitting there for three hours watching all the other talks. You were there. You saw it. Be honest. Don’t be nice. What was your reaction to the talk?
You killed the outfit.
I wore my Doc Martens. That was my first decision. I was like, “I’m going to wear my Doc Martens because the solo movement is punk rock.” To me, it’s the most punk rock thing I own. I had my traditional Docs on or high boots, a pair of jeans, a white button-down with gray stitching in the buttons, a gray sports jacket, and a gray Stetson Open Road. The outfit worked.
It was fun when you walked out. I also saw Pete’s first TEDx Talk, in which he wore a sweater vest. Pete has eras. That was his sweater era.
It was not my best sartorial era.
Now, he’s in his cowboy hat slash hat era. You walked out and there was a presence. The outfit was fun. He was the last talk. These sometimes blur into one another. By the time you get to the end, you’ve listened to so many. It’s good for the crowd to know, “This is the end,” and then you’re not wondering, “How many are left?” I want to talk about the moment that was very powerful. Pete practiced the talk so many times. In practice, he barely stumbled and had it down, but early on, he did fumble some words a little bit. He stopped, clearly a little nervous or shaken, and said, “I’m sorry. This is the most important talk I’ve ever given.”
When you were up there, maybe you thought that was a mistake. You were probably thinking, “Oh no.” For the audience, that felt so real at that moment. It did a few things. It humanized you to us and showed us how hard you prepared for this. It also made us realize how important this is to you. It meant more to me because I know you. I know how many talks you’ve given. You’ve given so many talks. I didn’t know that you felt this was the most important talk you’ve ever given. I got emotional when that happened. Everyone was on your side more after that happened.
I felt that. The audience rallied a little bit with that. I felt very supported in their response.
Everyone clapped at that moment.
It was really nice. You’re told, “You’re not supposed to tell people you’re nervous because they often don’t notice. They don’t care,” and that kind of thing that you ought to do when you give a talk. It came over me, a moment of vulnerability. After that, I locked in. I have to tell you that it almost felt like a huge stage. I asked afterward, “Did I say that? I can’t remember saying this particular line or not.” I had one error where I mixed up the order of things, but that can be fixed with the video. The video will be edited to clean up some stuff. It’ll be interesting to see if the editor at the first pass of the video leaves in my stumble and me saying that.
I was wondering the same thing.
I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to see what they decide to do, and then I’ll ask, “Do you think it would work better the other way?”
It really hit me in a personal way because, somehow, it struck me too that it’s about the solo thing. It’s about solos being able to command the same respect as married people and occupy the same status in society. Beyond that, it’s about respecting differences and letting people do whatever they want to do. I’ve been single for a larger portion of my adult life than pretty much anyone I know. You conveyed this idea of let’s welcome all types of people. That made me emotional.
Stop Telling Single People To Get Married
Let’s get into it. You’re allowed to have a throwaway line to give you a chance to say something and hear your voice and the speakers in front of the crowd. I asked the crowd, “If anyone’s unmarried in the crowd, let’s have a round of applause. Be proud.” There were a lot of people clapping. That won’t be part of the video. That’s a thing that’s there. There’s not a title slide, so you have a black background behind you. They asked not to do a title slide because it feels very academic.
I start by saying my not-so-subtle request, “Stop telling single people to get married.” I paused, and then I launched into the talk. I’ll read the first passage and then we will stop and you can reflect on it if you want. The first passage was, “Twenty years ago, as a new professor at CU Boulder, I threw myself a bachelor party. Backs were slapped, stories were shared, and glasses clinked, but there was a hitch. I wasn’t getting hitched. My rationale without a wedding in sight is, ‘Why should married folks have all the fun?’ That night, unbeknownst to me, I joined a movement, the Solo movement, where being single isn’t tolerated. It’s celebrated. Not less than and not better, but a different path full of opportunities to live remarkably.”
