Women are happier being single than men, according to new study

Despite gender stereotypes, women don’t sit at home waiting for their Prince Charming
Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones
Handout

If we were to believe everything we saw in Hollywood films, then the trope that single women across the UK spend their time at home pining for ‘Mr Right’ to come along (à la Bridget Jones) would be true.

But the thing about Bridget Jones, is although her ultimate goal is to be in a loving, caring relationship, she also has a burgeoning career and a tight-knit group of friends to fall back on.

A new study by Mintel has found that single women are happier and more satisfied with their relationship status than single men.

In fact, 61 per cent of single women say they are happy with their relationship status, compared to 49 per cent of single men.

And they’re in no rush to find a partner either with 75 per cent of single women not actively looking for a partner compared to 65 per cent of single men.

We spoke to relationship expert Susan Quilliam about the reason why women are more satisfied with their single status.

Quilliam said: “Women often have a good social life and are good at meeting their needs in other ways.”

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An exercise Susan does with her clients is to write down a list of life needs – from taking out the rubbish to having sex.

She added: “When we look at all of our life needs, women are meeting most of these.

“Women are sourcing what they need often from a wider support network than men, but younger men are a lot better at doing this than older men.”

Typically, men will jump back into dating sooner than women.

Susan explained: “Both genders suffer from heartbreak, but in general men will think to themselves ‘this is a problem that needs to be fixed’ and spend all their energy concentrating on filling the gaps.

“Women tend to hang back and look at what went wrong last time and take their time deciding whether they want to go through it again.”

The reason why women are happier with their single status could be because they tend to be more social while in the relationship so the strong friendships are there to fall back on if it ends. This also rings true for women who have been single for a while - they often spend more of their time being social and more time is spent on things they enjoy doing.

Yes, Bridget found happiness with Mark Darcy, but if she looked at her life and support network, she was happy before him too.

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