Voluntary Singlehood in a Greek-Speaking Cohort: Different Priorities and Giving Up Intimate Relationships as Reasons for Singlehood

Menelaos Apostolou and Timo Juhani Lajunen ()
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Menelaos Apostolou: Department of Social Sciences, University of Nicosia, Nicosia 1700, Cyprus
Timo Juhani Lajunen: Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: People frequently choose not to be in an intimate relationship, but the reasons behind this choice vary. In the current study, we analyzed a dataset pooled from previous studies, consisting of 3226 Greek-speaking participants, 357 of whom were voluntarily single, to estimate the occurrence of different types of voluntary singlehood. We found that the largest subgroup, accounting for more than 60% of cases, consisted of individuals who indicated that they preferred to be single because they had different priorities. This was followed by those who indicated that they had given up on trying to attain an intimate relationship, comprising more than 26% of cases. Furthermore, about 13% of voluntarily single participants indicated that they were in this group for “other” reasons. Additionally, we found that participants in the different priorities group were single significantly longer than participants in the group who had given up on finding an intimate relationship. No significant sex differences were detected in the occurrence rates of the two types of voluntary singlehood. Moreover, younger participants were significantly more likely to indicate that they had different priorities than that they had given up on finding intimate relationships.

Keywords: singlehood; voluntary singlehood; voluntarily single; mating; mate choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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