You Should Go and Love Yourself

On the art of learning how to self-date

Jun 13, 2023

Like anyone with a beating heart, I cried when I finished reading Gabrielle Zevin’s divine Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Of course, I cried because the story was so profoundly beautiful and emotional, but what really got me was the fact that in her acknowledgments, Zevin cites a particular performance of Macbeth as inspiration for the novel’s Shakespearean title and subtle throughline.

The performance was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2018 season at the Barbican Theatre in London. It starred Doctor Who’s Christopher Eccleston, and it was the first time I ever consciously and decidedly took myself out on a date.

I hate to be the girl who cried, “Abroad changed me,” but it did in the sense that after enduring my worst-ever patch of mental health, I used my time in London to start the arduous process of learning how to feel like (and actually start to like) myself again. Unfortunately for 2018 Emily, that required intentionally spending time on my own—the horror!!!!!

I am unabashedly a Doctor Who fan, and my favorite Doctor is obviously the one I share a birthday with because I’m annoying. But it works out because Eccleston’s incarnation of the Doctor is actually the best and deserves so much more credit than he gets. I also, a little more secretively, managed to take nearly every Shakespearean English course my school had to offer and can confidently claim Macbeth as my personal favorite play. This performance could not have been more tailored for me, and yet, I almost didn’t go.

I don’t have an exact record of Things I Missed Out On Because Someone Wouldn’t Go With Me, but I can count the number of Things on one hand that have passed since I learned I could do whatever I wanted to by myself…and survive. It’s a powerful thing to enjoy being in your own company, and it’s not a skill of mine I take for granted. As baffling as it may sound if you’re someone who regularly clears your schedule to be alone, there are people who make it to and through adulthood without knowing the pleasure of eating at a restaurant on your own, or seeing a movie at the Alamo alone, or, you know, going to the Barbican to watch one of your favorite actors in one of your favorite pieces of art.

That’s why today, I wanted to talk with someone who is a pro at self-dating as well as a fantastic partner in crime for many of my crazy plans. This week, I talked with David Melgoza about his journey to becoming a solo adventurer, the lessons he’s learned on his own, and the impact it has had on his relationships with others.

Hey friends, David here! Just another NYC transplant trying to find his way in the city, but has only found rats and good bagels so far. I’m originally from Los Angeles and am one of those annoying tech guys that frequently says, “I can’t imagine working in an office.” My favorite sports are day drinking and eating Mexican food. I love music, cooking, and E4P! I’m excited to finally be making my debut on here and telling you all how much I love myself <3

50 First Self-Dates

To kick things off, I absolutely had to know:

Emily: What is your ideal self-date?
David: Currently, my favorite self-date is going to the spa. At least once a week, I go to the spa within my gym and spend about two to four hours there.
Nothing screams self-care like getting a good workout in and then hitting the steam room and pools. My spa has no cell service inside, it’s dark, and plays calming music. It’s my oasis within this crazy city and I love my time in solitude.

Mine’s April 25th because it’s not too hot and not too cold—all you need is a light jacket! But I digress.

I wanted to know the backstory of how David became so comfortable with spending time alone, so I asked:

Emily: What was the first thing you did by yourself?
David: My solo adventures started with exploring various cafes in my college town, going to the movies, and eating at restaurants. After a year of small solo dates, I discovered how much fun they were and how much I genuinely loved my “me time.” With this new revelation, I made it a point to push myself to get out there and enjoy the one life I have.
This new confidence made me feel more secure in my solo adventures and I started to book more ambitious endeavors like studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, and moving to New York City.
Emily: Do you see scheduling solo adventures as a skill you try to practice, or is it something more natural?
David: For most, working up the courage to go on a solo adventure is a skill they must practice. That is certainly the case for me at least. I am one of four children in my family and have also been blessed with a fountain of great friendships. I have always been surrounded by loved ones and because of this I only associated “adventures” with friends and family from an early age.
A solo date or trip was never on my radar because back in my late teens and early 20s, I believed doing something by myself automatically made me that kid eating alone in the cafeteria. We all know and have seen that kid—whether that be in films, shows, or sadly even in real life. Nobody wanted to be them and therefore doing group activities alone was ingrained in us to be seen as almost taboo.
I held this notion all through high school and most of college. The fear of being seen as “friendless” crippled me and limited my experiences. Not eating what I wanted to eat, missing a concert or even skipping the gym because no one else wanted to come with me! Sad, I know.
It was not until my junior year of college where I finally said “fuck it” and began to do the things I wanted without the fear of being the lonely kid eating alone holding me back.

