It was this past summer. Speeding down New Jersey backroads, the Mountain Goats blasting from my speakers, my body felt truly online for the first time in a while. I felt fully aware of myself, my capabilities, and for once, I wasn’t being so hard on myself. I was doing enough. I was enough. I was seeing myself as a being worthy of love and affection, and for once, projecting that emotion onto myself wasn’t just fueled by pure bravado. It was a real, actual feeling.
I had just taken myself on a date and was feeling fantastic.
It’s a given that a date “must” take place between two people. Merriam-Webster defines the word date as “to make a usually romantic social arrangement to meet with.” Asking Google how to have a good date bombards you with advice on how to knock the socks off of a potential partner.
Ask yourself this—who decided that a date has to involve more than one person? Why can’t you take the romance involved in a date and apply it to yourself? Instead of sitting around and waiting for someone to give you an excuse to go out, why not make yourself that excuse?
When people think of a solo-date, I’m sure images of sad men sitting alone at bars come to mind, or every single “table for one?” joke a rom-com has ever made. Which is a shame! A solo-date can sometimes be just the thing to get yourself up on your feet, and can serve as a good reminder to practice self-love.
So how do you have one?
Here’s the fun part—a solo-date can be anything that you’ve wanted to do but didn’t have an excuse to do. It can be choosing a direction and walking down it until it takes you somewhere. It could be ordering in Chinese and watching an entire season’s worth of Adventure Time. Simply put, a solo-date is intentionally engaging in an activity that puts you and your happiness at the forefront.
It can be hard to carry out a solo-date. We feel like we should be giving our time to other people, or that our date would be somehow “better” if we were with a partner or friend. While there’s nothing wrong with spending time with our loved ones, it’s important nonetheless to make sure that we are comfortable spending time with ourselves. Practicing solo-dates to hopefully train us out of the need to constantly share time with others is important. And even if you’re good at this already by nature of being introverted, the self-care aspect of a solo-date can be much more beneficial than solely spending time alone to “recharge.”
The key is to remember that the point of a solo-date is not to exclude your friends and partners, but to take some time to get in touch with yourself. One of my favorite solo-date methods is driving to a town I’ve never been in before and wandering around aimlessly. It gives me a goal and drive to discover new things, but also gives me the physical distance I need from others to truly think about my current situation, what I could be doing better, what I’ve been doing well, etc. If the concept of one seems daunting to you, you can always start small. Taking yourself to a store you like, or visiting a new park alone can be good places to start. If you need ideas for solo-date ideas, I’ve composed a list at the bottom of the article that you can reference.
Close Her Campus, take a breath, and find something small and feasible that you’d like to do. And then just do it. You’ll be surprised at how much power you have.
List of Solo-Date Ideas:
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