Expect the first two to feel slightly awkward. You may spend the first solo date thinking about what everyone at home is doing, and the second one running through the to-do list. By the third or fourth, something loosens. If you're finding it genuinely difficult to be alone with your own thoughts — restlessness that tips into real anxiety, or a sadness you can't place — that's worth mentioning to your GP or a therapist rather than pushing through.
Isn't this just being antisocial?
Not if the rest of your week involves other people, which for most women it overwhelmingly does. Antisocial is withdrawal from connection; this is a couple of hours that you return from with more attention to give, not less. The test is simple: if you come home slightly more curious and slightly less clipped, it's working.
What if I feel self-conscious eating or sitting alone in public?
Almost everyone does at first, and almost nobody is looking. Start with settings where solitude is normal — a cinema, a gallery, a bookshop, a long walk — and work up to a table for one if you want to. Bring a book or a notebook as a prop for the first few times, sit somewhere with a view rather than in the middle of the room, and notice that the discomfort usually fades by the second visit.
