Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Me your Girl Daniel Moody pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to be taking some much needed time
Speaker 1: off from all of my shows. As you know, I
Speaker 1: host three of them, with WOKF being my flagship show.
Speaker 1: And I love this show because I get to bring
Speaker 1: on guests that may not quite squarely fit inside of politics,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless we're able to have conversations that connect politics
Speaker 1: to our daily lives, to our emotions. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is the thing when people say ridiculous comments
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm not into politics, or you know
Speaker 1: I'm not about politics, like I'm not a political person,
Speaker 1: it's just like are you breathing? Are you paying attention?
Speaker 1: Because everything in your life is actually controlled by politics
Speaker 1: and by policy, so it would behoove you to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the ways in which you are either treated
Speaker 1: fairly or unfaie justly or unjustly based on those things.
Speaker 1: And so this conversation fantastic which is coming up with
Speaker 1: doctor Bella de Paulo. She is the author of the
Speaker 1: book Single at Heart, The Power Freedom and Heart Feeling
Speaker 1: Joy of Single life, and she is a leading expert
Speaker 1: on single life and has given a TED talk that
Speaker 1: has garnered over one and a half million views, and
Speaker 1: she speaks to millions of people.
Speaker 2: Across the globe who are.
Speaker 1: Drawn to the single life, and she has been doing
Speaker 1: case studies on this work for quite some time. In
Speaker 1: my conversation with doctor Depollo, I was shocked to learn
Speaker 1: some things about the way that single people are kind
Speaker 1: of treated and discarded in this country. And you know,
Speaker 1: she opened my eyes to so many things. But also
Speaker 1: we had a conversation steeped in the politics of single
Speaker 1: theom right, the decision that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: making younger generations. That one it isn't just about the
Speaker 1: fact that they can't afford to get married, or afford
Speaker 1: to leave home or any of those things. Not looking
Speaker 1: at the choice to be singled through an economic lens,
Speaker 1: but actually looking at it through a political one. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of great reasons why people are
Speaker 1: choosing not to get married, or maybe get married later
Speaker 1: in life, or stay single, as doctor Depollo has And
Speaker 1: so it was a really interesting conversation about shifting again
Speaker 1: expanding and shifting our perspective to you know, move beyond
Speaker 1: what we've been force fed as like the natural way,
Speaker 1: you know, the natural course of life. You're a single,
Speaker 1: you go to school or you go into a vocation,
Speaker 1: you meet somebody young, you get married, you start having kids,
Speaker 1: you buy a car, you buy a house, you go
Speaker 1: into debt. You know, you raise those kids to the
Speaker 1: best of your ability, and the cycle continues, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of disruption, and I think that that is why,
Speaker 1: you know, and we talk about this in this episode,
Speaker 1: why the right wing is pushing their forced labor agenda.
Speaker 1: Why they are you know, terrified of critical thinking because
Speaker 1: guess what that provides freedom and liberation to think and
Speaker 1: do and move and act differently, and that's absolutely what
Speaker 1: they don't want. So we get into a really incredible
Speaker 1: conversation that I hope all of you will enjoy. And
Speaker 1: whether you were married, you were single, you were divorced
Speaker 1: or widowed, I think that this is an extraordinary conversation
Speaker 1: about the possibility of what it means to center joy
Speaker 1: in our lives in a different way. Again, her book
Speaker 1: is Single at Heart, The Power Freedom and Heart Feeling
Speaker 1: Joy of single Life. Coming up next, my conversation with
Speaker 1: social scientist doctor Bella de Polo.
Speaker 2: Folks, I am.
Speaker 1: Very excited to welcome to wok F Daily for the
Speaker 1: very first time doctor Bella de Polo, who is the
Speaker 1: author of the book Single at Heart, The Power Freedom
Speaker 1: and Heart Feeling Joy of Single Life and is a
Speaker 1: renowned speaker whose ted talk has garnered now one point
Speaker 1: seven million views in talking about what it means to
Speaker 1: be single. The I guess the I like to say
Speaker 1: the lies we've all been told about the benefits of marriage. So, uh,
Speaker 1: doctor Depaula, Well, I just want to start off with
Speaker 1: thank you in all honesty. You know, folks that listen
Speaker 1: to this show know I was married for god fifteen
Speaker 1: years and I'm divorced now and I'm also queer. But
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, reading and listening to your talk,
Speaker 1: you know, I was one of those people that was
Speaker 1: on the front line fighting for marriage equality. Why because
Speaker 1: of the fifteen hundred plus rights that you get through
Speaker 1: the federal government if in fact you are married, and
Speaker 1: so marriage equality and fighting for marriage for me was
Speaker 1: so important and is still important because I feel that
Speaker 1: you should have the right to love and marry who
Speaker 1: you choose. But when you started to get into the
Speaker 1: economics of it and the politics of it. You realize
Speaker 1: just how advantaged married people were versus single, which is
Speaker 1: why the fight for marriage equality wasn't just about the
Speaker 1: recognition of same sex relationships. It was also about government recognition.