I love that line, “Not less than and not better, but a different path.” It’s interesting how many times I’ve talked about your work with people, even in a cursory way, I’ve often gotten some pushback. Even right before this, I got into a debate of sorts with a friend who said, “It is natural for people to want to couple up. To be opposed to that is to be opposed to our evolutionary biology and not understand what human beings are.” That was the argument. That’s not what the message is. The message is that there are all types of people, and there are always people who go against what others do. I don’t care which path you choose. I’m not telling you what path to choose. It’s having a place for everyone to exist.
It’s unfair to create this one narrow relationship, the relationship escalator. I debated whether to put that language in the talk. I decided not to because it’s a little bit inside baseball. It’s unfair because life’s not fair. Why would it be the case that if your spouse died, you become less than? Why is it the case that if your spouse decides to cheat on you, leave you, and run away with a nanny that your life becomes less than?
What if you are in a situation in life, poor health, some disability, or a bad financial situation that makes it difficult for you to partner up that you’re less than? You have to live in this world where everything is going perfectly for you to be high status. I’ll never believe that to be the case. I don’t want to live in a world where someone who becomes divorced becomes less of a person and becomes embarrassed by their situation.
Ironically, in the world we live in, in a lot of ways, it’s more challenging to form a broad social network with rich connections, belong to different groups, and have good friendships than it is to find one person who will want to marry you. I don’t know how much you want to talk about your personal life, but before the TED Talk, Peter was going to practice his talk and focus.
My tendency is to batten down the hatches and clear the decks and say, “Here comes a squall. Let me lock in, get this perfect, and be very precious with my time.” As a result of a mini mushroom trip, I decided not to do that.
Peter had some people over for a chill dinner and game night. It struck me how often I’m in groups where we all know each other, like it’s a bunch of friends from college or a bunch of friends who are all colleagues. In this group, there was another professor, a podcaster, and someone he met randomly at a coffee shop. It was such a diverse group of people that he’d met in different places. I’m like, “I never see this, honestly, or not very often. This is more challenging to pull off to make a friend in a coffee shop than to go on a dating app and meet someone.” I wanted to say that.
It was such a good night. I had some misgivings about it leading up to it because the talk was the next day, and I was still trying to memorize it. I sent a note to the group. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I said, “If there’s anything that you can do to make this night easier on me, chipping in to help out, I would really appreciate it.”
It was stunning. Someone was like, “I’ll take care of the kitchen duty. I’ll greet people.” Everybody rallied around me also. It became a much more pleasant night because it wasn’t me pouring drinks, picking stuff up, and making sure everybody’s fed, cleaning up, and so on. It was a really lovely night. Also, I did a dress rehearsal. I gave the talk to the group. It was heartwarming because people got emotional about it. That made me feel good because I had not shared this idea very much with people. I had kept it close to my vest.
Aunt Sally
Let’s continue. I then have a slide with a table. I’ll give you a gist of what I said. I said, “In 1960, 90% of US adults would marry. Today, half of US adults are unmarried. A quarter of Millennials will never marry and don’t get me started on what’s happening with Gen Z. Yet, we still live in a world built for two.
Married people enjoy 1,000 legal advantages, unavailable to singles, like tax breaks, social security benefits, and hospital visitation rights. Singles heavily invest in celebrating marital milestones. This made sense when everyone said, “I do.” Lifelong singles, we buy our own crockpots. Then, there’s Aunt Sally. Perhaps you have an Aunt Sally who won’t stop asking, “Is there anyone special?”
The crockpot thing got a shockingly big laugh.
Few of the talks were funny.
None.
Anything by contrast was appreciated.
The rule of comedy is you think that people are deciding whether you’re funny. They’re not judging you in comparison to their favorite comedian. They’re judging you by the things that came before. When I was a teacher, I was always shocked at how hard they would laugh at mediocre jokes I made. You said, “They’re not comparing you to something funny. They’re comparing you to their other teachers, who are dinosaurs.”
That’s right. The other thing is you are legitimately funny.
Thank you.
