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From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: what does single really mean?
Message-ID: <1303@hao.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Dec-84 19:24:22 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.1303
Posted: Wed Dec 12 19:24:22 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Dec-84 00:42:44 EST
References: <4487@tektronix.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 35

> This amazes me!  I know I have always been one of the "different drummer"
> people,  but are "intimate relationships" so pervasively important to
> women, that their entire sense of well-being rests on it?  
  
  I have two things to say about this: firstly, I doubt if women have a 
monopoly on this statistic. I find that I myself (a man!) am much happier
when involved with a relationship, even one that is not particularly close.
One reason for this is that people tend to have more hope that a close
relationship (that they really want) will develop out of a not-so-close
one then they have that it will develop out of no relationship at all.
Plus, you still get the status symbol and approval from others even if your
relationship isn't as close as you would like (as long as it isn't totally
antagonistic, but I think those are extreme cases). And further, even not-so-
close relationships have their close moments.
  Secondly, about the only useful piece of information I gained while getting a 
B.A. in Pscyhology was that one must be very careful when making conclusions 
based on study results. In this case, it could be that a relationship is the
most important factor, but it doesn't show that there aren't exceptions to the
rule, nor does it show that there aren't other factors that also contribute.
And lets face it, this is an awfully small sample. I doubt if it does a very
good job of representing the general female population. In addition, we
don't know that the happiness isn't related to some other factor (self-esteem,
maybe?) that is also correlated with whether or not an intimate relationship
exists. All we can guess from the results of this study is that there is some 
kind of correlation between having an intimate relationship and being happy.
Above all, there is *no* eveidence to suggest a cause-->effect relationship
one way or the other.

--Greg
-- 
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!stcvax | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!stcvax}
       		        !hao!woods
   
     "...once in a while you can get shown the light
         in the strangest of places if you look at it right..."