Speaker 1: Our friends and families if you were, you know, privileged enough,
Speaker 1: had already accepted you, loved you and appreciated you, and
Speaker 1: so did your God. But the government, however, did not.
Speaker 1: So I just want to talk about, you know, the thoughts,
Speaker 1: your thoughts initially around kind of the politics around being
Speaker 1: married versus single in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you for having me on and thank you
Speaker 3: for that question. Those benefits and protections that you mentioned,
Speaker 3: so many of them, they are available only to people
Speaker 3: who are legally married. So of course that was one
Speaker 3: of the motivations for all the effort that went into
Speaker 3: the legalization of same sex marriage. But where does that
Speaker 3: leave single people of any orientation or identity or status.
Speaker 3: They are still left out of all those benefits and protections.
Speaker 3: And I think that no one should have to get
Speaker 3: married to be treated as a full fledged citizen. And
Speaker 3: you know, these benefits are they're really big things. So
Speaker 3: thakful I as a lifelong single person, no kids. I
Speaker 3: might pay into Social Security just like a colleague who
Speaker 3: is married and works the same number of hours the
Speaker 3: same number of years, maybe I even do better work.
Speaker 3: But when my colleague dies, their benefits go to their spouse, and,
Speaker 3: under certain conditions, to a whole series of ex spouses,
Speaker 3: whereas mine go back into the system. I can't give
Speaker 3: my social Security that I contributed to every year my
Speaker 3: working life to anyone, and no one could give their
Speaker 3: benefits to me.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: See, so here we go with the bells. I did
Speaker 1: not know that I had. I had no idea that
Speaker 1: you weren't able to dictate. Like when people pass away
Speaker 1: and you have money in a bank account, it goes
Speaker 1: to your next of kin. My assumption was that the
Speaker 1: same was true for your social security.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, okay, So you know, talk to me about
Speaker 1: your decision and wasn't an active decision to be single,
Speaker 1: to be a lifelong single person.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I never wanted to be married, but
Speaker 3: it seemed like everyone else did, or they at least
Speaker 3: wanted to be romantically coupled, and so for a long
Speaker 3: time I thought, well, wanting to get married or to coupled,
Speaker 3: it was kind of like getting bitten by a bug,
Speaker 3: and it was a little slow, and I just hadn't
Speaker 3: gotten bitten yet and I don't have like one clear
Speaker 3: aha moment. But over time, I think really in my
Speaker 3: thirties or late thirties, I started realizing, so, you are
Speaker 3: never going to be bitten, You're going to always love
Speaker 3: being single. And once I realized that, it was really
Speaker 3: transformative because then I wasn't holding back in any way,
Speaker 3: thinking well, maybe my life is going to change. So
Speaker 3: I bought a house and I decided to, you know,
Speaker 3: do what I wanted with my career and where I lived,
Speaker 3: and it was just joyful. And I also invested in
Speaker 3: becoming a scholar of single life. I used to have
Speaker 3: expertise in the psychology of lying and detecting lives, which is.
Speaker 2: Which would also be elpful nowadays, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually published something in the Washington
Speaker 3: Post about Trump's lies very early on, which was wildly
Speaker 3: successful or you know, popular, and of course invited lots
Speaker 3: of hate mail from from the MAGA types, so that
Speaker 3: was interesting. But I mean my work on singles I'm
Speaker 3: just passionate about. So it's it's different.
Speaker 1: You know, you were in a different generation right where
Speaker 1: I think that and as am I I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, older generations were all about get married, have
Speaker 1: a baby, get the house, get the quote unquote American dream. Yes,
Speaker 1: my parents are I guess boomers. I guess would be yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're boomers, so they're that. It is it is
Speaker 1: the same generation. It is you know dictated to you.
Speaker 1: There was never you know, you had a couple of
Speaker 1: shows that I can think of that celebrated single women.
