Loneliness can hit differently when you’re single and dating. We’ll talk about how to cope with those moments without settling, spiraling, or dating just to fill the space.
Michelle greets the audience, identifies herself as a dating coach, and introduces the video's focus on coping with loneliness—especially the pressure people feel on weekends.
Michelle distinguishes between being alone and feeling lonely, explains that loneliness is a temporary emotion, and uses a washing-machine metaphor to describe how feelings rise and fall.
Michelle shares mistakes she made when lonely—reaching out to the wrong people and making poor choices—and introduces pouring love into herself and planning activities as better options.
She lists specific actions like group fitness, walks, events, self-care nights, and 'coping ahead' strategies such as scheduling plans, to-do lists, and Zoom calls to prevent weekend loneliness.
Michelle recommends healthy distractions—bathing, reading, watching a movie, or simply going to bed—and reminds viewers that being single contains lonely moments but doesn't define their whole life.
She asks viewers to plan concrete weekend activities, shares her own example of going to a barbecue, invites engagement on social media, and encourages building a life with connection while maintaining mental health.
Hello, cadre. I am purposely pausing a little bit here because it always freezes when I'm the most awkward facial expression and then that's what gets posted. So I'm just going to smile for a second, hoping it captures that. Happy Friday. I am Michelle. I'm a dating coach from Unstuck by Michelle. And I wanted to chime in today to talk about coping with loneliness because it's the weekend and there's a lot of pressure often with the weekends to do things, to be active. And I know that a lot of people get lonely.
And I know that when you're single and if you live alone, like there's just more, you have to do more to plan to be around people. And so One thing I want to say too is during the week, a lot of people have work or there's just a little more structure in your weeks. And so it's harder for the mind to wander, I should say. And so on the weekends, it can feel sometimes like we get stuck in our heads. And like I was saying earlier, it feels like it can feel like everyone has plans, right, except for us.
And so a reminder is that loneliness doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. And it also doesn't mean that you need to be in a relationship. So let's just take a moment to talk about being alone versus being lonely. You can be alone and be peaceful. When I was single, there was times when I wasn't alone and peaceful. But towards the end, when I started dating with more intention, I did a lot more work on myself. Like I was alone, but I was really peaceful and I didn't really feel lonely. And I'll tell you how I got there.
Because you can also be surrounded by people and feel lonely, right? Loneliness is about wanting connection, not necessarily wanting a partner right this second. And so just to remember that loneliness is a feeling. It is a feeling and all feelings have a timeline, right? I like to think about feelings as like a washing machine. when you have a washing machine and it's going and then when you like put stuff in it and it's like all like wonky and it starts making those loud noises and it's like, But eventually it comes down and it stops.
And that's like emotions. They come and they come in and then they have a level of intensity. But if we don't get on that narrative, if we don't sulk in it, if we don't feed the emotion, it will go away. So something to remember just about the weekend and things that you can do is something that I did when I was realizing I was really lonely. That's often when I made the most mistakes with dating. So when I realized like, you know, hey, I'm lonely, I would reach out to people I shouldn't reach out to.
I would say yes to people that I shouldn't say yes to. And I would spend time with people that I shouldn't spend time with. And did that help me feel less lonely? No. It ultimately made me feel worse. So something that I started doing was pouring a lot more love into me. I made sure that every weekend, because I lived alone for a long time, that every weekend I had something to do, right? For me, group fitness was a big thing. And so I would spend time every Saturday morning, go to my group fitness.
I would try to find a friend to grab coffee or to grab a drink with. I would be intentional about, or I'd spend time with my nieces quite a bit actually, but I would be intentional about making connection and making sure that I wasn't alone all weekend. I would make sure to do something outside of the house. Now I have a dog, and so when I was single, I still had a dog, and so I could walk him. But before I had the dog, I would go on a walk by myself without my dog, right? I'd make sure just to get outside, even go to the farmer's market.
Just doing something outside of your house. And doing something just for you. That can be self-care, that can be reading, that can be making a good meal. I remember one New Year's Eve, because I know that New Year's Eve gets so much pressure, right? And I was single and I wanted, I felt like I should be doing something, but I was like, it's just a lot of work. And so what I did is I bought me some cute pajamas from Target and I got me a bottle of wine. I seared myself some tuna and I had just like a Michelle night and it was actually quite glorious.
And I went to, I don't know how late I stayed up, but It was nice. I made a plan for me. I wined and dined myself, and it was quite lovely. So going into the weekend, don't wait until Saturday at 7 PM to figure it out. When you know the weekend is coming, plan ahead. There's a thing called coping ahead. If you know weekends are hard, if you know that loneliness tends to appear more on the weekends, cope ahead by making plans. Cope ahead by finding a community event to go to. Cope ahead by making a to-do list.
Cope ahead by scheduling a Zoom call with a friend or family that doesn't live here. Coping ahead is such a helpful thing. So in the moment, if you're like, I did all the coping ahead and I still feel lonely. The good thing is we always have distract tools, right? Healthy. distract us because we don't want to do those things that I did, right? We don't want to swipe over swipe on dating apps because we're lonely. We don't want to connect with someone that wasn't right with us because we're lonely.
We don't want to accept last minute breadcrumbs from somebody because we're lonely, right? You're going to turn on Netflix, watch a movie, right? You can take a bath, Read a book. And what I always say, I think on like most of my live streams is just go to bed. I posted last week about the importance of sleep. We all need 8 to 9 hours of sleep. So just go to bed. Go to bed. If it's getting late, go to bed. So I just want to remind you that being single can have lonely moments. That doesn't mean that your entire life is going to be lonely, right?
So being single has lonely moments, but that doesn't mean your entire life is going to be lonely. Build a life that has connection in it, that you have purpose, and build a life that you have things that you're looking forward to while still leaving room for a relationship that you want. As a dating coach, I always ask my clients, what are you looking forward to? What are you looking forward to? What are you doing outside of dating? Who are you connecting with? Because your whole world can't be dating.
And it's important to find peace if you are alone, to find peace while being alone, right? That is so essential because when we just date from a lonely place or, you know, we ignore red flags and we oftentimes still feel lonely, right? If we can't build our life with connection and do things for ourselves, oftentimes a relationship doesn't just fix that, right? So this is really good preparation for you for the future. So I'm interested if you're watching this later, what are you going to do this weekend to help you build connection?
Like what can you put on your calendar that would help you to feel more with people or more seen or less alone? For me, I'm going to a barbecue tomorrow. I wasn't going to go. I don't hope she's not watching this. I wasn't going to go. But I was like, I should go. I'll feel good if I go. And so I'm going to go to the barbecue. So tell me, what are you going to do this weekend? And if you're watching this later in the week, it's like a Wednesday, what are you going to do the next weekend? Let me know.
Drop a DM. You can follow me at Unstuck by Michelle on TikTok and Instagram. You can comment here. I want to know what you're going to do to build some community and connection. Again, I am Michelle. Follow me. Let me know everything about dating that you want to hear about because we know that dating is really connected to mental health. And we date better when our mental health is better. We make better choices. And yeah, so I'm here for all those things. Thank you. Have a lovely, lovely weekend.
