How do people really feel about singledom? SoulPancake gets deep with a few willing participants to find out once and for all… what singles want.

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Everyone has a friend in a stagnant relationship who has said “I miss the single life.” And most people have been looked at over the reading glasses of an elder to hear the phrase “Don’t ever get married” right after that wise old sage has been in a blowout with his or her companion.

But it might be that these sentiments are born from cynicism and misshapen conceptions of what it actually is to be single. After all, it doesn’t seem to resonate with human nature to be alone; most people desire a partner to navigate life with.

When single people were placed in an environment where they could speak candidly and asked whether they would rather stay single or be in a relationship, the results were overwhelmingly clear. The challenge, however, came not in defining what they were seeking—defining what singles want seemed fairly straightforward—but how they could move toward attaining it when they were encouraged to take a thoughtful risk.

Witness their results and reactions in SoulPancake’s experiment, “The Single Life.”