16 Celebrities Share the Relatable Reasons Why They're Happy to Be Single

These stars have all spoken out about being complete — and embracing love — even when they don't have an "other half"

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being single — countless artists have sung its praises.

Contrary to what social media will have you believe, not having another person to call your special someone is far from the end of the world. There are plenty of fun perks to being single — but more importantly, you learn so much about yourself during this period.

The biggest takeaway: There's a difference between being lonely and being alone.

Let these testimonies from Stevie Nicks, January Jones, Mindy Kaling and more stars inspire you to think differently about the pleasures of being mindfully unpartnered.

Julie Bowen

While appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show in January 2023, Modern Family actress Julie Bowen (who finalized her divorce from software developer Scott Phillips in 2018) fielded a question about dating from a member of the audience — and declared that she herself was not actively looking for love.

"I like where I am. I'm single," she said. "You know, like working. … Who has the time?"

Allison Janney

Oscar-winning actress (and sometimes silver fox) Allison Janney opened up on The Drew Barrymore Show in April 2021 about being happy with her decision to never tie the knot or have kids.

"I think if I'd found the right guy at the right time and wanted to have kids, I probably would have with the right partner," the Palm Royale star said. "Because I wasn't ever really confident that I wanted to have kids, and I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret it."

She continued: "I really am at this time in my life getting to know who I am and what I want. So I'd love to eventually find someone to share my life with, but if it doesn't happen, I think I'll be just fine."

Jane Fonda

The 80 for Brady actress and activist has been pretty steadfast about not desiring a partner — even in her 80s. “I don’t want to be in a relationship, a sexual relationship, again. I don’t have that desire,” the then-83-year-old told Harper’s Bazaar in 2021.

“Do I fantasize? Yes, here’s my fantasy. I’ll just put it out there,” Fonda said. “That I meet a professor or a researcher, somebody in that line who is really capable of loving, of cherishing a woman, so that I could test myself and see if I could show up. I think maybe now I could, but the problem is that, like a man, I would want a younger man. Isn’t that awful? It’s a thing about skin. I would want a younger man, and I’m too vain.”

Sharon Stone

While appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2020, Sharon Stone explained why she has focused on her relationships with friends and family instead of romantic ones since finalizing her divorce from journalist Phil Bronstein in 2004.

"I'm done dating. I've had it with dating," the Flight Attendant actress told host Drew Barrymore. "I just find people to be insincere and not worth my time. I enjoy my alone time and time with my kids and my friends more."

"I feel like I don't need another kid," the star said, making Barrymore laugh. "I don't want any insincerity and baloney and game playing."

The Basic Instinct star added that she feels men and women aren't "at the same place right now."

"I have really good men friends but I just feel when it comes to emotional maturity in relationships that men and women are seemingly in different spots," she explained.

"So, here's my boyfriend," Stone teased, holding up her dog Bandit to the camera.

"And here's my boyfriend," Barrymore said, doing the same with her dog Douglas. "Apparently we both like hairy men, so that's good."

Stone’s bad luck with dating hasn’t seemed to change. In 2024, she told The Times that, while foraying into online dating, she ended up meeting a convicted felon and “a heroin addict who’s clearly 20,000 heroin injections later than the picture he sent me.”

Drew Barrymore

The star and talk show host revealed on The Drew Barrymore Show in September 2020 that she was single … for now.

"I'm not closed for business," Barrymore explained to guest Jane Fonda, "but I have been exactly in that mentality for the past five years, thinking I just don't have the bandwidth, I don't know if I'm willing to open [up], I just can't fit it in."

Nevertheless, the Charlie’s Angels actress later shared some words of wisdom for the hopeful singles watching at home. "No matter how badly you've ever, ever, been hurt, you have to not believe that that is what is in your future or that someone else deserves that baggage,” she told her viewers on a January 2024 episode, per The Blast.

“You have to be brave, and you just have to be convinced that each individual, circumstance, person, and situation is probably going to present [itself] differently," she added. “It is not the repetitive fear that you have in your mind that you project.”

