Eric Klinenberg - Going solo the extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone [2012]

ended her childbearing years—at age forty-five, though for most women it is younger—without giving birth, whereas one in five women do so today. 17 But since they know many other women in their situation, they wouldn’t be surprised by the trend. If living alone and being childless in one’s late thirties and early forties has become more common, it hasn’t gotten any easier. Even the most confident and successful solo women we interviewed openly questioned whether they had made the right choices for themselves.

Molly, a Web designer in her late thirties, defines herself as a fierce individualist. “I’ve always liked to have a lot of alone time,” she explains, her soft brown eyes seeking out understanding and her mouth slightly open, making her appear somewhat vulnerable or exposed. “I’m not someone who intertwines that well.” She and her sister grew up as latchkey kids with divorced parents, both of whom used Molly as their mediator. “I wasn’t just the caretaker. I was also, like, the rodeo clown. Everybody always put their stuff on me, and I had to run interference. When I went off to college, I was so excited. I felt like enormous amounts of weight were lifted off of me. I didn’t call home for months.”

Molly moved to Boston after graduation and rented a place with roommates. She went out a lot and had a few relationships, but nothing serious. After six years she moved to New York City, and when she could afford it got a place of her own in Kips Bay. Now Molly’s thirty-seven, and she doesn’t think she’s incomplete without a partner, even when she’s home alone.

“I really love being able to create that little vacuum of space for myself,” she says. “I don’t ever feel desolate. Sometimes I don’t even answer the phone if it rings. It’s not like I don’t have good interpersonal relationships. But I think that sometimes they can be too close, and to have that with someone, and also be living together—there’s just like no relief, no time when it’s just me by myself, not having to think about anybody else and whatever. It’s just too close for comfort for me.”

Despite herself, when she was in her twenties and early thirties Molly thought she might enjoy moving in with a partner or getting married. “I did enormous amounts of dating,” she says. “I was looking for the guy.” A few of her relationships lasted a year, at which point she would ask herself, “Do I want to go the distance with this person? And I just always opted against it.”

By the time she turned thirty-five, Molly had tired of trying. She was working long hours, and using her hard-won free time to meet men felt wasteful, even self-destructive. She started spending more time hanging out with friends, mostly coworkers and people she’d met on snowboarding trips. “I just like that I don’t have to worry about anybody else’s anything,” she explains. This has made her happier than dating, and so she has decided to stop searching for a