By high school teacher standards, you’re hilarious. I was setting up this world that we live in, this contrast. There’s a model for a TED-style talk, which is you present a problem and then you present the obvious solution. What you do is, if you need to, you critique that obvious solution, but you end up presenting a non-obvious solution. That’s a very nice formula for a successful TED Talk. Here I am setting up the obvious solution to the rise of singles. I have a slide that comes up and it has a bunch of headlines and a picture of a book that came out.
I say, “A chorus of media voices has traded Aunt Sally’s question for a prescription, “Get married.” Don’t believe me? There’s even a book called Get Married, released on Valentine’s Day. Get Married advocates like to point to data showing married people report higher life satisfaction than singles. Their conclusion is to get married, get happy, and, bonus, save civilization.” In the subtitle of the book, a part of it has Save Civilization. I said, “If you’re wondering, I’m not anti-marriage.” I have a slide that I click to and say, “I’ve even had a couple of near misses.” The slide has a runaway bride with a sash that says, “Misses McGraw.” It’s a little bit of a hacky joke.
That got a laugh.
Not a big laugh, but it got a bit of a laugh. It has a nice little a-ha. This is my chance to point out these media stories that I’ve been writing in response to, which are making the case for why you should get married. As we’ll talk about in a moment, while those articles are well-meaning, they’re disingenuous in how they portray the data. They have a goal. They 100% believe that the world would be better with more married people. They believe that individuals would be better married than not, in part because these are people who believe that their lives are better because they’re married. I don’t think that they make a fair case for it.
I say, “I even had a couple of near misses. I am against over-prescribing marriage based on correlational data that the Get Married crowd is a little too wedded to. Any serious scientist who looks closely at the data finds people who get married are already slightly happier in the first place.” I then click through to a slide that shows life satisfaction over time for people who get married is flat and then it goes up. That coincides with the wedding day, and then it goes back down to baseline. I say, “The only evidence that marriage causes happiness is a wedding day bump that fades fast. For the $30,000 cost of the average wedding, you could take 15 vacations with no in-laws.”
I found that data really interesting. It’s so true. It’s a confirmation bias. If you already believe something, you can find data to fit the story that you want to tell. Especially if you’re a journalist and not a scientist and you don’t understand how to interpret data or how they got the data, it’s easy to tell a misleading story even if maybe you’re not intending to.
I had a whole bunch of stuff in there about how you can’t run an experiment to see a causal effect because you can’t randomly assign people to weddings, single life, marriage, or divorce. I had a joke about a bad reality show called For Better or For Worse.
Another thing that you’ve talked to me about before is that these studies generally only look at the people who stay married. A significant number of people get divorced and have a lot of unhappiness from that. They’re throwing that out in the studies, right?
That’s right. It’s like prescribing medication and not telling people that 33% of the people who take the medication are going to be worse off. We have the wrong cultural conversation around divorce. There’s a lot of stigma, embarrassment, and feeling of failure around it, which makes the already difficult process of disentangling your life from someone else with the government doing it. The government has to be involved in your divorce. Even if the overall situation is an improvement, the process is embarrassing and difficult. I see a lot of shame and guilt around this because of the narrative around divorce as a failure rather than as a new start, a new beginning, or a chance to improve what has turned into a bad situation.
Louis C.K. has a joke about that. When he got divorced, people were saying, “I’m sorry.” He was like, “The word to say is congratulations.”
The Rise Of Women
I use that term when I sense someone wants to hear congratulations. I click through to another figure. This is a scatterplot that I’ve made with the percentage of people living alone by country and the average life satisfaction in that country. That is a very strong upward-to-the-right set of points. I say, “Here’s the real puzzle, though. If marriage causes happiness, why do the happiest places in the world have the most people going solo? This is especially true in Scandinavia. Rather than treating the rise of singles as a bug, let’s treat it as a feature of progress, particularly for women.”
This is the critical turning point in the talk where it contrasts the view of the current cultural climate, which is, “Marriage is good. We need more people doing it,” with a perspective that people in the solar community have, which is, “Not better and not worse, but different.” We’re going to start unpacking why we are seeing a rise in single living. I’m making the case for why the rise is good. Good things are happening in the world, and that’s spinning off more solos. You have to start with women because it’s the strongest case worldwide for why this is happening.
