A Single-Minded Approach to Life

She's not going to tell you how to satisfy your man! And she definitely won't tell you what you can do to make him pop the question!

On the contrary, in her first issue of Singular, a Los Angeles magazine devoted solely to singles, what she tells you is this: You don't need him (or her) in the first place.

Kim Calvert will not tell you "I think it's so sad that people are buying into that Bridget Jones mentality of the poor pitiful single," said Calvert, a 53-year-old West Los Angeles resident who is happily single. "It's totally their choice to change that attitude."

To help foster that change, she and business partner David Wright founded the bimonthly lifestyle magazine, a glossy targeted at men and women who have decided they don't need to be attached to be happy.

What that means is that instead of the usual seduction how-to's so prevalent in most men's and women's magazines (i.e. Bedroom Tricks to Blow His Mind! or How to Woo Your Woman), Singular features stories on topics ranging from traveling solo and dinners for one, to health, fitness and hot-button political issues.

Of course, the magazine doesn't ignore the issue of dating (dating is, after all, the luxury of being single); it just doesn't push the "You must marry" mantra.

"There's this cultural message that being married is the right choice and that you should be on that path," she said. "It's so pervasive in our society that sometimes we don't even question it. We (enter into a relationship) without thinking, 'Wait a minute - I'm happy."

Happily Ever After? 

Calvert wasn't always satisfied solo. When she was 35, she married a man she had known for only a few months: It was romantic. It was passionate.

She was divorced by 40.

"When I talked to my girlfriends about the fact that this man had proposed to me, they all had said, 'Oh, you should get married, you're getting older,"' she said. "I went into it with this fantasy that once I'm married, it's going to be this wonderful thing. It wasn't what I thought."

After her divorce, she realized she was happier single.

And, she noticed, she wasn't the only one.

"I had lots of male and female friends who were absolutely satisfied being single people," Calvert said. "They had rich, full lives. They didn't really have this burning need to get married."

A Cultural Shift

So much for the "old maid." (News flash: They're called "cougars" now.)

It wasn't that many years ago (okay, 1957) that a survey revealed 80 percent of Americans thought those who chose not to marry were "deviant, neurotic or immoral," and it's clear being single isn't the societal abomination it once was.

In fact, for the first time in U.S. history, married couples are in the minority, according to a 2005 New York Times analysis of census figures, which reported that 49.7 percent of the nation's 111.1 million households were married couples, down from 52 percent in 2000.

"The best part of being single is having no one to answer to," said my single friend "Mary," a 40-something Marina del Rey resident. "Being single is better than being in a bad relationship."

But ... is it? According to a Cornell University study, people in relationships - even unhappy relationships - are generally happier than single folks.

For Better Or Worse?

"People appear to feel better about themselves and their lives when they move into a more committed relationship," said Claire Kamp Dush, a postdoctoral fellow with the Evolving Family Theme Project of the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell, in a report released by the university.

"Being married is associated with higher self-esteem, greater life satisfaction, greater happiness and less distress," she continued, "whereas people who are not in stable romantic relationships tend to report lower self-esteem, less life satisfaction, less happiness and more distress."

Then again, another survey done by Yahoo Personals showed that 88 percent of singles said they are just as, if not more, happy than their married friends.

So what's the right answer?

I say there isn't one.

"Being single has its own set of unique challenges, just like being married has its own set of unique challenges," Calvert said.

Which means, all those sappy love-story junkies looking for somebody to "complete them" should know: It takes more than a significant other to do the job.

Therapy, anyone?

To find out more about Singular, go to www.singularcity.com.

(c) 2008 Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.