Austin Spivey, a 24-year-old woman in Washington, has been on several dating apps — OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, Tinder, Bumble. She’s joined a volleyball team, lured in part by a chance to meet people with similar interests in a casual setting. She’s even let people set her up on dates.
“I’m a very optimistic dater,” Spivey says, adding that she’s “always energetic to keep trying.”
Yet, she has no romantic partner. But she’s hardly alone in that respect. Over half of Americans between ages 18 and 34 — 51 percent of them, to be exact — do not have a steady romantic partner, according to data from the General Social Survey (GSS).
That figure is up significantly from 33 percent in 2004 — the lowest figure since the survey was first taken in 1986 — and up slightly from 45 percent two years ago.
There are several other trends that go along with the increase in young single Americans. Women are having fewer children, and they’re having them later in life. The median age of first marriage also is rising.
According to a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center, among those who have never married but are open to it, most say a major reason is because they haven’t found the right person.
Of course, not everyone who’s under 35 and single is looking to change that. Caitlin Phillips, a 22-year-old student at the University of Georgia, is open to love if it walked into her life, but she’s not actively looking for it.
“I’m too busy, honestly. I travel a lot, and I have a great group of friends that I hang out with,” Phillips said, adding that she also has a part-time job.
Ford Torney, a 26-year-old from Baltimore, does want a steady partner — he just hasn’t found the right connection yet. Torney said he occasionally feels isolated in his social circle, because most of his friends are married or in serious relationships. He has to remind himself, he said, “that most people my age aren’t married, and I just have an outlier in terms of my social group.”
Among his friends who are single and around his age, most of them aren’t looking for relationships, he said.
The GSS survey reflects similar trends from the federal Current Population Survey (CPS) as analyzed by the Pew Research Center. The CPS data asked about living with a spouse or partner as opposed to simply having one. The Pew analysis found 42 percent of American adults who did not live with a spouse or partner in 2017, up from 39 percent in 2007. It also found an increase in the share of adults under 35 who didn’t live with a spouse or partner over that period, from 56 percent to 61.
The GSS data broke down responses by demographics: 41 percent of Democrats are without a steady partner, compared with 29 percent of Republicans. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to not have a steady partner: 51 percent vs. 32, respectively. The share of non-partnered Americans also is higher among those who are unemployed — 54 percent compared with 32 percent for those with jobs.
Laura Lane, co-host of the podcast “This Is Why You’re Single” and co-author of a book by the same name, said that factors like employment often figure heavily in romance. Not having a job can affect a person’s confidence and, in turn, torpedo their efforts to find a steady partner.
But she warns against thinking that finding a partner is going to fix everything,
“You really have to find that yourself,” she said, adding that both she and her podcast co-host Angela Spera struggled to find love “until we had something personally exciting that we were doing. I think it was an energetic thing where we attracted people into our lives.”
They’re both in solid relationships now.