I say, “4,400 years ago, arranged marriage was invented to create business alliances during harsh agrarian times. Women were treated more like property than partners, with fathers transferring “ownership” to husbands at the altar.” I had a line more about how the father is giving away the bride, but this gets at that and cuts some words. I say, “Today, fortunately, marriage is more about love. It’s also increasingly optional.”
This is a line that we talked about and workshopped a little bit where I said, “The story of the rise of singles is a story of the rise of women. It got started with the invention of the spinning wheel. The spinsters who used it were able to earn their own money and escape being owned by a father or husband. Now, with the invention of birth control and greater access to education and economic opportunities, “I do,” has become, “Do I?” This next line was a big winner. It was, “Yesterday’s spinsters and today’s cat ladies are not old maids. They’re trailblazers and pioneers of independence.”
That was the line that got a big reaction.
The cat lady part got a big applause break. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it was at the end of it with the pioneers of independence, but I had to stop talking.
You had to stop talking because the applause started at the cat lady. That’s such a part of the culture wars. It’s like a rallying call and Taylor Swift posts.
That’s right. I had a little bit about Taylor Swift because one of the headlines was encouraging Taylor Swift to get married. I decided to cut it out because it was a little too topical. To me, the cat lady thing is evergreen, although it’s part of the zeitgeist at the moment. One of the things that I talk about a lot, and I end the talk by talking about how solo has a big tent, is that I’m largely apolitical with regard to this movement.
It doesn’t matter if you’re left or right to me. There are people on both sides of the aisle who are living solo, in a sense. That said, some of this, “Get married,” stuff is a much more conservative approach. It fits a conservative ideology a bit more. To me, I don’t want to exclude anyone, but I’m also not going to tolerate people talking smack about cat ladies.
The stereotype is the careerist woman who chooses financial independence and her career pursuits over a family or prioritizes that.
You’re seeing these conversations about the trad wife and things like that where there’s a bit of this good old day conversation. If a woman wants to be career-focused, wants to be independent, and wants to go solo, I’m all for that. I am also all for a woman who wants to have a traditional gender role, which goes back to the 1960s, and stays at home with the kids and so on if she wants to do that. As long as she chooses that, I’m also going to support that. I want to support people’s choices, a well-thought-out and well-reasoned choice, rather than defaulting to what you ought to do.
I went down a rabbit hole one day on these trad wife Instagrams and the comments.
Maybe you should say what a trad wife thing is for someone who doesn’t know.
A trad wife is a very TikTok-y internet term for a traditional wife. It’s a woman deciding her husband makes the money so she can stay home with the kids. There are people making a lot of TikTok and Instagram content around this.
Are they supporting the idea or criticizing the idea?
There are trad wives themselves posting their lifestyle. It’s a lot of posting elaborate homemade meals.
Some of it’s like, “Look at my Martha Stewart style crafts, food, or this or that,” kind of a thing that they’re posting.
It’s on another level of people going to extremes. They’re making handmade clothing, and they live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Some of it is insufferable about how proud they are of their lives, but I don’t have any judgment of them. Somebody said a fair point. One of these trad wives said, “I don’t want to give up all this time I can spend with my kids at this age to have a career. I’d rather be at home with my kids.”
There are a lot of comments from careerist people attacking the trad wives and the trad wives attacking the careerist women, and then there are a few that are like, “Why do we care what other people are doing? Other people should be able to do whatever they want.” That’s the message. That’s what feminism is. It’s a choice. \
Types Of Singles
That’s right. That’s well said. The idea was that the feminist movement wasn’t designed to get women out of this role into this other role. It was to allow them to choose which role that they wanted. That’s my perspective in general across topics. Let’s move on. I have a slide that says, “The rise of women, inventions, and cultural progress.” I move on to this invention idea, which I’ve already hinted at above with the spinning wheel and birth control.
I say, “Urbanization, apartments, and the invention of home appliances, which ironically were invented for housewives, are fueling a striking global rise in one-person households, peaking in cities like Stockholm.” There’s a figure with this exponential increase in one-person households around the world. I say, “Intrigued by Scandinavia’s happy singles, I swapped my Stetson for an Indiana Jones-style fedora and set off to Sweden, the singles’ capital of the world, a global leader in gender equality. I found Stockholm filled with one-bedroom flats inhabited by singles, whether by choice or by chance, living rich, interconnected, remarkable lives.”
I then transition to a slide that has the four types of singles, which a regular audience is very well familiar with. I say, “Let’s dispense with calls to get married. They’re either already preaching to the choir or shouting into the wind. There are the Someday Singles waiting to find their person, and sometimes hopelessly waiting, and the Just May Singles, who are hopeful romantics open to possibilities.
Half of single US adults, however, have different priorities. They aren’t pursuing love or lust, whether for now or forever. These No Way Singles are using their time and energy to pursue education, build businesses, and create art. Indeed, singles often live deeply meaningful lives, donating more time and money and caregiving elderly parents or disabled friends than their non-single counterparts. That’s so much for being selfish.”
That was a big, important part of the talk, too. That part got a reaction.
Do you think so? I don’t even know. I was blacked out at this point.
I don’t remember, honestly.
That resonates if you’re single. People feel very comfortable saying that single people are selfish and that married people, with kids especially, are unselfish. I’ve always bristled at the idea that a rich society has both types of people doing complementary things.
It’s not that you can’t give back a lot to your community if you’re married and have kids, but if you’re married and have kids, you have to devote a lot of time to them. There are problems with priests, but the idea behind priests not being able to get married is so that they can be fully free to give to their community.
Their flock.
Instead of their personal partner.
Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, has a critique of a variety of things. The rise of television pulled people out of the community, for example, and into their living rooms and their suburban lives. One of the things that’s clear from his data is that single people are more involved in their communities because not only can they, but they want to be because they still want to be connected. If you’ve got kids, especially in America, you spend a lot of time at the ball field and the soccer pitch and shepherding them around to gymnastics, play dates, and stuff like that. You’re not doing the Elks Lodge anymore.
I don’t think anyone’s doing the Elks Lodge anymore.
That’s true, but you know what I mean. You’re not involved in these community associations. How do you find time to volunteer, especially in a world where both parents are working and you’ve got 2.5 kids in this very ambitious, “They must do everything in order to be prepared for college,” culture that we live in?
Anecdotally, when I’ve volunteered, I’ve noticed a lot of the volunteers were single or didn’t have kids. Another thing is that the media, TV, and film can often portray singles as being selfish. One of our prior episodes of this show was on Sex and the City. As much as I’m a super fan of Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw is the archetype of that. Her life is frivolous about buying shoes and having fun in a lot of ways. I do feel like a lot of film and TV, that’s what you think of when you think of a single person. You don’t think of a single person with siblings and they’re the ones stepping up to caregive for their elderly parents, but that’s what happens in reality statistically,
I did an episode on solo caregivers and how that happened. I wanted to say that. I then say, “I recognize I’m not making the case that married people are selfish. I believe that everyone is self-interested and that there’s a benefit to being self-interested first and then giving what you can with your extra resources.”
It’s pure bandwidth.
It’s math. I finished this with the last group. I say, “Finally, the fastest-growing and dare I say sexiest group, New Way Singles seek non-traditional connections such as living apart together, friends with benefits, polyamory, solo polyamory, or platonic partnerships. À la, The Golden Girls. I bounce between being a No Way and a New Way Single. What about you?” I got to get The Golden Girls reference in there somewhere. I wanted the audience to reflect, “Which one are you?” and let them think about this that there’s not one type of single out there in the world.
That was an interesting part too. At the end, one thing you say is, “We have a big tent. There are so many different types of single people.”
I didn’t spend the time talking about how the Somedays are single and the Just Mays, No Ways, and New Ways are solo. I didn’t have space to cover that. I figured if someone finds the movement, they’ll figure that out. Let’s continue.
It doesn’t mean if you’re solo that you don’t have sexual or romantic relationships too.
