In periods of emerging adulthood and early adulthood people typically form permanent romantic relationships. However, some people remain single despite the importance of romantic relationships and prevalent social expectations of having a romantic partner, which occurs for several reasons such as external circumstances, psychological deficits or personal decisions. Failure to establish and maintain romantic relationships in this period could seriously threaten an individual’s life satisfaction, indicating that the experience of long-lasting singlehood may be very emotionally burdening and may have several negative consequences for an individual. The goal of the master's thesis is to understand the experience of singlehood in periods of emerging adulthood and early adulthood, and the aim is to profoundly examine and describe the experience of singlehood from the aspect of participants, using a qualitative methodology and phenomenological approach. Three female and two male participants who have not been in a romantic relationship for more than a year were included and took part in the semi-structured interviews. Participants report on occasional experiencing loneliness and variety of negative as well as positive feelings. There are differences in the intensity of their longing for romantic relationships and their fear of never finding a life partner. They can perceive the most support within their families and a lot by their friends. Their life satisfaction can depend on how satisfied they are with their coping with the current life situation. In the period of singlehood, they have time which can be used independently of others. However, their time can remain unspent and their needs may not be met. When coping with negative feelings, they often focus on positive possibilities of singlehood, such as having time for socializing, activities and personal growth, and as another coping mechanism can also be religiousness. Reports on relationships in the participants’ primary families offer numerous insights into possible dynamics of their current engaging in relationships and possible explanations of maintaining singlehood. Research findings are not generalizable to the wider population due to the choice of methodology used, but rather single people may have similar experiences to those reported by the participants.
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