Single people who are lonely want to go on dates and start romantic relationships, right? For lonely single men, that’s true. But for lonely single women, not so much. In fact, among single women who had previously been married, more than 70 percent of the loneliest of them were not very interested in romance.
孤独的单身人士想去约会并开始浪漫的关系，对吧？对于孤独的单身男性来说，这是真的。但对于孤独的单身女性来说，情况就不那么好了。事实上，在以前结过婚的单身女性中，超过 70% 的最孤独的人对浪漫不是很感兴趣。
Those were some of the striking findings reported in "Is everyone “looking for love?" by Yale sociologists Hannah Tessler, Meera Choi, and Grace Kao. The article was published earlier this year (2024) in the Journal of Family Issues.
这些是耶鲁大学社会学家 Hannah Tessler、Meera Choi 和 Grace Kao 在《每个人都在“寻找爱”吗》中报告的一些引人注目的发现。这篇文章于今年（2024 年）早些时候发表在《家庭问题杂志》上。
Is Everyone Looking for Romantic Love? Not at All.
每个人都在寻找浪漫的爱情吗？一点也不。
The assumption that just about everyone is looking for romantic love is so pervasive, and until recently so rarely challenged, that it strikes some people as a truism about human nature. That’s just what it's like to be an adult: It is normal and natural to want to be in a romantic relationship. Only it isn’t.
几乎每个人都在寻找浪漫爱情的假设是如此普遍，直到最近才很少受到挑战，以至于它让一些人觉得这是关于人性的真理。这就是作为一个成年人的感觉：想要建立浪漫的关系是正常和自然的。只是事实并非如此。
In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that among a national U.S. sample of solo single people (not married, not cohabiting, and not in a committed romantic relationship), half were not interested in a romantic relationship or even a date. When they conducted a similar survey in 2022, the percentage had increased a bit: 56 percent were just not interested.
2019 年，皮尤研究中心发现，在美国全国性的单身人士样本中（未婚、未同居、未承诺的浪漫关系），一半人对浪漫关系甚至约会不感兴趣。当他们在 2022 年进行类似调查时，百分比略有增加：56% 的人只是不感兴趣。
Tessler and her colleagues found the same thing. In their analysis of a national U.S. sample of solo single people surveyed in 2021, they learned that 51 percent of them were not interested in going on dates or starting a romantic relationship.
Tessler 和她的同事发现了同样的事情。在他们对 2021 年接受调查的美国全国单身人士样本的分析中，他们了解到其中 51% 的人对约会或开始浪漫关系不感兴趣。
That number, 51 percent, came from averaging across all of the solo single people in the study. It mattered, though, whether they were men or women and whether they had always been single (never married) or had been previously married.
这个数字 （51%） 来自研究中所有单身人士的平均值。不过，重要的是他们是男人还是女人，他们是一直单身（从未结婚）还是以前结过婚。
Among the previously married, a remarkable 73 percent of the women were not interested in romance. Among the previously married men, that number was 50 percent.
在以前结过婚的人中，有 73% 的女性对浪漫不感兴趣。在以前结过婚的男性中，这个数字是 50%。
Among those who were never married, the women were again more likely to say they were uninterested in dating or romantic relationships than the men, but the difference was much smaller, 47 percent vs. 44 percent.
在从未结婚的人中，女性再次比男性更有可能说她们对约会或浪漫关系不感兴趣，但差异要小得多，分别为 47% 对 44%。
For both the never-married and previously married women, the older solo singles were even less likely to be interested in romance than the younger ones. (The patterns were less straightforward for the men.)
对于未婚和以前结过婚的女性来说，年长的单身人士甚至比年轻的单身人士更不可能对浪漫感兴趣。（男性的模式就不那么简单了。
The researchers did not have data available to explain their results. Typically, when previously married women express less interest in romantic relationships than men, and when it is shown that they are more likely to initiate divorce, what happens inside the marriage is posited as an explanation. For example, even as the division of household chores and caring for children has become more equal over time, women, on average, still do more than their share.
研究人员没有可用的数据来解释他们的结果。通常，当以前结过婚的女性对浪漫关系的兴趣低于男性，并且当表明她们更有可能主动离婚时，婚姻内部发生的事情就会被假定为一种解释。例如，即使随着时间的推移，家务劳动和照顾孩子的分工变得更加平等，但平均而言，女性所做的仍然超过她们的份额。
Those kinds of explanations may well have some validity, but they assume that women want to be single because of what they didn’t like about being married. What I have learned in my study of the single at heart is that many people—men, women, and people who identify as neither, the previously married as well as the lifelong single people—are attracted to single life because they appreciate what it has to offer. They are not so much avoiding romance as embracing the freedom, the social connections, and the psychological richness of single life. Because they appreciate solitude rather than being afraid of it, they are especially unlikely to feel lonely.
这类解释可能有一定的道理，但它们假设女性想要单身是因为她们不喜欢结婚的原因。我在对单身内心的研究中学到的是，许多人——男人、女人和那些两者都不是的人，无论是以前结过婚的人还是终生单身的人——都被单身生活所吸引，因为他们欣赏它所提供的一切。他们与其说是逃避浪漫，不如说是拥抱自由、社会关系和单身生活的心理丰富性。因为他们欣赏孤独而不是害怕孤独，所以他们特别不可能感到孤独。
Loneliness as a Possible Driver of Romantic Interest—or Not
孤独是浪漫兴趣的可能驱动力——或者不是
Among solo singles who have never been married, the loneliest among them do typically want romance. But again, that was mostly true for the single men. Among the previously married, too, the lonely single men were especially interested in dating and having a romantic relationship.
在从未结过婚的单身人士中，他们中最孤独的人通常确实想要浪漫。但同样，对于单身男性来说，情况大多如此。在以前结过婚的人中，孤独的单身男性也对约会和恋爱特别感兴趣。
Tessler and her colleagues did not test any explanations for these differences, so we can only speculate. Maybe when women feel lonely, they are more motivated to reach out to friends and family than to a romantic partner. They often have more experience at nurturing ties with friends and family than men do. Or maybe they have learned, through experience, that the promise of romantic relationships as a cure for loneliness is often a false one.
Tessler 和她的同事没有对这些差异进行任何解释，因此我们只能推测。也许当女性感到孤独时，她们更有动力去联系朋友和家人，而不是浪漫的伴侣。他们通常比男性更能培养与朋友和家人的联系。或者，也许他们已经通过经验了解到，浪漫关系可以治愈孤独的承诺往往是错误的。
Regardless of the explanations for their findings, what Tessler and her colleagues have documented is significant. In this research, and in some of Tessler’s other work, she is throwing data at the presumption that everyone is looking for romantic love, and knocking it down. She is taking aim at something fundamental—what we assume to be normal and natural and universal desires among adults.
无论对他们的发现有何解释，Tessler 和她的同事们记录的内容都很重要。在这项研究以及 Tessler 的其他一些工作中，她将数据抛向每个人都在寻找浪漫爱情的假设，并将其推翻。她瞄准的是一些基本的东西——我们认为是成年人中正常、自然和普遍的愿望。
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