Khloé Kardashian

After years of drama with the father of her children, Tristan Thompson, Khloé Kardashian made it clear in March 2024 that she’s been much more prosperous as a single woman. The Good American co-founder and mother of two expressed as much in a brief message to her Instagram followers insisting she's single and thriving.

According to The U.S. Sun, the businesswoman posted an empowering quote to her Instagram Stories: "She's not single because she can't get a man. She's single because every time she focuses on somebody, they show her exactly why she's better off alone."

Tracee Ellis Ross

Tracee Ellis Ross opened up about her favorite parts of being single on Valentine's Day 2020.

"As a happily and gloriously long-time single woman who also has a deep desire to be in romantic partnership with someone, Valentine's Day can feel tricky," the American Fiction actress captioned a since-deleted Instagram post. "But, I am reminded that although I don't have one special partner... my life is wonderfully full of so much special love. And one of my favorite parts of being single is how I get to choose who I spend my time with, share my heart with, hang with, giggle with, call, dine across from."

She added: "I have cultivated a robust tribe around me and today on this designated day of love I hope that all of you in my tribe and all of you remember how lovable we are! Happy Valentine's Day!"

Ross echoed those sentiments in an October 2020 Shape magazine interview, saying, "I am happily single, though that doesn't mean I am not open to and don't want a relationship. But … I have learned to have a productive relationship with loneliness and an intensely juicy relationship with my joyful solitude — I really enjoy my company."

The star explained that she loves taking herself out for or making herself a good meal, making her bed and generally practicing self-care.

"One of the things that's been lovely to discover is how I care for myself and how I actively love myself,” she said. “And I believe that love is an action: You get back what you put in."

Fran Drescher

After having gone through a very public divorce from her husband of 21 years, Peter Marc Jacobson, in 1999 (after which he publicly revealed he is gay), Fran Drescher has found love again — with herself!

"I think that I've had to very consciously work on not being codependent, not being fearful of being by myself or doing things by myself," Drescher told PEOPLE in February 2020. "I really had to make a concerted effort to get past that. And I think that I am good with it now. But still, I'm not like, 'I'd rather stay home by myself than go out and do things by myself.' But then whenever I do do things by myself, I enjoy it."

She added: "And then I think that hiccup phase where I don't push myself to do it, until the next time I do. So I think that that's been a big hurdle in my life that I needed to conquer. And getting really connected to myself has been a great journey because now; I'm not even feeling like I have to be in a relationship, because I'm in a relationship with myself — and it's going quite well."

Teri Hatcher

After celebrating her 55th birthday, Teri Hatcher said she was feeling her best as a single woman.

"There is a difference between being lonely and being alone," the Desperate Housewives actress, who divorced actor Jon Tenney in 2003, told PEOPLE in 2019. "I have been single for a very long time but there is nothing lonely about my life. I want to remove the stigma of that."

Hatcher continued: "Many women who get divorced will not get remarried. That kind of sounds depressing but it doesn't have to be. Many women are not just surviving alone; they're thriving. They're empowered, they're making money, they're being healthy, they're traveling. You are allowed to be proud of your life when you're not part of a couple."

Although she’s perfectly fine not having an other half, she did try — albeit unsuccessfully — to give dating apps a go. “I’ve tried them all, and I tried my latest one. I tried Hinge,” the actress revealed on HSN+’s Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone in 2024. “You know, I thought, ‘I’m gonna say to the universe that I am open and vulnerable, and I’m putting myself out there.’ That’s what I thought my gesture of joining the Hinge app would be.”

Apparently, Hatcher was “kicked off” the dating app because it thought she was “pretending” to be herself. “I’m definitely done with the dating apps,” she said. “Honestly, I’m happy. I have a really full life, a really busy life. I have beautiful friends. It’s fine: I don’t need a man. I have a cat.”

Emma Watson

Even when Emma Watson isn't dating anyone, the Harry Potter actress doesn't necessarily call herself single either.