As I talked with David and reflected on my own experiences with self-dating, I realized a big thing that held me back from doing these things sooner was a fear of loneliness—both the kind that I would feel on my own and the kind I assumed people would perceive in me if they ever saw me alone. It’s a thought process captured perfectly by Faith Hill (the other one) in a piece for The Atlantic:

Research has found that people tend to assume they’ll appear lonely if they’re seen doing a pleasurable activity such as dining out—as opposed to a practical one such as running errands—alone, and their interest in the activity decreases as a result. Valerie Manusov, a communications professor at the University of Washington, said that some of her students pretend to be on the phone when they’re walking by themselves; they’re afraid, they’ve told her, of looking like they don’t have friends.

I remembered reading that Japan and the United Kingdom had each hired a Minister of Loneliness to target what they saw as a crisis in their countries. I tried to see if the US had established something similar but, alas, we just have an Epidemic of Loneliness. But, you know, keep America great.

As it turns out, this has been a problem for Americans well before the pandemic, according to a report from the Surgeon General’s office released earlier this year. The report stated that

across age groups, people are spending less time with each other in person than two decades ago. The advisory reported that this was most pronounced in young people aged 15-24 who had 70% less social interaction with their friends.

These findings build on results from Census Bureau surveys which showed that “around 60% of people in the U.S. right now report feeling lonely on a pretty regular basis.”1 Now, loneliness has been linked to a number of other health concerns, such as “mental health deterioration, stress, sleep disturbance, and substance misuse,” and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy claims that “loneliness is on the scale of the opioid epidemic or obesity.”

If you’re thinking all of this information would mean you shouldn’t find ways to spend time by yourself, I need you to bear with me because I have a point, I promise!!!!

I don’t want to underemphasize how hard it is to make friends in this day and age and just generally in adulthood because that is a fact and a part of this conversation. But I’d argue, as I spent so many years believing this to be true, that we incorrectly associate being alone with being lonely. I think a lot of us believe that to never be lonely, we have to constantly be surrounded by other people, that the other people choosing to be with us all the time makes us whole.

I love my family. I love my friends. I love dear David. I love being around each and every one of them. But if I had to always be surrounded by these people in order to never feel lonely, I would light myself on fire and then dive head-first into the East River.

I have been lonely in friend groups and in crowded rooms and on the packed subway. Loneliness, unlike hell, has nothing to do with other people. It is unavoidable regardless of who you are or who you’re with, but, good news, it’s manageable! For most people, it will ebb and flow—although there is such a thing as chronic loneliness that I just learned about while doing research for this piece, which is a whole other can of worms.

But barring that single extenuating circumstance, loneliness is not a constant no matter what our brains tell us. One of the most frequently cited cures for loneliness is “cultivating a culture of connection,” as NPR calls it. I fully agree but want to take it a step further: I’d argue that setting aside time to do things you love by yourself—cultivating a stronger connection with yourself—allows you to forge deeper bonds with others. It also, even more importantly, dispels the idea that being alone is lonely when it actually is just the difference between dry land and the river floor off the FDR Parkway.

David explained all of this a lot more eloquently than I possibly could when I asked:

Emily: How has doing things on your own impacted your friendships? How has it impacted your relationship?
David: As I mentioned earlier, I believe solo dates/adventures play a huge role in your development. Solo experiences nurture your self-awareness, strengthen your independence, and build confidence—all of which are necessary to have in order to create strong relationships. Whether the relationship is platonic or romantic, you need to be secure in your individuality and empowered to act alone when needed in order for it to be successful.
Dependency in the simplest terms…is not hot. No one wants to have a relationship with someone who is extremely reliant, can’t make a decision by themselves, or always needs your attention. Everyone should be able to conduct their own train and feel confident in doing so. I strongly believe forcing yourself to go on solo dates helps you gain this confidence, allows you time to explore your growth opportunities, and establishes a strong sense of self-love.
My independence has only had a positive impact on my relationships. My friends don’t blink an eye when I want to recharge and have a solo date. In fact, they embrace it.
On the other hand, I did encounter some friction with my need for “me time” at the beginning of my relationship with my partner. At the beginning of our relationship, we both sacrificed a lot of our individual routines to spend more time with each other. We were in the honeymoon phase of it all and every free second we had, we’d meet up.
After month three of this, we both were in need of our “normalcy” and decided to apply more structure to when we spent time together. While we enjoyed each other's company, we were giving up other important activities that kept us sane as individuals—like skipping the gym or not hanging out with friends, for example.
Just because we need time to ourselves does not mean we do not want to be with each other. Rather, we both recognize that in order to be the best versions of ourselves we need time to recharge and maintain our routines.
Even though I have a partner, I still go on solo movie dates and spend four hours at the spa. He does not get jealous or butthurt that he was not invited. He understands the importance of solo adventures and also goes on his own. 10/10 recommend!

If I’m remembering correctly, I believe there’s a particular person who makes this point every single week:

When you figure out what it is that you need to be you and you give that to yourself—whether it’s time at your gym’s spa or dinner with a book and silenced phone or, fuck it, a trip to Spain or London—you will return to your relationships as the best (or at least a better) version of yourself.

And hey, maybe while you’re out doing what makes you happy, you stumble upon another person doing the same and make a new friend. I know this is essentially a meet-cute but let’s all just pretend I said something really profound.

Letters to a Young Solo Adventurer

David is frequently to me what Samantha Jones was to the other women on Sex and the City: a wise older sage who doles out painful but necessary advice while sipping on enough liquor to kill a Victorian child in an instant.

By this, I mean that he knows how to distill the lesson from an uncomfortable moment of growth and share it with others, which is exactly what I asked him to do:

Emily: What has been the greatest lesson you've learned since starting to do things alone?
David: Going on solo adventures is crucial to one’s development, in my opinion. I strongly believe that the most important relationship anyone has in their life is the one they have with themselves. With that being said, you should treat it as any other relationship and truly take the time to understand who you are as an individual through self-dating.
Emily: What is the most significant thing you've learned about yourself on a solo date?
David: My solo experiences have undoubtedly helped shape the person I am today. I think the most formative experience was my time studying abroad in Spain. It was my first time leaving the States, being away from my family, and living in a country where I didn’t speak the native language.
(Sidebar: Yes, I am Mexican and can’t speak Spanish. That’s a whole other story that we will save for another E4P!)
I knew no one else in the program or what to expect when I got there. Nervous was an understatement—I was deadass shaking in my boots. Thankfully, all those negative feelings turned into excitement the second I landed. From the moment I took my first step on Spanish soil, I just allowed myself to live, learn and take in the beautiful country.
The three months I spent in Spain were honestly magical and I learned everything but Spanish (which was the reason why I was there). Instead, I was reminded of how big the world is, how much food there is to eat, museums to see, people to meet, and memories to make. More importantly, I learned how I would have not experienced this monumental moment of my life if I allowed my fear of being alone stop me.
Walking away from this experience I was able to firmly grasp the power of independence. With a whole new level of self-reassurance, I came home feeling empowered and in control of my life.

To add to what I started saying in the last section (because you truly can never have too many bodies-in-the-East-River jokes, I guess), during the years I tried to never be or do anything alone, I would often agree to every plan floated my way. The result was I more often than not ended up in situations I didn’t want to be in with people I didn’t very much like.

Setting aside time for myself has allowed me to figure out exactly what I do and don’t like doing based on what I seek out and actively give my energy to, but it has also enabled me to start setting the requisite boundaries needed in every relationship that I had simply refused to draw. When you’re always doing things with other people at the front of your mind, it’s so much easier to break yourself up into little pieces and give them all away without saving anything for you.

That’s a crazy way of saying: when you schedule time for yourself, you become a priority by default and, if nothing else, it gives you space to exist. With that said, I wanted to know:

Emily: What have you learned about the power of saying "no" to plans?
David: The power of saying no has saved me sanity and money!
As an extrovert, I have the tendency of saying yes to everything. I love my friends and enjoy spending time with them—especially at brunch. However, there have been countless weekends where I have said yes to plans Thursday-Sunday and by Monday, my social battery was nonexistent.
I felt like a beta version of myself and filled with anxiety for no good reason. As I have gotten older, I realized that it is okay to say no to plans when you know you need the day to yourself. Everyone should bake in time in their week to take a beat and breathe! It makes a world of difference and will increase your quality of happiness.

In fact, all of this is exactly like what the real Samantha once said:

Men Don’t Just Need Therapy, They Need to Take Themselves Out On Silly Little Dates By Their Silly Little Selves and Sit Alone For a Silly Couple of Hours

I would be remiss not to make a particular point abundantly clear but to make sure it gets across without ruffling too many feathers, I’m couching it in a hefty serving of positive re-enforcement: David is sincerely and truly one of the best people I’ve ever met. He is empathetic, giving, whip-smart, a little too funny and good-looking, and genuinely open-hearted.

He is, I presume, not one of the 63% of men who “use dates to become ‘a better version of themselves.’” A horrifying concept, albeit not a surprising one if you or someone you loved has dated a man in the last few years. In this bone-chilling CNBC article, therapist Pamela Larkin notes that

“Many men do not struggle with taking up space in a conversation…They may not be wrestling with thoughts of ‘do I belong here, does my voice matter, will I be heard’ in the same way that women’s narrative historically shows.”

My belief that men should struggle with taking up space is a conversation for my own therapist, but more importantly, this view highlights the importance of self-dating even for those of us who man-spread on public transportation: you should not ever, ever, rely on another person to grow or work on yourself. That’s not their burden to carry for you.

To have time for yourself—to better yourself, to have fun with yourself, to be by yourself so that you (hat trick) don’t cannonball into the East River—is a gift and one that a LOT of us should be a little more hip to accept.

But, in case you still don’t think any of this pertains to you, I asked David:

Emily: What advice do you have for people who are still hesitant to do things by themselves?
David: I’ve spent a good amount of time talking about solo traveling and I understand that’s more of an advanced level of solo dating, so let me reel it in a bit.
Solo dating can be any type of activity you personally enjoy. The takeaway is that you should feel empowered to do it by yourself. Prioritizing your wants and needs, investing in yourself—but more importantly learning that you do not need anyone else to have a good time!
My advice to those who are still hesitant on doing things by themselves is to forget about the fear and to start small. One of my all-time favorite solo dates is going to a movie. Eating popcorn, sipping on a cold beer, and sitting in a comfortable recliner seat while watching a movie is literally chef's kiss. With no one to bother you, you’re able to properly disconnect from reality and relax. Nothing beats it.
No one cares that you’re alone—in fact, you might be inspiring others to do the same. Whenever I see someone with a book in hand, a tall glass of wine to the left of them, enjoying a meal by themselves at a restaurant, I personally find it so sexy! We love a king or queen that prioritizes themselves and takes the time to reconnect and enjoy their solitude. There is nothing more attractive than independence and being secure with oneself.

This is going to sound rich coming from someone who, just weeks ago, copped to the fact that I always have and likely always will be deeply obsessed with how people think of me, but I wish I would have learned to take myself out sooner. It is now, ironically enough, one of the only times in my life where I don’t care how I look to others.

Think about it from my perspective: they are not buying my pasta, my craft ~~cocktails~~ cocktail, my movie ticket, my book, my other book from the other bookstore up the block, or all of the stuff that I really don’t need from Sephora but love and definitely have to have. They’re not beside me while I eat, read, watch, walk, or dance to Cody Rigsby and Jess King’s Beychella cardio class (thankfully).

They don’t know what it took for me to get here, all five years of trying since that one night in the Barbican, but I do. And that’s why every movie, dinner, and walk all the way uptown is for me and me alone.

Simply put, as David explained:

David: On a closing note, there are a lot of pros to self-dating. You don't have to debate with others on where to go, it's cheaper, there is always a single seat open, and you get to treat yourself—you deserve it!

A million and ten thank yous to David for being so honest and fun—an absolutely perfect E4P debut!!! He just started a new job today so everyone congratulate him!!!!