Speaker 1: You know or you know, Kate Nelly were the divorce
Speaker 1: best friends that lived together in the eighties and were
Speaker 1: raising their kids together. But there were no reinforcements truly
Speaker 1: about a single dum being an opportunity. It was always like,
Speaker 1: if you're single, there's something wrong, and I'll say there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you. But if you are divorced, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you were chosen at one time, right and some but
Speaker 1: something went something went awry, so you're still okay. There's
Speaker 1: like this skeptic like, why do you like I think
Speaker 1: that it has changed over generations, the skepticism towards people
Speaker 1: who choose single dumb, But what do you make of
Speaker 1: how we progressed in this idea or evolved over generations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, I was born in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 3: I'm seventy and nineteen fifty was the year of when
Speaker 3: people got married in the US at the youngest rate,
Speaker 3: at youngest age going all the way back to eighteen ninety,
Speaker 3: so women were on the average twenty years old when
Speaker 3: they first married, which means just crazy for them, were
Speaker 3: teenagers crazy. Yeah, so that's a whole different thing. And
Speaker 3: of course the divorce rate was low. So back then
Speaker 3: it was like divorce was oh, she's a divorce and
Speaker 3: it was considered shameful. Now it's like you said, you know,
Speaker 3: if your divorced, well, at least somebody loved you once.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's the psychology around it, right.
Speaker 3: Right, And what I'm trying to do is reverse or
Speaker 3: challenge all of that. And I'm trying to say that
Speaker 3: if you're single, especially if you're single at heart. And
Speaker 3: let me just take a second and say what I
Speaker 3: mean that people who are single at heart want to
Speaker 3: be single, They want to stay single. They are flourishing
Speaker 3: and happy because they are single, not in spite of it.
Speaker 3: And so they are living their most meaningful, fulfilling, psychologically
Speaker 3: rich and authentic lives. Okay, where was I before when.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the generation all shift about being single.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what I'm trying to say is that for
Speaker 3: people who are single at heart, single life isn't limiting.
Speaker 3: It throws the doors wide open to a big, bigger,
Speaker 3: more expansive life. So for single people, people who are
Speaker 3: single at heart, you know, love can mean romantic love,
Speaker 3: but it's not stuck in that box. I mean love
Speaker 3: can mean the love of your close friends, your mentors,
Speaker 3: your pets, spiritual figures. It's just a big, wide, open,
Speaker 3: open armed concept. Same thing for family. Family can mean
Speaker 3: the way we usually think of it, but it also
Speaker 3: can mean the people you choose as family. Intimacy can
Speaker 3: mean sexual intimacy, but it can also mean emotional intimacy.
Speaker 3: And people who are single at heart.
Speaker 4: Have skills and attitudes that serve them well and that
Speaker 4: are less often honed by people who are inconventional coupled relationships.
Speaker 3: So, for example, one of the stereotypes about single people
Speaker 3: is that they're lonely. Well, in fact, people who are
Speaker 3: single at heart love their solitude. They want time to themselves. It,
Speaker 3: you know, it is something that helps them flourish and
Speaker 3: relax and be more creative and more insightful about themselves.
Speaker 3: And if you are comfortable with time to yourself, that's
Speaker 3: a great protection against loneliness. So rather than being especially
Speaker 3: susceptible to it, we are especially protected against it. And
Speaker 3: that's not that we all want to spend all of
Speaker 3: our time alone. And I like to say that people
Speaker 3: who are single, instead of having the one, we have
Speaker 3: the ones. So we tend to the people in our
Speaker 3: lives who matter whoever they may be, without needing to
Speaker 3: worry that a romantic partner wants all that time and
Speaker 3: attention to themselves.
Speaker 1: Fair you know, in your Ted talk they did back
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen that has now garnered over a million views,
Speaker 1: you put up a chart, and you'd put up a
Speaker 1: chart where you showed what the perception was from college students, right, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the perception that college students had on what they believed
Speaker 1: their happiness level would be if they remain single versus married,
Speaker 1: And you put up their idea first on both levels
Speaker 1: and then the reality. Yeah, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: really funny and I'll you know, I want you to
Speaker 1: tell the listeners like what the difference was, because I
Speaker 1: thought that it was really telling, and I want to
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a question after you do
Speaker 1: you explain the charge?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, so my colleague Wendy Morrison, I asked, I
Speaker 3: think it was like seven hundred and sixty college students.
Speaker 3: How happy do you think you would be if you
Speaker 3: got married? And how happy do you think you would
Speaker 3: be if you stayed single? Well, the marriage, they rated
Speaker 3: themselves about as happy as they.
Speaker 2: Could pressibly be.
Speaker 3: And then for the sing if they stayed single, they
Speaker 3: thought they would be miserable. Well, there are studies of
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of people who are followed for more
Speaker 3: than twenty years over the course of their adult life,
Speaker 3: so we know who stays sing, who stays happy or not,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that they're very The lines of
Speaker 3: the degrees of happiness are very similar. In fact, if
Speaker 3: you follow people who get married and see how happy
Speaker 3: they were before and after, well, as they approach the
Speaker 3: time of their wedding, you know, the early years they're marriage,
Speaker 3: they get a little bit happier. You know, they get
Speaker 3: this big party and it's all so exciting and then
Speaker 3: they go back to being as happier, as unhappy as
Speaker 3: they were before they got married, and that brief honeymoon
Speaker 3: effect we like to call it, where they know they're
Speaker 3: on their honeymoon and they're really happy. That the only
Speaker 3: people who get that are the people who get married
Speaker 3: and stay married. They are average. The people who are
Speaker 3: headed toward divorce are already getting a little less happy
Speaker 3: as the day of their wedding approaches, rather than getting happier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I thought it was so interesting because again,
Speaker 1: your perception versus like the reality is all skewed based
Speaker 1: on how you're socialized, right, the kind of films your
Speaker 1: family like, your schooling, your friends, your colleagues, all of
Speaker 1: these things that contribute to your perception of what your
Speaker 1: happiness could possibly be like. If we didn't have an
Speaker 1: entire industry, right, and this goes back to the politics
Speaker 1: and the capitalism and greed and the wedding industrial complex
Speaker 1: and all of these things. If we didn't have an
Speaker 1: entire system that was driving people towards this way and
Speaker 1: said you could be happy regardless, and if you had
Speaker 1: the same you know, you saw two sides of the same.
Speaker 1: I don't think that their perception would have been so
Speaker 1: down in the dumps. I think it would be like, well,
Speaker 1: I could be equally happy being single and fulfilled, and
Speaker 1: I could also be fulfilled and happy if I got married.
Speaker 1: And so I find it really interesting, and I wonder
Speaker 1: the follow up question that I have for you is
Speaker 1: reports are saying that Generation Z right and millennials who
Speaker 1: have just about turn forty and then Generation Z coming
Speaker 1: behind them, are less likely to get married than their
Speaker 1: parents and their grandparents.
Speaker 3: Work.
Speaker 1: Now, the lens that people are reporting this through is
Speaker 1: largely through economics. They don't have the money to get married.
Speaker 1: They don't have the money to leave home and start
Speaker 1: off lives like the boomers did at twenty getting married,
Speaker 1: and homes are cheap and cars are cheap and all
Speaker 1: of these things. What do you make of it?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 1: Through your lens? Is it that they have seen divorces?
Speaker 1: You know, their grandparents divorced, their parents divorced, Like, what
Speaker 1: do you make of the idea that we may have
Speaker 1: you know, I'll talk about the other politics around it.
Speaker 1: A generation of young folks who decide that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not it for.
Speaker 3: Me, right, thank you for asking that there are so
Speaker 3: many articles and opinion pieces about this, and it's all
Speaker 3: about the barriers. No, they don't have the money, or
Speaker 3: maybe they're running away from it because because their parents
Speaker 3: were divorced or all that kind of stuff. What's missing
Speaker 3: is the attraction of single life, the powerful rewards and
Speaker 3: freedom and heart feeling joy of single life. And one
Speaker 3: thing that's happening going back to what I said earlier
Speaker 3: about the age at which people first marry, so now
Speaker 3: it's up to about thirty for men and twenty eight
Speaker 3: for women. So that means that for men, half of
Speaker 3: all men who marry for the first time are older
Speaker 3: than thirty. Well, they've had a whole decade almost that
Speaker 3: men in past generations did not have to spend time
Speaker 3: being single, and maybe they, you know, they get a
Speaker 3: taste of the freedom of it, the joy of it,
Speaker 3: the power of it. And so for me, what I
Speaker 3: like to look at are the are what's positive about
Speaker 3: single life. And that's a whole different frame than the
Speaker 3: way everything is framed now, which is everyone wants to
Speaker 3: get married, and if they don't, what's standing in their way?
Speaker 3: And I want to change that and say, you know,
Speaker 3: some people lived their best, most fulfilling meaningful and psychologically
Speaker 3: rich lives by being single, and if they got me,
Speaker 3: the risk to them is not what they would lose
Speaker 3: if they never put a romantic partner at the center
Speaker 3: of their lives, but what they would lose if they did.
Speaker 1: See And that's that's the perspective that I think that
Speaker 1: people are truly afraid to delve into. And I'll take
Speaker 1: a stab and a spin at what I believe the
Speaker 1: politics of this moment that we are seeing and how
Speaker 1: it plays out in what in single, dumb versus married.
Speaker 1: You know, you can look at the economic trajectory of
Speaker 1: women after Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade.
