Hey #TheJoshCast, we here at the last episode of “Living Single”. The single life is blessing and a curse. Single people still face a stigma, even though their ranks have grown. Yet a new study suggests singles become happier as they age. One strategy: Focus on creating a full life now, for yourself, rather than finding a partner. After Katie Tomaszewski divorced at the age of 28, she felt ashamed to be alone. So she did what she thought a single person should do: She over-dated, over-worked and over-socialized, inviting friends over for dinner nearly every night because she was afraid of being lonely.

“It was constant socializing and constant distraction,” says Ms. Tomaszewski, now a 36-year-old Pilates instructor in Chicago. “I became desperate and depressed, looking for someone—anyone—to save me from being alone.”

Yes, it can be tough to be single. But a new study published this past December in the Journals of Gerontology offers hope for those who are struggling. Singles today are more satisfied with their lives than singles in the past, the study found. And people who are single become more satisfied with their lives as they grow older, according to researchers from the German Centre of Gerontology in Berlin, who analyzed data from the German Ageing Survey, a nationally representative sample of people between the ages or 40 and 85. Experts say the findings ring true for Western countries broadly. This is important news, because one of the biggest demographic trends of the past 50 years is the rise of singles: In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reported that more than 120 million U.S. residents, or almost 48% of adults aged 18 or older, were divorced, widowed or had never been married. In 1970, 29% of the population, or 39 million adults aged 18 or older, were single.And yet single people still face a stigma. Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and author of “Singled Out,” has been studying singles since the late 1990s and has coined the phrase “singlism” to describe the ways in which people discriminate against singles. The stereotyping includes the assumptions that singles are miserable, lonely or selfish; that they are desperate to get married; that there must be something wrong with someone who is single. Some single people internalize all that, even if they like being single,” Dr. DePaulo says. “They even sometimes think that liking single life is itself a sign that something is wrong with them.”

Society is organized around couples—they get breaks on everything from club memberships to tickets and events. And it can be a drag for singles when people offer advice or insist on fixing them up. “I think the phrase ‘fix you up’ is telling,” says Dr. DePaulo. “It seems to suggest that you are broken, and that coupling will mend you.”

She says the hardest time to be single is around the age of 30. That’s when the expectation to be married becomes most intense. Friends and relatives are marrying, or are already married, and single people often feel like the odd person out. This feeling is most acute in single people who socialize primarily with couples. “Couples often demote their single friends to lunch or daytime events or children’s birthday parties, basically treating them as if they are not fully adult,” Dr. DePaulo says. It is possible for single people to adjust their attitude and become happier. In a not-yet-published study done at Simon Fraser University, in greater Vancouver, British Columbia, psychologists gave single people one of two made-up articles to read, one reporting that singles are generally happy in life and one reporting that they are not. People who read the happy version of the article reported higher levels of life satisfaction and lower desire to find a relationship than those who read the more negative version. Basically, “if you have a fear of being single this undermines your well-being,” says Yuthika Girme, a social psychologist and lead researcher on the study.