The romantic comedy version of this survey would end with all 5,000 respondents finding love. The actual version is more like: thanks, but I already have plans.
The 15th Annual Singles in America Study, conducted by the Kinsey Institute, surveyed nearly 5,000 single adults across the U.S. and found that one in four would turn down their perfect match if that person showed up tomorrow. They’d rather stay single.
Then there’s this: about 61% said they sometimes wish they didn’t have to be so independent all the time. Fair. Being happily single doesn’t mean you never get tired of handling every little thing yourself. Sometimes you just want somebody else to call the plumber or hear the full story about your coworker without needing the character list first.
1 in 4 Singles Would Rather Be Alone Than Date Their Perfect Match
The rest of the survey makes the one-in-four number easier to understand. Nearly half of respondents (48%) went on zero in-person dates in the past year. More than half said they were happier than they’d been in their last relationship, while 50.6% reported feeling more confident and 54.5% said they were less stressed.
Only 16.3% said they were actively looking for a committed relationship, and a third had been single for at least five years. For many of them, being single has simply been life for a while. There’s work, friends, bills, weekends, family, bad dates when they bother, and everything else that fills a year whether somebody has a partner or not.
That aligns with years of work by UC Santa Barbara social psychologist Bella DePaulo, who has argued that single people are too often treated as if they’re simply waiting for the right person to fix the situation. She coined the term “singlism” to describe stereotypes and discrimination aimed at single people.
A 2024 study by sociologist Kimberly Martinez Phillips found that single women talked about financial independence, close friendships, peace of mind, and genuinely liking their lives. For some, there wasn’t much urge to trade that for a relationship.
There is one awkward detail here. The Kinsey Institute survey was funded by Match, a company with a pretty obvious interest in single people eventually dating. Keep that in mind as you read the results.
Single life isn’t automatically easy, either. A 2026 University of Zurich study that followed 17,000 young people for more than a decade found that long-term singlehood had a complicated relationship with wellbeing.
Still, one in four people saying they’d reject their perfect match makes one thing pretty clear: not everyone is waiting for somebody to come along. Some people already like the life they have.
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