Being single doesn’t have to be a bad thing - in fact, for some people, it's even better than being paired up, with researchers finding that single life can impart a whole lot of benefits that marriage doesn’t.
单身并不是一件坏事——事实上，对一些人来说，比结婚更好，研究者发现单身生活能带来太多婚姻无法给予的好处。

Psychologist Bella DePaulo, pointed to evidence that single people can have richer, more meaningful lives than their married counterparts.
心理学家蓓拉·迪波洛指出相关证据，表明单身的人比结婚后拥有更丰富更有意义的生活。

"The preoccupation with the perils of loneliness can obscure the profound benefits of solitude," said DePaulo, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“长时间思考孤独的危害会模糊掉独处带来的深切益处，”来自加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的迪波洛说道。

"It is time for a more accurate portrayal of single people and single life - one that recognises the real strengths and resilience of people who are single, and what makes their lives so meaningful."
“是时候给单身的人和单身生活一个更精准的描述了——一个认识到单身人真正的力量和适应力，以及是什么让他们的生活如此有意义的描述。”

One study cited by DePaulo showed that people who are single are often closer to their parents, siblings, friends, neighbours, and co-workers. Another study showed they had a heightened sense of self-determination, and demonstrated continued growth and development as an adult.
迪波洛引用的一份研究表明单身的人往往和他们的父母、兄弟姐妹、朋友、邻居和同事更亲近。另一项研究表明他们有更高的自主能力，而且能够展现出作为成年人的持续性成长和自我提高。

"There is no one blueprint for the good life," she said. "What matters is not what everyone else is doing or what other people think we should be doing, but whether we can find the places, the spaces and the people that fit who we really are and allow us to live our best lives."
“好的生活不只有一幅蓝图，”她说。“要紧的不是其他人在做什么或者其他人认为我们应该做什么，而是我们是否可以找到真正适合我们的地方、空间和人，能够让我们过最好的生活。”

"People who marry get access to more than 1,000 federal benefits and protections, many of them financial," DePaulo said of single people living in the US. "Considering all of the financial and cultural advantages people get just because they are married, it becomes even more striking that single people are doing as well as they are."
“已婚人士可以获得超过1000项联邦福利和保护，许多都是和财政相关的，”迪波洛谈及生活在美国的单身人说道。“考虑到所有仅仅因为结婚就能获得财政和文化特权，单身的人依然故我就变得越来越受关注。”

Most didn’t even look at single people in their own right, using them to instead investigate marriage. “Only a very small number of the studies were motivated by a desire to learn anything about single people. Typically, single people were the comparison group in studies designed to elucidate something about marriage,” she said.
大多数文章甚至不把单身群体独立看待，而是用他们来调查婚姻。“只有非常少数的研究是被想了解单身群体的渴望所驱动。很有代表性的是，单身群体在阐释婚姻相关事实的研究中是对比群体，”她说。

Further research is needed to help cut through the stereotypes, and there’s no denying that DePaulo is biased when it comes to the advantages of single life – “Always have been, always will be,” she told Ian Johnston at The Independent. But the limited evidence so far shows that being single in no way means you can’t lead a fulfilling life.
要打破固有的刻板印象需要进行进一步的研究，而且要承认迪波洛在谈及单身生活的好处时是有倾向性的。——“一直都是，永远会是，”她告诉《独立报》的伊恩·约翰斯顿。但是目前有限的证据表示单身绝不意味着你无法有一个满足的生活。

It’s 2016 – do whatever makes you happy.
现在是2016年——做任何让你快乐的事。

声明：本双语文章的中文翻译系沪江英语原创内容，转载请注明出处。中文翻译仅代表译者个人观点，仅供参考。如有不妥之处，欢迎指正。