Significant Other
I wanted this to build to be this powerful ending. We’ve got not even probably the last 20% of this. I have a slide. It’s the last real slide that says, “Beyond marriage.” It has a thing about significant others, family-of-one policies, and elevating single living. I said, “What should we do instead of telling single people to get married? This is that non-obvious solution. Let’s start by expanding the concept of a significant other. When psychologist Robert Sternberg introduced the term, it also included close family, deep friendships, and family of choice. Science shows that social connections broadly predict life satisfaction.
I have not put a ring on a finger, but I have significant others. They’re my brothers and sisters in the Solo community around the world, my brother from another mother, Darwin, who’s taught me more about unconditional love than any lover, and here, my soul sister, Julie, who also attended my bachelor party.” I said a little hi to Julie and gave her a wave, and then I paused and said, “Who are your significant others?” turning the attention back to the crowd.
That part was very powerful to me. It’s similar to what we talked about earlier. Getting married or having a romantic partner doesn’t mean that you’re not alone. People talk about this all the time. They’re like, “I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m alone.” Is it better to have a partner and then if they break up with you, you’re alone? It’s not that if you have a partner, you don’t have all these broad connections. The idea is do you have enough connection? Do you have significant others and not what they are to you, whether they’re romantic or not?
Having one significant other, whether it be a spouse, a platonic partner, or a best friend, and not having anyone else is very risky. What happens if that person dies? What happens if that person moves to another city? What if that person divorces you, breaks up with you, or whatever? You are stuck trying to create significant others from scratch.
You see this with divorces and often, the men in a divorce who have outsourced all of their social connections or social life to their wives, who takes care of all of that. She’s gone and he’s a 55-year-old guy with no friends and no important connections. As the Wu-Tang Clan says, “Diversify your bonds.” We want to diversify their social bonds also.
One of the Mad Men characters, I forget which one, said, “If you’re anything like me, your wife does the social calendar.”
That sounds like Sal.
Statistically, women tend to be better at maintaining relationships.
Family Of One
It’s not even close. They do much better. Let’s continue. I say, “Next, let’s create policies for a family of one. Sweden’s social safety net supports all citizens individually, whether it be universal healthcare, free or low-cost education, affordable childcare, and elder care. No spouse required.” This is self-explanatory. I cover this in the book and in an episode about Sweden being the singles’ capital of the world.
In America, getting married doesn’t give you status. You get 1,000 legal benefits that you don’t get as a non-married person. That’s not fair and not right. It forces people to make a decision that might not exactly agree with them. One of the things about that part of the world is there’s a different culture. They trust the government in a way that Americans don’t. That allows the government some rope to create these policies that then, on balance, people are comfortable paying a higher tax rate for.
That’s very true.
That’s hard in America because Americans tend to be anti-tax. It’s part of our origin story, the Boston Tea Party stuff. Also, we have much lower trust in the government. I say, “Finally, let’s raise the status of single living to be on par with marriage. Not better and not worse, but a different path full of opportunities to live remarkably.” This is a callback to earlier in the talk.
For years, I thought there was something wrong with me because I thought marriage would be like wearing an ill-fitting suit, or worse, a straight jacket.” That got a little giggle. I say, “Now, there are plenty of things wrong with me, but a wedding ring isn’t going to solve my problems. As I nursed a broken heart after one of my near misses, it hit me. I’m happy when I’m single. I’m healthy, financially secure, and doing meaningful work with a wide and deep circle of friends. I wasn’t a half waiting to become whole. I was wholehearted and complete. Are you wholehearted? I hope so.”
That part was powerful because it became more personal. That was one thing to me that really distinguished your talks from some of the other ones. A lot of TED Talks I’ve seen, in general, become about the speaker’s accomplishments. This felt very outwardly focused and about something much bigger than yourself. That stood out to me about it.
