What friendships can tell us about life satisfaction among singles

A new study published in Personal Relationships highlights how the quality and adaptability of friendships are strongly linked to the well-being of single adults in the United States. The findings suggest that feeling satisfied with friendships and being able to manage social networks dynamically are more important to single people’s emotional health than simply having many friends or frequently communicating with them.

There is a long-standing belief that single adults tend to be lonelier and less satisfied with life than those in romantic relationships. But this stereotype overlooks the diversity of single people’s lives. Instead of comparing singles with partnered individuals, the researchers behind this study focused only on single adults to understand what makes their experiences different from each other.

Friendships often take on a larger role in the social lives of singles compared to those with romantic partners. Friends can provide support, companionship, and a sense of belonging. However, most past studies on friendship and well-being have not looked closely at the specific ways friendships might shape the lives of single people. The new study aimed to identify which features of friendships are most strongly tied to well-being, including life satisfaction, loneliness, and companionship.

The study was conducted by Junwen Hu, a PhD candidate, and Amanda Holmstrom, a professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Natalie Pennington, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and Jeffrey Hall, a professor at the University of Kansas, also contributed to the research.

The researchers told PsyPost: “Nearly one in three people in the United States is single, and the single population continues to grow. Yet mass media often portray singlehood as unhappy, lonely, and just a phase that should eventually end with a romantic partner and a ‘happily-ever-after.’ This view has recently been challenged by social psychologists like Dr. Bella DePaulo, who argues in her book Single at Heart that romantic partners are not the only source of intimacy and support. Friends—though often underappreciated in our culture—can greatly influence happiness. Therefore, we wanted to examine what kinds of friendships are linked to reduced loneliness and greater companionship and life satisfaction among Americans.”

The researchers collected data from two nationally representative samples of single adults in the United States—one in 2022 with 552 participants and another in 2023 with 391 participants. All participants were 18 years or older and were not involved in a romantic relationship.

Participants answered a series of online survey questions about their friendships and their emotional well-being. The surveys included measures of friendship satisfaction, support from friends, communication habits, and how well they felt they could maintain or grow their friendship networks. The researchers used statistical models to examine how ten different friendship-related factors were related to participants’ levels of loneliness, companionship, and overall life satisfaction.

One of the strongest and most consistent findings was that general satisfaction with friendships was associated with better well-being. Across both years, people who felt more satisfied with their friendships reported feeling less lonely, more accompanied, and more satisfied with life.

The study also found that single adults who reported difficulty maintaining or forming friendships—what the researchers called “network inadaptability”—were more likely to feel lonely, less likely to experience companionship, and less satisfied with life. This pattern held true across both samples.

Losing friends over the past year was also linked to higher loneliness, although the connection to life satisfaction was less consistent. Interestingly, the number of friends a person had or how tightly knit their friendship group was did not consistently predict better well-being. This suggests that simply having a large or close-knit group of friends is not enough. What seems to matter more is how well people feel they can manage the ebb and flow of their social connections.

Perceived support availability—how much people felt they could count on their friends when needed—was linked to greater companionship in both samples. However, its relationship to loneliness and life satisfaction was weaker and inconsistent.

“Being a happy single person isn’t just about having many friends or staying in a close-knit circle,” Hu and his colleagues explained. “While those factors might help to some extent, what matters more—across sociological, psychological, and communication factors—is having an adaptive and satisfying friendship network: being able to maintain old friendships and form new ones as desired, and feeling content with the friends one has. Perceiving that support is available from friends also plays a key role in fostering companionship.”

“These findings make sense, especially in a democratic, industrialized society where social relationships are often fluid. Being able to make thoughtful relationship decisions and cultivate a strong support network can significantly impact well-being. Interestingly, one side finding showed that while higher income was associated with increased companionship, it did not reduce loneliness. This may suggest that money can buy the presence of social contacts—but not necessarily the psychological sense of social fulfillment.”

In contrast to what some past theories have suggested, communication patterns with friends were less predictive of well-being than expected. Face-to-face communication, regular routines for keeping in touch, and the percentage of time spent socializing with friends did not show strong associations with emotional health. There was some evidence that more frequent online communication was linked to greater life satisfaction and companionship in the 2022 sample, but this was not found in the 2023 data.

“We were surprised that communication-related factors did not yield many significant effects, even though theory suggests that, for example, maintaining routine interaction with friends can be beneficial,” the researchers said. “It’s possible that these effects were already accounted for by variables like perceived availability of support. More research is needed to disentangle these relationships.”

Altogether, the researchers’ statistical models explained between 24% and 36% of the variation in loneliness, companionship, and life satisfaction among single adults. This means that these friendship factors captured a meaningful part of what contributes to well-being in this group.

However, because the data were collected at a single point in time, the researchers cannot determine whether friendships improve well-being or whether people who already feel better are more likely to build satisfying friendships. Longitudinal research that tracks these variables over time would help clarify these patterns.

Additionally, the study focused on friendship structure and interaction patterns rather than the content of conversations or the emotional tone of those relationships. Future studies could explore what kinds of support or interactions are most beneficial for singles.

“We hope this research contributes to a broader effort to center the well-being of single people as a heterogeneous group,” the researchers said. “People may be single by choice or by circumstance, and there are both happily single individuals and those who struggle with singleness. Rather than comparing single people to married people in ways that frame the latter as superior, we hope future work will explore the diversity of single experiences and the factors that drive well-being within this group.”

The study, “What Friendship Characteristics Are Associated With Well-Being Among Unpartnered Individuals in the United States?,” was authored by Junwen M. Hu, Amanda J. Holmstrom, Natalie Pennington, and Jeffrey A. Hall.