The new dating demographics

We all seek this opportunity to have relationship, but many of us are thwarted in our attempts to attain it. In fact, demographers have of late delivered some stunning news. For the first time, 1990's census statistics in both the U.S. and Canada show more people between the ages of thirty and sixty are single and living alone than are part of a couple. "Whew," you may say, "I'm not as unusual as I thought I was." Yes, that's right, but as a professional social worker, I am very concerned about this trend. That makes for about 15,000,000 people in Canada who are living alone. And how many people actually prefer it that way? Below is a table that tells us what percentage of single men and women at various ages would like to get married. The surprising result was the overall figure which found that more men than women want to marry: 51% of single women and 66% of single men in the U.S. would like to marry.

Percentage by age of single men and women who wish to marry:
 

 
Although it is evident from the table above that 'the urge to merge' varies with age, in general it can be said that most single people would prefer to be married.

Why do we want to be married?

Mystics tell us that we desire a deep relationship with another because we have a vague and ancient memory of a blissful union state. In remembrance of this paradise lost, we spend our entire life seeking to re-establish it.

Heinz Kohut, the acclaimed psychiatrist and elucidator of the school of psychology called self-psychology, on the other hand, gives us some more down-to-earth motivations for the desire to mate:

• the need to be mirrored: we all have a deep yearning to be known and once known, we need to feel affirmed, confirmed and recognized for the person we become known to be. This 'known person' then needs to feel accepted and appreciated for who we are
• we have idealizing needs: we need to feel special to another. We also need to experience ourselves as part of an admired and respected other: furthermore, we need the opportunity to be accepted by and merge into another whom we perceive to be stable, calm, nonanxious, powerful, wise, protective, and into another who has qualities which we, ourselves, lack
• we have alterego needs or the need to experience an essential likeness with another
• adversarial needs: we have the need to experience another as a benignly opposing force who continues to be supportive and responsive while allowing or even encouraging us to be in active opposition, thus affording us the experience of autonomy. This experience of autonomy is critical for ensuring the longevity of the relationship.
• merger needs: we need to feel totally at one with the idealized other
• efficacy needs: we need to experience that we have an impact on the other, an impact which can evoke responses that can meet the five needs described above.

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