The idea of solo dates always grossed me out in a very specific way; the same way self help books like ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ do. Because luv, let’s be real… Why would anyone willingly go out, order food, sit alone and call that self care, when the same thing could be done at home in pyjamas with zero social exposure?
Eating alone in public feels like announcing something has gone wrong in your life, and you were waiting to be asked if you were okay. It all feels cringe until it’s your turn!
Yes… my breakup happened; the slow unravelling kind, where there were no explosions, but everything quietly slipped out of place. And suddenly, home felt too small, silence felt too loud and scrolling through my phone felt like watching other people live the life I yearned for.
I did not want advice or deep conversations or people telling me it would get better. I just wanted a reset that did not involve talking about my feelings or pretending I had learned something profound.
And I felt like my own city, Sydney, was the obvious choice for my self-introspection. Because this city does not interrogate you when you are alone and lets you walk beside it without demanding explanations. So, one afternoon, with no real plan and very low expectations, I decided to take myself out and see what would happen.
I took the day off and walked longer than usual, because I had nowhere I needed to be, and no one was waiting for updates. I walked past cafes full of people, past office buildings emptying themselves into the evening, past streets I had walked a hundred times, but never actually noticed. You can’t possibly imagine the relief in not narrating the day to anyone, in not framing moments as stories to be shared later.
When I eventually sat down to eat (at the Fortune of War pub at The Rocks), alone and visibly so, the discomfort I had always imagined arrived right on cue. It hovered over the table like an uninvited guest, making me hyper-aware of my hands, my posture and the fact that no one would be asking how my meal was or stealing chips from my plate!
But discomfort, it turns out, has a very short attention span when you stop feeding it. Within minutes, I was more interested in the rhythm of the place around me and the simple luxury of eating without having to fill gaps with talk.
I also realised I had not once checked my phone or replayed old arguments in my head, which felt like a small but significant win!
As the afternoon slipped into evening, I felt better; not euphoric or healed, just less knotted inside. Instead of heading home like I normally would, I decided to stretch the day a little further – partly out of curiosity and partly because I was not ready to return to four walls and my own thoughts just yet.
That was when the idea of a Sydney dinner cruise crossed my mind, something I had always mentally filed under special occasions and shared experiences, not something you did alone unless you were very confident or very bored. The old me would have dismissed it immediately, but the old me was also the one who thought my ex was the ‘one’, so I booked it before I could overthink it.
Choosing to participate in something without needing a reason always gave me the ick. But this glass boat dinner cruise that I went on was like a forgotten lullaby that I enjoyed as a child. Maybe it was the soothing views of the magnificent Opera House and the imposing grandeur of the Harbour Bridge; maybe it was just the cruise experience; or maybe it was just a placebo. But nonetheless, the dinner cruise definitely gifted some ‘me time’. I was not proving independence or making a statement, I was simply enjoying where I was, and that felt new.
When the cruise ended, I walked back through the city slowly, and for the first time since the breakup, being alone did not feel like something to escape or fill, it felt like a space to ‘be’.
That night did not fix anything, and I did not wake up the next morning transformed or overflowing with clarity. But it reminded me that being ‘alone’ is not the same as being ‘lonely’; and sometimes, the most grounding thing you can do, is take yourself out and let a city like Sydney hold you for a few hours.
Since then, solo dates have stopped feeling like a last resort and started feeling like necessity, not a performance or a coping mechanism, just time spent existing without commentary… And occasionally, when the week feels heavy again, I find myself back on a solo date. And let me tell you, that in itself is the best therapy, as therapy sometimes looks like dinner, water and no one asking questions.
