Is it okay that I’m home alone on a Friday night?

Alternatively: Is everybody else lying about how busy they are?

I think I have a normal number of friends.

But, perhaps more often than I’d like to admit, I find myself without plans on a Friday night.

Now, that’s not to say I’m a massive, massive loser. Or at least, I hope it’s not.

I have a social life, I swear. I have a close group of girlfriends I’ve known since school and individual friends to catch up with one on one over coffee or drinks. I have work friends, former work friends, and friends-in-different-cities. If you saw my Instagram, you’d probably think I was a lot of fun. All of this serves to say, I do get out…

Just not as often as everyone else seems to.

And I’m not talking about what I see online — I’ve worked in social media; I know how deceptive the average feed is. Instead, I’m talking about how genuinely busy everyone is.

I see it when I need to give five weeks’ notice just to make plans in the group chat. I see it when I struggle to find a plus one to the theatre three weeks in advance because everyone already has plans that night. I saw it, intensely, when I got a date to travel down to London for work and found out that every single one of my friends there would be abroad at the time (?!?).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Oh no. This just got embarrassing. The poor girl doesn’t realise all her friends hate her and are lying about being out of the country when she visits.”

And, believe me, I’ve considered that possibility — at length.

But, as much as I’d love a moment to get all self-deprecating, I don’t think that’s what it is. There’s evidence that I am at least a bit liked. And, more importantly, I saw the photos — people were genuinely out of the country that week.

I don’t think my problem is a lack of friends so much as it is a lack of friends who have a similar schedule to my own, or, more specifically, a lack of friends who are free at the weekend.

Before I get too far into it, though, let me make one thing clear — I don’t resent any of the people in my life for not being available. I just worry why I’m so much more available than they are…

When someone asks what I’m doing next week, I rarely need to check my diary. If I’m out one weekend, chances are the next is sitting wide open. If I’m away, there’s always a free day before or after the trip.  I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve nodded through conversations about how hard it is to make plans with an adult friendship group while thinking, “I’m actually quite free this month”.

When I go two Fridays in a row without plans, I start to tell myself I am very lonely.

I love my own space, don’t get me wrong. More or less all of my favourite things — writing, reading, drinking wine in the bath — involve being indoors by myself. And when I do leave the house, it’s usually for yoga, the most indoors-y and introverted of all the activities. But, being a stereotypical homebody doesn’t change the fact that, on a Friday night, you’re meant to be Out Doing Something.

The rest of the time, I can rationalise my lack of weekend plans.

It’s a matter of circumstance. I’m at an age where a lot of the people I see most often are in very serious relationships, scattered around the globe, working on themselves and their careers, raising a very small human, or doing some combination of all the above. These things aren’t problems, in fact, some of them apply to me too.

I want my friends to be busy doing great things, but, selfishly, it does make prime time scheduling a challenge.

There’s also my lifestyle. I live alone, I work from home, and I’m single. When I was in a relationship, my chronic availability didn’t plague me half as much, because, even when I was at home on a Friday night, I wasn’t alone on a Friday night.

It's all very logical, you see. But this logic doesn’t help when a colleague asks what I’m doing at the weekend and I freeze, because, however many after work catch-ups I’ve had during the week, however I justify my lack of weekend plans, however much I love writing, reading, and drinking wine in the bath, it’s not particularly cool to say out loud.

And that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? I’m not so much bothered by having no plans on a Friday as I’m bothered about people realising I have no plans on a Friday, of all nights.

So, what do I do about it, Substack readers?

Should I accept my fate and start planning my weekends six weeks in advance? Should I join a club? Should I dive into a relationship despite promising myself a break? Should I forget about everyone else, book a solo holiday, and write my own Cheryl Strayed style adventure book?

Or — and stay with me here, because this is radical — should I forget about what my life looks on a Friday night, and focus instead on how I feel about it the rest of the time? Because, away from the pressure of “having to do something on the weekend”, I have a sneaking suspicion I’d think everything was perfectly fine…

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Hey!

The topic of adult friendships and loneliness is a popular one on Substack, I’ve seen a good few pieces, each one addressing a different aspect of what it means to have friends — or to not have friends — today.

It was this one, from

eleanor lucie

, however, that inspired me to write my own thoughts down on the subject, and therefore it wouldn’t feel right not to point you in the direction of it, so you can take it in yourself:

i have friends, i definitely have friends

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About The Content Girl

Opinions, insights, and the occasional marketing musing from a professional Content Writer giving writing in her own voice a go. You can expect:

• Commentary on pop-culture/regular culture and the like

• Insights/tips/information around professional Content Writing/Marketing and Digital Marketing

• Personal essays (I’ll try to make these not insufferable, I swear)

• Book reviews, recommendations, and roundups

• The odd piece of flash fiction