• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Is eating alone in a restaurant now a big taboo?

Lundi said:
Just a month ago I was in Munich and Salzburg, then I went to Lisbon and Porto. In all four cities, I saw a lot of people eating alone. Even men who looked to be in their 40s and 50s, just quietly eating alone and no one really staring at them. I felt quite at home, because I was just another lone diner, like them.

When I returned home after, I noticed that I was definitely back home because the culture was different. Downtown I usually go to this Italian place because it was close to my meetups. It is clearly overpriced, but really, the other options are even more overpriced. I was definitely not going to go to a place that charged close to $60 for a 7 oz (less than a quarter kilo) steak.

But when I say, "Table for one" at the Italian place, I notice that other diners just suddenly turn their heads towards me. I know that I am probably the only lone diner there and that most people are couples, probably on dates, or otherwise are just tourists. But when eyes fall upon me, I feel like something is wrong. I mean, surely they must have seen someone eat alone before. It cannot possibly be that weird.

I have to say, a lot of adults act like teenagers. You can meet a 40-something year old in a three piece suit, but says "bro" and "dude" every other sentence and makes fart jokes. I notice specifically from tech people that they tend to be the type that like to make fun of others, and comments like "loser loser loser" like in high school are quite common.

My acquaintance from Hong Kong (the one who is now in New York City) told me that since he had no one to go with, he would eat alone in restaurants. He said that he stopped doing it because he felt uncomfortable due to people's stares. My acquaintance from Minnesota says that he usually asks a friend to eat out with, to avoid getting stared at from eating alone.

My father very recently worked at some office where there were a lot of young people. He got sacked, but anyway he could not get along with the 20- and 30-somethings in his office. He said that the maturity levels were much lower than their real age.

My mother also has similar problems. Except that she also has Asperger's like me, so she gets the comments a lot. She hates people here, and every other day she gets into a vicious verbal argument with someone who insults her in public.

When I dine with my mother, we usually do not get those stares. I mean, some people do stare at us, but it is for other reasons not the dining alone reason.

I have developed a lot of self-confidence in the past few months though. I continue to dine alone despite the stares. If someone really fixates their eyes on me when I dine alone, I give them a glare. My mother gets angry easily, so if she dines alone and someone stares she might give them the finger or the British-style two-finger salute. Sometimes she just yells at them.

We often joke about how she should give the European arm gesture, where you show your clenched forearm as if you are doing a bicep curl, and then put the other arm on your bicep.
Click to expand...

Well, flee on your donkey, as the poetess Anne Sexton once wrote. Get out of that bizarre place.
 
I've always thought of San Francisco as people keeping to themselves mostly, and that it's a liberal city. I can't imagine people caring about someone eating alone. It doesn't sound real to me.
 
Fino said:
I've always thought of San Francisco as people keeping to themselves mostly, and that it's a liberal city. I can't imagine people caring about someone eating alone. It doesn't sound real to me.
Click to expand...

People keep to themselves in the sense that they have their own cliques and niches. As in, if you are next to someone and their social circle, people will exclude you. But in public people might just approach you and/or talk to you out of the blue. Usually when people approach me in public it is not to say something positive.

I am not sure exactly what you mean my liberal. I mean, yes drugs and sex are tolerated. Which is why talking about sex and asking someone sexual history is more or less tolerated here. But I am economically much more left-wing than most Americans, as well as most Europeans, and I get picked on a lot for these views.

It is a city of extremes really, very rich and very poor, very introverted and very extroverted, those who do tech and computers all day and those who go hiking and partying.

I could videotape myself in public and my experiences like those YouTube vloggers, but I am not going to do that because I am not sure that having strangers in one's videos is permitted.
 
Last edited:
And it's possible to be picked on for your your views on economics?

I'm with Kalinychta, this sounds like a twilight zone.

And I've been there, but it was just for three days. Seemed normal to me in those three days. I have a good friend who lives there and he doesn't report many oddities either.
 
I have met some people who say that it is the Twilight Zone. That is because they have lived here for a few months or a few years and feel that way from their own experiences.

I can only say that my parents want to move from this place as soon as possible. And that my friends/acquaintances that I did make from meetups have almost all left permanently.

If you do not believe me, you do not have to believe me. I know what I experience.
 
I've spent a decent amount of time either working in restaurants or dining in them. I can assure you the restaurant doesn't care. If you're in a place that mainly hosts groups or couples, then coming in solo may attract a degree of curiosity. But in all honesty, if people are staring at you this much, this consistently? It's probably not because you're coming in alone.

People notice differences. We don't always mask as well as we think.
 
All of your threads can basically be summed up as "San Fransisco is an awful city populated by teenagers in adult bodies, oh woe is me." There is a solution to this. Move somewhere nice.
 
You're an adult, take responsibility for your own wellbeing. If you do want to move, there are many resources online with advice on budgeting, how to move with no money, accounts of peoples own experiences. It can be done if you're smart about it.
 
I often see people eating alone in restaurants, and it's not a taboo. Once or twice I have done so myself, because I've been working and not had time to go home to eat, and the nearest place to get decent food is a restaurant.
There's nothing wrong with eating alone in a restuarant, and it's not anyone else's business to stare or judge. You are doing nothing wrong, it's not illegal so there's not reason why you shouldn't do it.
 
Sounds like one of the "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" clichés. Dismissive comments and now you put the blame on me.

Sometimes I wonder why I joined this forum in the first place.
 
I eat by myself all the time in public. I like doing it, never had people judge me for it though. Not that I know of, anyway.
 
SolarPoweredNightOwl said:
I've spent a decent amount of time either working in restaurants or dining in them. I can assure you the restaurant doesn't care. If you're in a place that mainly hosts groups or couples, then coming in solo may attract a degree of curiosity. But in all honesty, if people are staring at you this much, this consistently? It's probably not because you're coming in alone.

People notice differences. We don't always mask as well as we think.
Click to expand...

This is a really good point. They may have been staring at him for an entirely different reason. It doesn’t make any sense for someone to feel shocked and scandalized at the sight of a man dining by himself, so there has to be another reason.
 
Why does my father get stared at when he goes out to eat alone as well? And my mother?

Unless both my parents and I are all unbelievable weirdos and we somehow do not notice it?
 
I don’t mind eating at a restaurant by myself, although I miss pleasant dinner conversation when I do. I usually bring a book so I have something fun to keep me occupied while waiting for my food. This also signals to others that I’m not interested in company, as I’ve had men try and join me at my table in the past.
I’ll be attending a few training days in another city in the coming month. I’m kind of looking forward to sleeping in a hotel room by myself and looking for a nice place to have dinner on my own.
 
Nothing personal, but the more I read your threads, the more I'm beginning to think that there's something else you're doing to attract this kind of attention to yourself whether or not you're aware of it. If you don't want to take responsibility for your own behavior (which I believe is the root cause of these complaints) and try something different, go right on ahead, but expect more of the same from everyone else.

I have a hard time believing that the people of San Francisco are as you describe them either, but who knows. Never been there before, but even in a big city like that I'd imagine there are halfway decent people somewhere and people who really don't care what you are. Have you found any yet?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom