All his life, Shea Mandli had a clear vision for his future. A wife who would see him through the ups and downs of life. Six, maybe seven, kids to whom he would pass on life lessons. So far, things haven’t panned out.

He’s single — and has been for about three years after ending a six-month relationship. He’s disillusioned both by online dating and how tough it can feel to approach women IRL. “No longer the ‘no’ is the worst thing that could happen,” says Mandli, a 31-year-old living in Minneapolis. “It’s almost like a humiliation tactic if you want to introduce yourself.”

The gulf between Mandli’s goals and his reality has affected his well-being. He’s lonely, he says; he yearns for intimacy. When he looks at all the couples gathered around the table at Friendsgiving, he wonders what it would be like to have someone to experience it all with. At times, he wonders if he’ll ever meet someone. “I feel a void,” Mandli says. “I feel lonely that I don’t have a companion. Sometimes that may give me a tougher exterior, because I don’t want to project into the world that I’m lonely.”

Mandli is among a growing cohort of young — often straight — unpartnered men who wish they weren’t. According to Pew Research Center, 63 percent of men under 30 are single, compared to 34 percent of women. Half of these men are searching for a committed relationship or casual dates, compared to 35 percent of single women. Bucking against stereotypes painting single women as desperate for romantic partnership and men as content eternal bachelors reticent to be tied down, recent research has shown that single women are overall more satisfied with their lives compared to single men. Another study from Germany found that men were less likely to initiate a breakup, were less satisfied with being single, and wanted a partner more than women. Partnered gay men, according to a Chinese study, had better mental health than those who were single. Other research has found unpartnered gay men associate being single with loneliness.

Recent research has shown that single women are overall more satisfied with their lives.

Much has been made of the plight of young men recently: They’re falling behind women in education, employment, independence, social connection. Could the lack of romance in their lives — and their yearning for it — be the key to understanding their dissatisfaction? Or are they unlucky in love because they lack the tools to build a happy life with meaningful connections in myriad ways? It turns out rigid norms around masculinity may have a self-fulfilling effect, both contributing to unhappiness with being single while making it more difficult to find a partner, too.

How men become emotional castaways

Being single is hardly a bad thing in and of itself — plenty of people happily choose to live unpartnered. But many men see a romantic relationship as their primary emotional outlet, which makes lacking one particularly unmooring. In his years of working with men in therapy, Fredric E. Rabinowitz, a psychology........

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