Why Alone Isn't Lonely When You Travel Solo After 40

People often ask me if I get lonely when I travel on my own, and it's a fair question. But after more than 40 solo trips, I realize that being alone and being lonely don't really have much to do with each other.

I took myself to see The Devil Wears Prada, the musical, in London, on my own, with two empty seats beside me and a very tall woman right in front of me. What happened in that theater, along with a note from a subscriber, Irene, were important reminders for me.

In this episode, I take apart the difference between loneliness and solitude. You can feel lonely in a marriage, in a crowd, or in the same loop of the same week and still feel completely content at a table for one. I get into the research on the capacity to be alone and share the small, ordinary shift that made solo travel feel lighter after 40. If you are a solo female traveler, or a woman who wants to be, and you keep bumping into the worry of what if I get lonely out there, this is the conversation for you.

In this episode:

• The empty seats beside me
• Taking up space on your own
• Taking a book to dinner
• Alone vs lonely
• Onward

This episode is for you if:

• you've talked yourself out of a dinner, a show, or a trip because you'd have had to go on your own
• you travel solo, or want to, but the thought of a table for one in a bright room stops you cold
• you're a woman over 40 who does alone at home easily, yet dreads being alone where other people can see you
• you've reached for a book or your phone as a buffer so you don't look like the woman nobody came with

Take the Solo Travel Fit Quiz at https://freedomlookslikethis.com/solo-trip-fit

About Freedom Looks Like This

Freedom Looks Like This is a podcast for women over 40 who want to travel solo, or who already do, and want to go deeper. Host Damianne President explores self-trust, decision-making, and what it actually takes to stop waiting and start moving. New episodes every Tuesday. For solo female travelers, midlife women, and anyone who suspects that the real barrier isn't logistics.

