The Forgotten Joy of a Weekend Alone

What would you do with 72 hours, solo?

Thanks to all your pre-orders, last week the book was third in the UK best-selling unreleased fatherhood books, and it was the number one hot new release in depression. We did it, Joe, we won at depression! All online links are on the book website, where you can also claim your free pin badge and other pre-order goodies.

I’m travelling for work this week—currently sat in Liverpool airport putting the finishing touches to this intro—so resharing a favourite essay from the archive, originally published in April 2022. (Which is paired with one of my favourite Tony illustrations too.) It’s about what happens when you suddenly find yourself with a weekend entirely to yourself, and why every parent should try it. Almost four years later, I feel even more strongly about this. That solo weekend in Barcelona also led to the psychedelic parenting essay: proof that giving yourself space to think can take you to some unexpected places.

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Illustration by Tony Johnson

When that final email whooooooshed out on Friday lunchtime, the overwhelming sense of possibility hit. What was I going to do? A three-day weekend to myself. No children. No one else. It’s an odd feeling, considering what you might do, rather than what we might do. Not that we’re spending our weekends being marched from event to event, against our will, through gritted teeth. But there’s an exhaustion that comes with constantly interrogating one another, the parenting equivalent of the journalistic six: Who (are we going to see)? What (are the kids going to eat)? Where (are we going to go)? When (WILL WE BEEEEEE THERE DAD)? How (the hell are we expected to hold things together)?

Freed from the responsibility of children, and relinquished from the never-ending discussion of “what to do”, the choice becomes yours, and yours alone. It can be daunting. Parenthood becomes so all-encompassing: a cave you descend into, filled with equal parts terror and delight, in there so long you forget what life was like above ground. It’s easy to lose sight of who we are underneath it all — the constant logistics, the Sisyphean to-do lists, eternal Tetris played with the family calendar. The longer you’re away from yourself, the harder it becomes to tune back to what’s beneath; time spent deciding as an “us” making it harder to remember what you, individually, actually want, if given the choice; the inevitable dread and spiral of panic that comes when you get said choice, and fret about frittering away the free time you have, before descending into despair, realising you’ve squandered it.

My weekend wasn’t wasted, I’m delighted to say. Friday afternoon was spent helping out a shift at my favourite local restaurant, where I’ve been helping out a few hours a week (a story for another time, and at least 2,000 more words, but I promise you: it’s a doozy.) I returned for dinner later that evening, sat “on the marble” (the table closest to the kitchen) and ate a little bit of everything. After closing time, enjoyed a few drinks with the staff, who have become good friends, before heading separate ways into the night. I arrived home, more than a little tipsy, and wrote a glowing review for the place 2am. Hey, when you gotta write, you gotta write.

The rest of the weekend was spent free from formal plans, allowing serendipity to take centre stage: walking round the city with friends, long lunches turning into longer dinners, beers turning into crashed dinner reservations, fortuitous “bumping intos” that recalled life as it once was, before we started planning our personal lives as meticulously as our professional ones. (“Great, dinner on the second Thursday next month at 7pm? PERFECT!”)

This wasn’t the first time we’ve taken time to ourselves—my wife and I have been trying to carve out a few solo weekends over the last year, and I’ve already written about how barely distinguishable these are from our regular family holidays:

“I didn’t expect the week to be so transformational. I’ve had time away from the kids, sure. But it was always for work. This was dramatically different. When I came back, I felt like I’d been away for a spa week, or a meditation retreat. Recharged, afresh, anew. And so glad to see them again. I’d missed them so much, and realised I actually missed missing them — we’d been together so much I’d forgotten how that felt.”

The Calendarization of Parenthood

In the years BC (Before Children), you may have left the house early on a Saturday morning for a coffee—no idea where the day might take you—and return early the next morning, watching the sun rising on a new collection of stories, enough to last a year, gathered in less than a day.

Then you had a baby. And your world immediately became dictated by The Routine. Your routine was different from mine: maybe you did Tracey’s E.A.S.Y method and clung onto the Y for dear life; or you decided to go all Gina Ford in the bedroom, a la boss. Maybe you had no say on what the routine was, but learned to follow it religiously. Whatever route you took, life changed—chained to a new schedule, as chained as your wife was, clearly. But a world apart from what it once was. Confined and restricted at first: a time-based straight-jacket, covering yourself Memento-style in reminders on nap times, feeding quantities and the occasional “do this, because if you forget, bad things will happen.” Structure might be something you relish. Or it might have been uncomfortably born by a formerly laid-back (but not laying back) person. As the baby gets older, the binds begin to slack. “There’s only one nap, they can have it in the buggy now”, or “so long as they’ve eaten by 6 pm and we’re back for bath, we should be OK.” But those structures are still there. It’s the Calendarization of Parenthood, life outside of work a mirror of life inside it; juggling personal, professional and shared family calendars, spontaneity nothing but a distant memory. And all the planning. The never-ending planning. What shall we cook for dinner? What do we need to help them with? What shall we do with them this weekend?

Then you’re liberated from it all. For a weekend. Completely free, to do whatever your heart desires (within reason.) I wanted to know if more parents were seeking this out, or whether it was something they craved. So I asked (back on 2022 Twitter, before it became a cesspool):

Yes, I know the sample size is too small, the results are biased to those who follow me, and all the other reasons this isn’t a statistically significant survey. (Sit down, stats nerds, your time will come.) But with 75% of us wanting to take more, or already taking more, time alone, there’s a huge unmet need here. We need to normalise this behaviour, remove the stigma around spending time away from the ones we love most, and promote the idea of plugging back into yourself. To show our children that we’re more than just parents, and that while we love them, we also need to look after ourselves.

A bunch of dads started discussing solo time in the community, and numbers were similar. The same weekend I was sauntering around the streets of the city, Dadscord dad Ivor posted a photo of himself atop the Dolomites, two beers rapidly cooling in the ice. “I keep thinking about my family, thinking how important, essential, fundamental it is to get some time to yourself, preferably in nature, to be able to step back. Free time without the constant pull of someone else is a balm for me and my head, so I will think how we can do this regularly.”

Other dads had barriers to overcome. Guilt came through as a significant theme:

“I would love to do this more often, but don’t get a chance. Now more than ever and that the second born is getting older. My thing is guilt. My wife always tells me to do it, and encourages it. But I end up feeling like I dumped a load on her and then can’t enjoy it as much as I could. I also encourage her to do it, but I think she also avoids it for similar reasons.”

“We both feel guilty doing stuff for ourselves. I think in different ways there’s cultural baggage from both of our parents. I don’t think either of our mum and dad ever did stuff for themselves.”

“The guilt can be resolved if you gift each other the time, rather than feeling like you’re taking it,” Ivor suggested. “And the guilt is different once you get past the first time,” another dad shared. Ivor shared a photo of himself drinking an ice cold beer atop of a snowy mountain, but admitted to us all that “I almost didn’t post that photo because I thought it might come across as a humblebrag (‘Look at me! Up a mountain sans baby!’). The guilt is strong for me too.”

I’d held back from posting photos of myself in the Dadscord that weekend, hesitant to share the delight of a kid-free weekend, worried I was rubbing my freedom in the noses of other dads, frantic with their kids on Easter Sunday. Another dad piped up and told me exactly what I needed to hear: “I don’t think anyone should feel guilty about posting anything here. That’s something that should be celebrated.”

Another reminder on how important it is to open up, lean into the discomfort, and see it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself in the process. After all these years of writing here, I thought I’d have fully understood that lesson by now. Turns out I still have a ways to go.

Might lose my jacket, and hit a solo [one time]

We need more parents to take more time without their kids. Doing it together as a couple: date nights, life as a couple, and reconnecting with that pre-parent period, when life was all about each other. But time alone too: space with our own thoughts, to figure out our own shit. I ended my solo weekend with a series of unlocks on major professional and personal issues, some of which I’d been grappling with for months. All the problems needed was a little room to breathe, combined with the right input from the right person at exactly the right time.

So, let’s get into it. For those dads who’d love a weekend alone, but don’t know where to start, here are some thoughts from other dads who’ve done the same, along with a small caveat: whilst I endeavour to always make TNF relevant for all shapes and sizes of family, this advice probably works best for those cohabiting with a partner.

1. This won’t happen if you’re just waiting for it. So you’ll have to put your hand up, get out there, and be intentional about making the change.

2. It can only work (and the guilt be navigated, for the many who clearly feel it) if both parents take the plunge. Dad needs to be able to take the kids on his own for long enough that Mum can recharge too. And that’s not an easy hurdle to overcome. 7 days alone, looking after my two, was the most exhausting week of my life. But I was — without a sliver of a doubt — closer to them after it than I was before. My son, always one to go straight to mum with any “poopa” (a Spanish classic), would start coming to me a little more often (though still nowhere near equally.) I spent large chunks of 2024 and 2025 solo parenting, and whilst it isn’t easy, it did bring me much closer to my kids. “I love the challenge of a solo weekend,” another dad shared, “it’s exhausting, and difficult, but it deepens my bond with my daughter.”

3. Get talking. Be open and talk about your needs, and how you can make it happen. Forward this email to your significant other, and suggest they take their own time away. Take your weekend with the kids first. Lead by example.

I’ll leave the last word to two dads in the community, sharing their own experiences:

The most important thing is to have an open, equitable conversation with your partner about why you want this. At its best, it’s a wonderful gift to give each other. Felt like the ultimate life hack the first time we did it.

It’s got to be a quid pro quo, and it needs to come from a place of honesty about each other’s needs, and be patient with your partner if they’re not open to it — they may think you’re shirking. Offer to take the kids yourself first, or start small and build up to a night or two away. For us we’re open about the fact that we can’t look after our daughter, or each other, if we don’t look after ourselves first.

Had a weekend to yourself recently? Or hoping to make it work? Drop a comment over the weekend, let’s see if we can support each other and help make it happen.

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Good Dadvice

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