Speaker 2: Right, the ability to.
Speaker 1: Go into the workplace, the ability to decide when and
Speaker 1: if and how you wanted to have a family gave
Speaker 1: women the independence that they did.
Speaker 2: Not have pre ro v. Wade.
Speaker 1: Well, when conservatives are now looking at this and they're
Speaker 1: not thinking to themselves, well, how do we make marriage
Speaker 1: and couple them and all of these things more attractive
Speaker 1: so people want to procreate, They're like, no, we'll just
Speaker 1: take the right away altogether, and we'll force it right.
Speaker 1: We'll force you into these situations that then require women
Speaker 1: to stay home, which we saw during COVID right where
Speaker 1: people had to quit their jobs because they had to
Speaker 1: care for their kids. And it's like this kind of
Speaker 1: dragging people back to this pre Roe v. Wade error,
Speaker 1: which again was never about the celebration of independence. It
Speaker 1: was about restriction, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I think what you're saying is true of
Speaker 3: lots of other things that are going on politically, And
Speaker 3: I think that what when you say, have this very way,
Speaker 3: but also you have all this celebration of marriage and
Speaker 3: two parent families. There was a book that came out
Speaker 3: recently about you know, two parent families are better. You know,
Speaker 3: psuchodop get used to it. And I think a lot
Speaker 3: of this it's it's not because we're all so secure
Speaker 3: about the place of marriage in our lives. It's because
Speaker 3: we're so insecure. And I think what's happening is that
Speaker 3: single people have been making progress clearly in their numbers,
Speaker 3: and that is threatening to people who don't want that
Speaker 3: to happen. And so what we're seeing now is backlash.
Speaker 3: It's just like Susan Faludi famously described in her book
Speaker 3: called Backlash, that when women started making progress, that's when
Speaker 3: Dyro was all is pushback, and you know, no, women
Speaker 3: can't can't be exact great and they have to stay
Speaker 3: in their place. And don't you want to be a
Speaker 3: nice housewife and not have ambitions?
Speaker 1: And I mean, and I think that what's interesting here
Speaker 1: too is that over the past, you know, five decades,
Speaker 1: you know, during the passage of Roll V. Wade, the
Speaker 1: independence of women, women being able to secure their own
Speaker 1: financial future. Because what people forget is that women weren't
Speaker 1: able to get credit cards until nineteen seventy four without
Speaker 1: the signage of their fathers or their husbands, right, so
Speaker 1: there was no financial freedom. And I think that when
Speaker 1: we look at how now women, people of color, those
Speaker 1: that were marginalized can actually flourish without having to bind
Speaker 1: themselves to another person to keep their heads above water.
Speaker 1: And you see these options, I think that that's what's
Speaker 1: driving the numbers. It isn't about the obstacles to marriage.
Speaker 1: But it's just like, wait, you mean that, I don't
Speaker 1: have to have kids, I don't have to be married.
Speaker 1: I can have I can be economically stable, I can
Speaker 1: do these things. I can travel, I can you know,
Speaker 1: take on second, third, fourth careers because I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not anchored to said person. Said thing or what have you. Like,
Speaker 1: My life isn't about compromising so much with another person.
Speaker 1: It's about what do I want right and and like
Speaker 1: you said, centering yourself as opposed to centering a spouse right.
Speaker 3: And living authentically because of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, final question for you, what are your hopes for
Speaker 1: single people in the future? Right like reading your book,
Speaker 1: listening to your TED talks, knowing that like I see
Speaker 1: more best solo travel for women, best solo you know,
Speaker 1: so I see more of these things now in the
Speaker 1: last several years than I ever had before. What are
Speaker 1: your hopes for how we think about singleness in the future.
Speaker 3: I hope we understand that single life can be not
Speaker 3: only just as good as coupled life, but for some people,
Speaker 3: it's their best life, and that single people, even if
Speaker 3: they would want to be coupled, should still live their
Speaker 3: single years joyfully, unapologetically and fully.
Speaker 1: I love it so much. I think it's amazing. You know,
Speaker 1: doctor Bella Apollo, I really hope that you'll join us again.
Speaker 2: Up, folks.
Speaker 1: The book is Single at Heart, the power, freedom and
Speaker 1: heart filling joy of single life. And I would encourage
Speaker 1: everyone to check out the TED talk that now has
Speaker 1: over a million views. Really appreciate you making the time.
Speaker 3: Thank you. This was fun.
Speaker 2: That is it for me to day.
Speaker 1: Dear friends on Woke a f as always power to
Speaker 1: the people and to all the people power, get woke
Speaker 1: and stay woke as fuck.