What Do You Do If You're the Only Person Standing Alone?
observe the room, be genuine (not clever), and see where it goes
You’re at the event. Sparkling drink in hand. Surveying the crowd. Over your mental speakers, you hear Frank Sinatra crooning:
Blue moon
You saw me standin' alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
And you think about going home to watch Grease again because it’s so dang hard to walk into social situations alone.
Pause right there.
Standing alone at an event can feel like publicly displaying the fact that you do not know what you’re doing. Everyone else appears to have arrived with friends, found their people, and received a secret set of instructions you somehow missed.
But people tend to assume everybody else “has it all together” when that’s usually not the case. More often than not, people appear more “put-together” than they feel. In reality, a person who looks deeply established in a group may have joined it thirty seconds ago. Someone laughing with the host may only know the host. The person beside the cheese plate may be pretending to study the brie because they also have no idea where to stand.
Your first job is just to take in what is happening. From there, you can find someone who seems open to talking and hopefully have a conversation with someone who’s just as relieved as you to have found someone to chat with.
The hard part about not knowing your role
For me, one of the scariest things about events where I feel like an outsider is that I don’t know my role.
I derive a lot of confidence and security from knowing what I am there to do and how to do it. You’ll find me arriving early to help put out chairs or carrying a clipboard with a petition. Unfortunately for me, some situations have no use for my clipboard, and they may have already hired people to put out the chairs.
Purely social events are harder. Weddings. Large family gatherings. Work parties where nobody is quite working but everyone is still “on.” Lose additional points if there is a specific dress code and I have to figure out what “festive casual” means.
Your version of this discomfort may look different. Maybe professional networking comes naturally to you, but community garden cleanup day is baffling. Maybe you are at home at a giant wedding but freeze at a birthday party where you only know the host.
In any case, the underlying question is often the same:
How do I get “in” when everyone else seems to already be “in”?
Everyone else may not be as “in” as they look
As alluded to earlier, research suggests that people tend to believe their friends have more friends than they do. In one study of more than 1,000 university students, participants reported an average of 3.63 close friends but believed their friends had an average of 4.15.
The exact numbers matter less than the pattern. We tend to overestimate how socially connected everyone else is, especially when we already feel unsure about our own friendships or our ability to make new ones.
When I started a new job, it felt like I was looking in from the outside at a web of close relationships. I interpreted a lot from small gestures in meetings and from seeing people talking or laughing together.
With more context, I realized that I had filled in an enormous amount of information myself.
A quick glance across a crowded event gives you very little information about who feels close, who feels awkward, and who is hoping somebody new will come talk to them.
How to approach a group
At most events, people naturally gather in pairs and small groups.
Being outside one of those groups can range from mildly awkward to suddenly reliving every middle-school lunch period, depending on where your headspace is at that day.
Before approaching, take a second to look at the group’s body language.
People standing tightly together, with their feet and shoulders pointed inward, may be having a more private conversation. A group with some space between people, bodies angled outward, and members occasionally looking around may be easier to join.
Once you physically join a welcoming-enough circle, there are a couple different approaches that tend to work well.
This is my standard: listen to what’s being talked about for a bit before saying anything. One of the most irritating things is when somebody comes into a group and immediately and unilaterally decides that the topic is going to make a sudden shift (even if the intention is more our of the anxious “I don’t know what to do with myself” energy as opposed to “hey everybody look at me” energy). So don’t be “that person.” Spend some time listening enthusiastically, with head nods, smiles if appropriate, and all the good active listening skills you know and love.
Listen for a bit, and wait for a moment where it makes sense for you to jump in. When you do first jump in, bonus points if you can jump in with a follow-up question or something that is supportive of what somebody says. Things just seem to go a bit more smoothly if your first impression on the group is “I’m here to be a participating member of this conversation,” not, “I’m here to make you all my captive audience.” Then, when you do tell a great story or jump in with your own unique input, the group is already warmed up to you and likelier to respond more warmly.If you’re genuinely curious or interested in a topic you’re hearing a group talk about, you can say something like, “Sorry to interrupt, but are you talking about [fill in the blank]?” And when they say yes, you can say something like, “I love [fill in the blank]! I’m so curious, what’s your take?” Or, even better, ask something more specific about the topic.
Again, the goal here is to start out with the spotlight on the people who are already in the group and keep the flow of what’s being talked about instead of immediately driving in a different direction.
Importantly, keep your eye on the general reaction of the group. Their response tells you whether this particular group is a good place to spend your energy. If the vibes are off, you can smile, say, “Nice meeting you,” and continue wandering without making it mean anything huge about your social future.
How to approach someone else who is alone
By now, you have probably noticed the other people who are standing alone.
Approaching them can feel especially vulnerable because there is no existing conversation to slide into. Somebody has to create one from scratch.
They may be having the exact same internal debate about approaching you.
Look for signs that they might be open to talking. Someone with headphones in, intently locked in with their phone, or shoulders turned away may want a moment to themselves. Someone looking around, watching what is happening, or even making occasional eye contact between brief glances at their phone may be waiting for an opening.
And a note from one anxious event attendee to another: if you are scrolling through your phone only because you feel awkward, consider putting it away. Other people may interpret “I am stress-refreshing Instagram” as “I am occupied with something important.”
You can begin with an informational question:
“Do you know when the speaker starts?”
“Have you figured out where the bathroom is?”
“Is this your first time here?”
“How did you hear about this event?”
Then introduce yourself.
And yes, I totally give you permission to ask an informational question even if you already know the answer to it. The informational question just gives both of you something easy to do for the first few seconds. From there, curiosity can carry the conversation:
“How did you hear about this?”
“Have you met anyone interesting yet?”
“What have you thought of the event so far?”
“Are you a regular at things like this, or are you trying something new?”
Give yourself a chance to find out what it is like to talk to this particular person. Maybe the conversation feels easy. Maybe you both realize you have very little to say to each other beyond the location of the bathroom.
All of those outcomes are totally okay and normal. And to that point...
You are allowed to leave a conversation
Part of what makes approaching people scary is the fear that, once you begin talking, you will somehow be required to remain there until the venue closes and the staff starts stacking chairs around you.
I promise you: you are actually totally allowed to leave whenever the conversation feels complete.
Keep it simple:
“Good talking to ya-- I’m going to grab a refill.”
“I’m going to wander around a little, but it was really nice meeting you.”
“I promised myself I’d talk to a few new people tonight. Thanks for being one of them.”
A brief, warm exit usually feels better than staying until both of you are desperately discussing the weather for the fourth time.
When you genuinely want to see the person again, say so before you go:
“I’ve really liked talking to you. Would you want to exchange numbers?”
Or:
“I’m going to keep circulating, but I’d love to talk again before the end of the night.”
If you exchange information, follow up the next day with something specific and low-pressure:
“It was great meeting you last night-- I’m still thinking about our conversation about terrible reality television.”
Most conversations at an event will stay just that (maybe unless you’re going to an event specifically for making new friends, cough cough Skip the Small Talks cough cough). A few of those conversations may become friendships, dates, professional connections, or the person you always seek out at the fancy shmancy annual fundraiser because they also find the string quartet unnerving.
Every approach gives you more practice moving through the uncomfortable first few minutes of being somewhere alone. It may also give another person the gift of the relief that comes with being approached first.
The next time you arrive somewhere by yourself, take a moment before your brain automatically decides what the whole room thinks of you.
Look around. Notice who seems open. Pick one person or one group and say hello.
That small step is often the difference between “that event sucked” and “I met some cool people and had some great conversations.”