Come join us for a talk with Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard), the author of Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, as well as other books and more than 150 scholarly publications. She has been described by Atlantic magazine as "America's foremost thinker and writer on the single experience." Her TEDx talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single,” has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. Professor DePaulo is an Academic Affiliate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara. She has always been single and always will be. Below is a description of her talk:

In my decades of studying single people, I’ve found that many single people are flourishing, not despite being single but because of it. I call them “single at heart.” They invest in their single lives and that pays off. Why are so many people so convinced that single life is a lesser life? The stories we tell about single people are typically generated from a coupled person’s perspective, with the values and interests of coupled people as the standard against which single people are judged and often found wanting.

Drawing from social science research, sometimes based on hundreds of thousands of people from dozens of nations, I will show the ways in which single people – especially the single at heart – are leading joyful, meaningful, and psychologically rich lives. To flourish as a single person is especially impressive because of the “singlism” singles face – the stereotyping, stigmatizing, and marginalizing of single people, and the discrimination against them.

All through my presentation, I will draw parallels with people who are on the aromantic spectrum. By resisting the deficit narratives imposed on them and understanding their lives in terms of who they really are “at heart,” a whole different narrative of a big, open-hearted, expansive aromantic life will emerge.

HYBRID EVENT
This event will take place in person at Spectrum Center and includes with an interactive livestream through Zoom for those unable to join us at the Union. Register to receive updates.