Transcript

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People often ask me if I get lonely when I travel on my own. And it's a fair question. It's something that a lot of women think about. That if we go somewhere by ourselves, we'll end up feeling conspicuous and lonely at a table for one. Or we'll be in a theater seat with nobody beside us, and people will wonder about that. Having gone on over 40 trips on my own have changed the way I think about being alone and being lonely. And about whether the two of them have anything to do with each other. If you've ever talked yourself out of something because you have had to do it on your own, this episode is for you. Most women think solo travel is about being brave or fearless. But it's really about letting go of the expectations holding you in place. This show is about what changes when you stop waiting and take yourself seriously, starting with intentional travel. I'm Dami Ann, and this is Freedom Looks Like This. Let's get started. Today we're talking about a thing that keeps more women home than just money or time. And it's a question that we often ask ourselves, and I get that question a lot. It's some version of what if I get lonely? Many of you have felt this question come up. And many of us have stood in our own kitchen thinking about the trip we want to take or the show we want to see, or the restaurant that we really want to go to, and thought, oh, it would be so much nicer if I could go with someone. Or we talk ourselves out of doing it because we feel that we'll only belong there if we have somebody else with us. Last weekend I was in London and I was running a lot of errands. For example, one of the things I do in London is go get my hair done. And I also had a teeth cleaning this time, booked on Groupon. I went to a chiropractor because that's kind of a rare thing to find in Prague. And one of the things is that when you live in a country where the national language isn't your own, there is something really lovely about just being able to find services in your own language for a couple of days. I had afternoon tea with one of my sisters and did a bit of shopping, but none of that is really what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what I did on the Saturday night. I took myself to see The Devil Wears Prada, the musical on my own. I will use that as an example to take apart the idea of being alone and being lonely and whether or not they are the same thing. And I'll already tell you that they're not. What I noticed is that many women say we'd be too lonely to travel alone. In fact, I spoke with a few women last week who told me exactly that. But those same women are not really afraid of being alone. We do things alone all the time. There are times when you're at home and you eat alone. When you drive in your car alone, you may spend whole evenings at home alone, even if you live with somebody else and think nothing about it. I think what it really comes down to is a fear of being alone where other people can see us. It's when we're at that table for one, or there is an empty seat to your right and to your left, and the whole room can tell that you came by yourself. You may think that they're deciding if there's something wrong with you because of it. Many of us are trained into this, especially women, and especially women of our generation. We were taught in a thousand small ways not to take up too much space, not to be the woman sitting alone at the nice restaurant, looking like she has nowhere to be, not to seem like we need taken care of. So we learned to make ourselves smaller, or to only go to places when we have a reason or some justification. And then when that happens, we call the result loneliness. Where really it's the discomfort of taking up space on our own in public without apology. I sent out a newsletter last week and I got a response from a lady called Irene, and she wrote to me exactly this. She told me that she was widowed 15 years ago, and she decided to take herself to a movie and then out to a nice restaurant for dinner. She said that the movie was fine, but the dinner made her self-conscious. Imagine it, right? You're in the movie, it's dark, people aren't really looking at you. But when you're in the daytime or when you're on the lights and you're sitting by yourself, that's very different. So she said that she did something a lot of us do. She brought a book. She put the book on the table, and she savored her meal. And the book gave her something to hold, something to look like she was doing, so that being there alone felt okay. And I want to share this line from her note. She said, I found later it was easy to go to dinners alone. There's a name what she's doing, by the way, and I'll talk about that later. But maybe you've done this. I've suddenly done this. I've put in airphones, I've picked up my phone, I've read a book. There are lots of buffers that we can use when we're alone to make it feel less conspicuous, to make ourselves feel okay. We're social creatures, right? And we care what other people think about us. So being seen alone definitely feels riskier than just actually being alone. So if you're new to this, absolutely use the prop. I would prefer you to use the prop than to not do the thing that you want to do. And being able to do those things over and over again, being able to be alone in public, that will allow you to see that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Alone is just a fact. If you're the only person in the room in a situation, but lonely is that feeling about whether you're connected, whether you're seen, whether you belong. And the reason that matters is because you can feel deeply lonely in a full life. Have you ever been in a relationship where you felt lonely? Or have you ever been with a group of people where you felt lonely? Have you felt lonely in your family? You can be lonely surrounded by people that you have nothing to say to. You can be lonely in a marriage, in a group of friends you've outgrown. You can be lonely feeling like you're in the same loop of the same week, doing the same thing over and over for years. Being around people doesn't cure loneliness. And being on your own doesn't cause it. So really the question about solo travel is not what if I get lonely. The question is, can I be good company for myself? That's one we can actually answer. That's one that is within your sphere to answer. So here's what I want to offer you. Every time you take yourself somewhere you want to go and you do it by yourself, and you have a really good time, you put down a piece of evidence. It's evidence that your own company is enough, that you can be trusted with your own evening or your own Saturday or your own weekend, and that you can create or make space to experience pleasure without needing someone else there for it to count. And every time you defer, every time you don't go because no one could come, you put on the opposite piece of evidence. You teach yourself that your life is dependent on other people, and it only happens when somebody else shows up for it. That's the real cost. It's not about missing the dinner or missing the trip really, not by itself, but it's about what the deferral keeps telling you about yourself. I think this is especially true after 40 because by now we have a long history with ourselves. We have years of evidence already on file in one direction or the other, and that file is never closed. You can start adding new evidence this week. One dinner, one show, one afternoon you took for yourself. And as you do that, the story you've been telling yourself about whether you can enjoy your own life begins to change little by little. Being good company for yourself really means getting to know yourself well, finding out things about yourself, getting back in touch with that person that is inside of you. So let's get back to my Saturday night. I wasn't sure that it was a good idea to go to the Devilwear Sprada because I'm not really into fashion and I'm not into stories about awful bosses. And the first time when I tried to watch that movie at home, I fell asleep. So I really wasn't confident that I would enjoy the show. The only reason I picked it was because I recently heard people talking about how great Vanessa Williams is in it. And I thought, okay, I want to go see a show, so let's start with that one. So I get to my seat and I'm far in from the aisle. And at first I was early and I'm the only one in the whole row. Finally a couple came, two lovely men, and they were sitting on the two seats closest to the aisle. So the seat to my right and to my left were empty. Now when I bought the ticket online, it looked like everything else was sold out. So I'm sitting there fully expecting strangers to come and claim the seats around me, to box me in on both sides. And just as the show is about to start, a very tall person comes and sits directly in front of me, and I can barely sit around her. So I'm figuring it out in my head the way we all do, right? There's this tall person, there are empty seats around me. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna like this show. Why am I even here? And then the lights go down, and something wonderful happens. Well, first of all, nobody comes and sits into those two empty seats, so I'm able to crane right and left to be able to see around the tall person. Those seats stayed empty the whole night. And instead of feeling like there was a spotlight on the fact that I was there alone, it became a great seat. My stall seat was comfortable, which I don't take for granted, because I've been squished into plenty of theater seats in my life, and this time I wasn't. And the gentleman wants it away from me is a black man from California, now living in Houston. And he leaned over at some point and told me he'd heard there was a lot of singing. I don't know if he was joking or if he was just like making small talk, but he said that he'd only just come for Vanessa Williams. Instant connection. So we had a lovely conversation, the two of us. That was before the show even started. Once the show started, it won me over. And I can tell you the exact moment that happened. There's a number where Andy and her boyfriend are singing this song about only liking each other for their bodies, something cheeky like that. And they just looked like they were having so much fun up there. And I felt myself go all in on the show. Because I'm a sucker for a story that challenges norms or expectations. And that conversation that between the two of them did. And what I felt in that moment was pure delight. Just simple delight. Even now I can feel the smile on my face telling you about this. Just remembering getting into the show. How simple is that? And how pure is that to be able to be on your own and to feel the delight. The performers walked onto the stage from the audience at one point, and that was for a fashion show scene, and there were strobe lights going off for the fashion show. And I've never been at a fashion show, but it felt like it was an authentic experience. I believed it. Then at the interval, the lights came up and the room turned into a hum of couples and friends getting up for their drinks and for the loo, of course. And I just stayed in my seat. I didn't feel like I needed to look busy or text someone or perform having to be there. I took some time and looked around the theater. I noticed the energy of the place. I thought about what I'd seen in the show and what I thought was coming next. And that was also a fun part of the night. Because the interval is another time when it can be awkward being on your own. It becomes awkward when you think, oh, I'm the woman sitting by herself here, that didn't come with anybody, that nobody came with. What will people think? And I have certainly had these thoughts in the past, and I do have them occasionally, but generally I can tap the back into the experience that is happening. So at no point in the show did I feel lonely. I was alone and having a wonderful time. The only question I had at one point is would I rather be in the hotel room reading my book? I was reading a really good book at the time, or am I happy being here? And I decided that I was happy being here, being in the show. So there is actually a name for this, the capacity to be alone. In fact, it turns out that there's a whole body of research behind it, which you might find reassuring. So psychologies separate two things that we tend to lump together: loneliness and aloneness. So loneliness they explain as a painful feeling of being disconnected. It's being alone when you don't want to be. And the other word is solitude. Doesn't that sound like a nice word? That is just time on your own. And the research, a lot of it from a psychologist that I'm sure I'm gonna broach the name Vinyuyan, suggests that solitude can actually be one of the most restorative things that we do. Being alone can actually calm us. It can turn the volume down on more high-strung feelings, and it can allow us to actually feel steadier. But that only happens when we've chosen it. So the distance between the solitude that drains you and the solitude that restores you is in large part whether you're alone on purpose or whether you're alone and dreading it. I've definitely noticed this distinction playing out in real life. I can remember feeling so lonely when I was in high school. And that's because I had friends, but I didn't really feel like my friends understood me. This was shortly after I had moved to Canada from St. Lucia, and I was feeling really lost. I have not had that feeling in a very long time. So when people ask me if I get lonely when I travel, the answer is sometimes, but not that often. And again, I have been lonely when I have been in relationships. So when people ask me that question, I realize what they're actually telling me is that they would be lonely. That they're lonely when they're alone. I remember a neighbor asking me exactly that when I lived in Japan about thirteen years ago. I was in my thirties then. We both live alone. We were next door neighbors, but he was lonely in his life, and he wanted to come over all the time. And I liked him, well not liked like, but I liked him as a person. And I was enjoying my solitude. I wanted limits. I didn't want him to drop by all the time. I wanted my own time. So that's a really good example of how two people living in the same situation, the same circumstances, can have a very different experience of it. One of us was lonely, and one of us was in solitude. And then there's an older idea that I like even more, and it's from a psychologist, Donald Winnicott. He wrote about what he called the capacity to be alone. And his whole point is that because it's a capacity and not a fixed trait, it's something that can change. It's not something that some women have and the rest of us don't. It's something that we can build. And he actually says that the first way we learn to be alone is by being alone in the presence of someone. So think about children playing where they're in their own world, they might not even notice for a few seconds if their mom stepped out of the room. So a small child can learn to play happily on the floor while mom is present and not hovering. And that's exactly what it was like me being at the musical. I was alone in the presence of a lot of people. There was the couple beside me, the tall lady in front of me, a whole theatre full of strangers in the dark. But I was alone in company. And that is a really gentle way to practice being alone. It's not a table for one in an empty room. But a seat when there are lots of other people around. And if we go back to Irene, she's been doing this all along without a name for it. She brought a book to the first dinner. And I really think that holding something like a book or phone, it creates space for you. And it's the same way that a mother creates space for a child to feel free to explore alone. And as you do this over a few dinners, eventually you don't need the book as much. You don't need the phone as much because you've built your capacity. And there becomes a time when being alone at a table at a fancy restaurant is easy a lot of the time. That's what Irene meant when she talked about she later found it easy. She wasn't lucky or born that way. She built her capacity through practice. I have had a lot of opportunity to build this capacity. I've gone on so many trips alone. And inside of these trips, I've gone to so many places where I was surrounded by people, but experiencing it, visiting it on my own. So a few years ago I definitely would have gone to the show on my own. In fact, I've been to lots of shows in London on my own. So this isn't really about me finally becoming brave to go somewhere alone. But what is different now is that it feels lighter. It was harder before. So the what isn't so different, but the how is. A few years ago when I would go to the theater alone, I'd brace myself a little bit more for it. I would stay a little bit in my head aware of the empty seats. I would be aware of standing by myself during the intermission. And now I feel lighter. I do what I want in the moment. I lean to see around the tall lady in front of me. Without resenting her for being tall, I make small talk to the man from Houston instead of sitting sealed into my own little world on my phone. The doing is the same, but the ease around doing it has completely changed. I'm open to the little serendipitous things that will come up. And if I'm honest about what actually changed, it has a lot to do with stopping people pleasing and caring less about what other people think. At some point I realize that I can't blame other people for my experience. Because I'm an adult. Think about it. When we were children, or maybe it was just my parents, but when I wanted to do something and they said no, if I tried to push back, they would tell me, you can make your own choices and your own decisions completely when you're out of the house. I have been an adult and out of the house for a really long time. I left Canada 23 years ago. So what have I been waiting for to make my own choices? I had no answer for that. In fact, I'd put more or less the same question to my brother at some point we were talking about something in his life. And as I was saying it to him, I realized it applied just. As much to me. I can definitely picture the version of me a few years ago having the same sort of evening, it looking the same, but doing it very differently. I would still have bought the ticket, so that part was true, but I'd probably have spent the interval on my phone so that I didn't look like I was lonely. I might have not even noticed that the man from Houston was trying to have a conversation. I would have been polite but a bit detached, because I would have been too immersed in thinking about how everything was looking and being than to actually be in the experience fully. So the texture of the evening changed. It felt slower, it felt lighter. I think that's the real destination here. It's smaller and more reachable than the big words we sometimes use. We talk about freedom. I talk about freedom. I talk about change. And those words can be big and overwhelming. What I'm really describing is coming back to yourself, making space for yourself. It means that you get to choose the life you actually want, but in small, specific ways, on an ordinary Saturday night, where you can go and do the thing without having to wait for someone else to say yes and come along to give you permission. And notice what happens to the question when you've done this enough times. At the start, the question is, can I handle being alone out there? Can I do this? And if you just stay in that question, then you find yourself alone at home, just thinking about it, overthinking about it. But when you go, when you do the thing, the question changes and it becomes, what do I want to do next? Where do I want to take myself next? What do I want to do with myself next? We ask that about spending time with other people all the time. And I want to invite you to ask that about yourself in your own life. That's the shift. So here's what I'd love for you to do this week and treat it as a real thing, not a someday thing. We listen to a lot of podcasts and it's like eating potato chips. Great and delicious in the moment, whatever type you like. But as soon as it's done, nothing changes, very little value to ourselves. So if you can do the invitation in each of these episodes, and for today's invitation, I want you to pick something you would normally do with somebody else. Last time I already invited you to go to a dinner on your own, but this time I want it to be something else where you would typically do it with somebody else. It could be a concert or a gallery or a show. Something that has a bit of occasion to it, where a part of you would reach for company by reflex. And take yourself to it on your own. Buy the ticket. Put it on the calendar with a date on it. Irene mentioned that she's doing this planning little dates with just herself. And I am tempted to say put your phone down. But you know what? This is your life. And you can access it any way you want. So if you need the buffer, if the buffer is what's gonna get you out there, use it. But look for spaces of time when you can put it down. Can you put on your phone for the twenty minutes while you're actually chewing your food? Can you put the book away for ten minutes and just look around the place? And I want you to notice notice how you feel. Notice if you're feeling alone, surrounded by other people, or if you're feeling lonely. Is it solitude or loneliness? This doesn't have to cost anything. My point is that money is not really the reason a lot of us, a lot of you are not taking the solo trip. There's something else, and I want to help you unpack that. And I also want to leave you with one more thing from Irene. She said that being solo for her has been about asking herself instead of a partner what she wants to do and where she wants to go. And she told me there are still so many things on her bucket list, even though she's finished visiting all fifty states last year. Congratulations, Irene. And then she signed off with a single word. Onward. And I really like that. I don't think I could leave you with a better sign off than that. Onward. I would love to hear from you on this one, the way this listener wrote to me. If you take yourself somewhere this week, tell me what you noticed. If this has prompted a different experiment, a different thing for you to try, I want to hear about it. Tell me about whether the experience for you feels like you're in a spotlight, an uncomfortable one, or whether it gives you space to breathe. These notes are truly the best part of my email. And I would be happy to include yours in the episode. Just tell me if that's okay. And if you're not sure where you are with all of this, like a solo trip sounds interesting, but you're still thinking about it, you don't really know where you fit or if there is a type of solo trip that suits you. I've put together a short solo trip quiz. You can find it at freedomlookslike this dot com forward slash solo hyphen trip and fit. So the easier thing is for you to just check the show notes. The quiz will show you where you are in your solo travel journey because there are lots of different ways to solo travel. Thanks for spending this time with me. I don't take it for granted. If something in this episode resonated, choose one small action and try it in whatever way feels doable for you. And a great place to start is to take the solo travel fit quiz. The link is in the show notes.