Science That Will Make You Glad You're Single

At least being #foreveralone has SOME super-specific benefits.

1. Holding hands is basically like putting your hands in the garbage.

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A 2008 study found 4,737 separate strains of bacteria on 102 hands, so putting two of those hands TOGETHER just doubles the grossness. It is especially dangerous to hold hands with women.

2. A year of dating could cost you two THOUSAND dollars.

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Estimates vary, but studies continue to show that love ain't cheap: A year of dating in 2011 was found to cost between $1,529 and $2,129. It can only have gotten worse since.

3. Kissing transfers about 250 colonies of bacteria mouth-to-mouth.

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Pictures of your coupled friends might LOOK very adorable and sweet, but think about it like this: All that's really happening here is some mouth-to-mouth pushing around of germs. I mean, mono is CALLED "the kissing disease." Can we get a health insurance discount for lack of makeouts?

4. Single people live basically forever.

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Well, if they're women, anyway. A 2005 study found that divorced, widowed, and single women in old age were healthier than their married counterparts.

5. Sharing food, or sharing A DEATH WISH?

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Sharing food just because you "love someone" is no excuse — just ask Dr. Robert Lahita: "Me personally, with a Ph.D. in microbiology — I don’t share much food with anybody." Lahita went on to say that "virally-infected saliva on forks and knives is very disconcerting."

6. All coupled people do is stay at home and love each other.

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According to this New York Times study, living alone seems to encourage people to get out and socialize: "Compared with their married counterparts, single people are more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors, go to restaurants and attend art classes and lectures."

7. Is the person sharing your bed a loved one, or a cesspool of filth?

Beds are just horizontal bags of dirt, and so it's troubling to think that when you get in someone else's, it could have gone over a month without having been washed out.

8. Using another person's toothbrush: what new horrors await you?

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Studies show that uncovered toothbrushes can carry over 100 MILLION bacteria. It's sort of fine when they're your own, but if you forgot your toothbrush and have to accept someone ELSE'S?? *screams*