As of 2026, I’m 72 and I have been single my whole life. I love being single and so do more people than most of us ever realized. Drawing from my training as a social psychologist, I have devoted the last several decades of my professional life to challenging all the demeaning stereotypes about single people and showing that for many of us (the “single at heart”), we are happy and flourishing because we are single, not in spite of it.
I’ve written three traditionally published books and edited another. I’ve also self-published many collections of my essays and blog posts. (I’ve been writing the “Living Single” blog for Psych Today since 2008.)

Books:
• Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. 2023. Apollo.
• How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century. 2015. Atria/Beyond Words.
• The Psychology of Dexter (Editor). 2010. BenBella/Smart Pop.
• Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. 2007. St. Martin’s.

I have bylines in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York magazine, Atlantic magazine, Time, NBC, CNN, Slate, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and many others.

I have been interviewed on ABC, NBC, PBS, and other TV. I’ve also appeared on more than 50 podcasts and radio shows, including the BBC Sideways podcast, the TED Radio Show on NPR, Open to Debate on NPR, and Your Money Map by Jean Chatsky.

My TEDx talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single,” has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.

I’m an academic (Harvard PhD) with more than 150 scholarly publications. I taught at the University of Virginia for about 20 years and have spent the subsequent decades at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where I am an academic affiliate.

I’m living happily ever after in the spectacularly beautiful little town of Summerland, California, near Santa Barbara.