"I never believed the whole 'I'm happy single' spiel. I was like, 'This is totally spiel,' " Watson told British Vogue in December 2019 while discussing the expectations placed on women and the terminology she uses to refer to her current relationship status. "It took me a long time, but I'm very happy [being single]. I call it being self-partnered."

Watson — who previously dated Glee actor Chord Overstreet and tech manager William "Mack" Knight — said she landed on the term "self-partnered" after grappling with societal pressures placed on women when they turn 30, a birthday milestone she reached in April 2020.

Stevie Nicks

Despite her friends’ best intentions, Nicks hasn’t taken their concerns of her being single to heart. “People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee told Vulture in 2013 of being pleasantly unpartnered.

“I feel very sparkly and excited about everything," she added. "I know women who are going, like, ‘I don’t want to grow old alone.’ And I’m like, ‘See, that doesn’t scare me.’ Because I’ll never be alone. I’ll always be surrounded by people. I’m like the crystal ball and these are all the rings of Saturn around me.”

January Jones

"Do I want [a partner]? Maybe," Jones said in a 2017 Red Magazine interview, speaking about life as a single parent with her son, Xander. "But I don't feel unhappy or lonely. It would have to be someone so amazing that I would want to make room. Someone who would contribute to my happiness and not take away from it."

The Mad Men actress continued: “I realize I have very high expectations and will probably have to compromise — but my life is so full. It’s not like, ‘Aww, I wish I had a man.’ After I had Xander, I went on a couple of dates and I was like, ‘I’d rather be at home sleeping, or watching TV or hanging out with my kid.’ ”

Susan Sarandon

The Rocky Horror Picture Show star, who split from longtime partner Tim Robbins in 2009, knows that life is always changing — and being single is a part of that. "[Single life has] been a lot of different things," Susan Sarandon told Reuters in 2012. "It's traumatic and exhilarating. The one thing that's been really clear to me is that you have to think of your own life and your relationship and everything as a living organism. It's constantly moving, changing, growing."

Diane Keaton

Diane Keaton, who has never married, has never let her relationship status define her.

"I remember when I was young I honestly believed in some ridiculous way that you would find someone who would be the person you lived with until you died," she told WENN in 2001, per The Cut. "I don't think that because I'm not married it's made my life any less. That old maid myth is garbage."

Decades later, the happily single then-77-year-old expressed that her sentiments on the subject hadn’t changed. "I don't date. Highly unlikely," the Annie Hall actress told AARP The Magazine for its May/April 2023 cover story. "I don't remember anyone calling me, going, 'This is So-and-So. I'd like to take you out.' They don't happen. Of course not."

Mindy Kaling

With her show The Mindy Project and multiple books under her belt, a relationship may just be the last thing on Kaling's mind. "In my 20s, I was not only boy crazy, but marriage and relationship crazy," she told Flare in 2014, per Cosmopolitan. "Now it's almost the opposite. My work is so rewarding and I'm so self-centered about it that I'm kind of excited about not having to go home and ask someone about their day."

Even so, it doesn’t mean the actress, producer and mother of three isn’t still a sucker for love. “I’m still a romantic at heart, and I write these stories about people finding love when they least expect it,” the Never Have I Ever creator shared during a 2023 appearance on Today. “So of course, I’m open to that, and I believe in magic and timing.”

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow has fully embraced unmarried life — even after nearly becoming a bride three times, including to famous cyclist Lance Armstrong. "I'm hot. Even at 60, I'm hot, right?" she told host Howard Stern during a 2022 appearance on The Howard Stern Show. "Honestly, I even scratch my head and go, 'How did I get here without getting married?' ”

Like other stars on this list, Crow doesn’t regret not having made such a big commitment to someone else. "I go, 'Thank you God. Thank you. I didn't get married,' " the Grammy-winning singer said.

"I got breast cancer at the end of one relationship, and it was horrible, but when I came through it, I was like, you know what? I'd still be in that relationship had I not had breast cancer,” she added. “So in a weird way, I'm grateful. And you think you're gonna be like, 'Oh, F that guy,' or whatever, but by the time you get to that point you've moved on and you don't really care anymore."

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