Table For One: A Guide to Eating Alone

Dear Friend,

Four weeks into living in London and I’ve gathered a few critical insights about this marvelous city. I’ll be adding to this list every week:

1: Just because you’re on the subway platform the map told you to be on, does not mean the train pulling in is your train. I’ve tested this theory. Repeatedly.

2: Milk is a different thing here. It is so freaggin’ fresh and golden it makes you realize that whatever we call milk in the States probably needs quotation marks.

3: When a Brit asks, “You alright?” they are not checking in on your emotional stability; they’re just saying hi, stoically.

As I learn this city, I’m learning just as much about myself. The key teacher? My aloneness. When I’m not working with my business partners and growing team, I’m with me. I walk alone, see theater alone, eat alone, often. For this self-diagnosed extrovert, this is new.

At first, the quiet felt endless. There were waves of stillness so deep I could almost disappear into them. The kind of quiet where the world hums on around you and you feel like you’ve stepped slightly outside of it. But something is changing. The ballast is shifting. The stillness that once felt like weight is beginning to feel like steadiness.

More often now, I’m surprised by how much I love the freedom that aloneness brings. It feels like a clean mirror. I’m getting this rare gift of finding out what I like, what I don’t, and what I truly love, without anyone else’s opinions, needs, or wants in the room. For a recovering people pleaser, that’s no small thing.

pinterest, uncredited

And yet, even with this newfound steadiness, there is one part of the day that still tests me: dinner. Breakfast alone? No problem. Lunch alone? Easy. But dinner is something else. There’s something about walking into a restaurant where every table seems full of couples or friends that makes the quiet around my own table sound louder.

I think we actively don’t do it because we’ve been taught that Dinner, of all meals, is a social event and to eat alone is to turns up the volume on the ego’s thought that WE think OTHERS are thinking “Oh, poor thing’s alone.” And THAT brings up and mirrors our own absolute allergy to and discomfort with actually having to be with ourselves.

But that mirror is the perfect and most necessary teacher, because learning to be with ourselves in a good way is the skill we need to in order to walk into every and any room and situation in a good way.

Because the relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for literally every other relationship in your life - work, family, and stranger.

Because it decouples the unconscious belief that alone means lonely, loser, or sad, when in fact, it IS connection itself: to the most profound relationship you’ll ever have - you with you, to how you really are when not bombarded by the horrors and heaviness of life, and to a larger conversation beyond you with whatever invisible help might be there for you if you showed up for it.

So I’ve started to study it. To experiment. To make myself a student of this meal. What makes dinner alone feel alive instead of empty? What turns it from awkward to interesting? How can I make this most social of meals a space where I feel empowered, even joyful?

And, moment of celebration, I’m getting pretty good at it if I do say so myself! As I’ve started taking myself out on Date Nights, I’m learning a few things along the way. So, in the spirit of both research and romance, I offer you:

The Guide to Eating Alone and Feeling Great About It

1: Dress Like You Haven’t Given Up on Yourself

No leggings. Not even if you live in LA, mmmkay? (I say this as someone who lived 24/7 in leggings, proudly, for years.) If you were going on a hot date at that new restaurant everyone’s talking about, you’d pull that frock out from behind the blazers. If it were a cozy locals-only neighborhood spot, you’d reach for the good jeans and that I-woke-up-like-this boot. If you’re gonna wear sneakers, make it that fun pair (not the ones you run in!). What you wouldn’t do is roll into that fine establishment like you just rolled out of a nap.

If you’d get dolled up for them, why wouldn’t you for you?

Spend a little energy getting ready for the hottest date of all: the one with you, HUNey. Do that thing with your hair that makes you feel like a million bucks. Wear the earrings, the bold lip, or the sexy underwear that gives you a secret smile. Whatever is you doing you. That extra energy is what carries you from awkward to magnetic, from self-conscious to self-possessed.

2: Choose Your Table, Choose Your Vibe

If you leave it up to the maître d’, odds are they’ll try to tuck you away at the unsexy table near the waiter’s station. No. Absolutely not. Nobody puts Solo-Date-Night in the corner.

Be proactive. Be vocal. Choose where you sit. You can make a reservation ahead of time (as I’m learning is non-negotiable in London) or simply point to the spot that feels best when you walk in. If you want to chat with a stranger or strike up conversation with the bartender, sit where that’s possible. If you’ve got a hot date with a Miranda July’s “All Fours,” claim that cozy booth. The whole booth! Take over the whole damn booth. You’re not being high-maintenance; you’re setting the vibe.

Okay SO… #3 is definitely 100% the hardest one, BUT it does get easier the more you do it and the pay off is truly life changing: