As we know, being alone doesn’t (always) have to mean being lonely.

In fact, it can be damn right fulfilling, fun and exciting, as a new psychological study recently found.

The research, published in October in the Journal of Population Research, studied 6,675 people who lived alone at the beginning of the study in 1996, and then followed up on their living situation for the next six years. Intriguingly, the study found that those who were most likely to continue living alone were women, rather than men.

How to be happy single: illustrator perfectly captures the joy of being alone