I felt like I had to tell a little bit of my story to personalize it and to keep it from being too theoretical or too abstract, in a sense. People really resonate with this idea of being wholehearted and complete because that’s not part of the cultural conversation. It’s like, “My better half. My partner in crime. My ride or die. My king. My queen.” It’s this partnership thing that suggests that you are less than without that other person. I like the idea of another person adding value to your life rather than filling in a hole.
I don’t know if I’ve ever talked enough about this idea. There is this interesting thing because we believe that we’ll be happier when we’re married. There’s this thing about, “My partner’s going to help solve my problems.” That does happen in some cases. For example, if you are lonely, you partner up. That helps solve the problem of loneliness.
The all-or-nothing marriage model that we live with is like, “My partner’s going to help me get ahead in life. They’re going to be my advisor. They’re going to help me manage my troubles at work. They’re going to help me manage my drinking problem.” There’s a lot of leaning on that person to help you solve their problems. The problem is that we don’t often anticipate how that other person is going to help cause other problems sometimes.
Honestly, I don’t know if I agree with that, that a lot of people get married to find someone to solve their problems. They want to feel less alone and feel they have a partner. It’s like anything. If you’re starting a business, it’s terrifying to start a business all by yourself. People generally want to partner to have more expertise, another point of view, or more resources. If you’re moving through the world of 2 versus 1, that’s the appeal, which, honestly, I get.
Also, it makes good financial sense in a lot of ways. At least in modern-day America, you often have 2 incomes but 1 house.
I’d like to have someone paying half my rent instead of me paying all of it. You’re right. If you pick the wrong business partner, that’s a disaster.
It’s worse than if you had done it on your own. The final slide says, “Live remarkably.” Here’s the crescendo. I say, “In the end, there is no one remarkable life. There are remarkable lives. No amount of pearl-clutching or calls to get married will drag us back to the so-called good old days, which, let’s be honest, weren’t that good to begin with. Someday, singlehood and marriage will stand as equals. In the meantime, the Solo movement has a big tent. Never married, divorced, separated, or widowed? Welcome. We celebrate you and our married allies. The future is about options, not prescriptions. Let’s toast to a world that both honors the choice to settle down or go solo. Cheers.”
There were lots of claps.
That’s when I did the little glass-raised thing that I did when I started talking at the beginning with glasses clinked. You were so wonderful to be here with me and share this, but also to support me and be patient with my practicing, my anxieties, and my uncertainties, and then to spend a little time recapping.
This was a really wonderful weekend. It wasn’t just about you. For me, meeting some of the people in your circle, too, was valuable. One thing this made me think about was who are the significant others in my life, being a better friend, and paying more attention to the network that I have. That was a big thing that this made me think about.
You are one of my significant others. Thank you.
You’re one of my significant others.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Important Links
- Mary Dahm
- What Makes Things Funny
- TEDxBoulder
- Get Married
- Bowling Alone
- Sex and the City – Past Episode
- Solo Caregiving – Past Episode
- Sweden – The Singles’ Capital Of The World – Past Episode
About Mary Dham
I am a passionate English Language Arts educator with two semesters of student teaching experience. My pedagogy is informed by my values of equity, inclusion, authentic learning, and socio-culturally relevant teaching. I believe that rigorous instruction happens when teachers create an inquiry-based classroom in which reading and writing are ways to stoke curiosity, think critically about complex problems, and unravel questions that are meaningful and relevant to students.
Research shows that students’ excitement about school decreases as they age. I believe that high school should not be less joyful just because it is more rigorous. In fact, I believe meaningful school experiences stem from rigor. As a lifelong writer, reader, and devotee of great writing in all its forms, I have high standards for my students. But I believe that if our goal as educators is to create lifelong learners, the classroom must be a place of joy, exploration, meaningful debate, and growth. While I love imparting my passion for English literature to students, my real mission is for students to learn the 21st century skills and self-knowledge that will empower them to find fulfillment in whatever life path they choose.
As a graduate of USC’s Rossier School of Education, I have developed a reflective teaching practice where I always observe, self-assess, and adjust my teaching to improve for the next lesson. I seek feedback from both students and peers. I am deeply committed to avoiding complacency in the classroom in order to give my students the education they deserve.