To think I wasn’t rude to colleague?

[hellohelloisityou]

Our office day is today and this was the first time she’d been in since solo travelling around India.

I asked how it went, did she enjoy it. Then I said did you get lonely?

She pretty much snapped back that you wouldn’t ask a couple if they’d argued whilst on holiday so why am I jumping to the negative

I apologised but felt very awkward tension afterwards

Bit insensitive, sorry OP. It probably came across as though travelling alone was an oddball thing to do. Plus points already made about maybe she wasn't alone/ single by choice. Just seems a bit judgemental.

In answer to your Op, it seems like you weren't intentionally rude - but I'd say you were perhaps a little thoughtless. Like other pp said, going for a negative angle above so many other questions you could have asked.

I've got a couple of girlfriends in my wider friendship group who do solo holidays. One is single and childless (by choice) and takes a two week annual holiday to far flung places I could only dream of - South America, Malaysia, Eastern Europe.
The other is part of a couple, but choose to live separately. Kids all grown up. They have frequent holidays together, but my friend also enjoys solo travel - mainly Italy or one of the Greek Islands.

I cannot begin to describe how envious I am. I would absolutely adore to go away on my own - and there's no way I'd feel lonely.
I'm married with DCs, and we're lucky enough to be able to afford a holiday most years. But, that's peppered with compromises, and family dynamics, and tending to the DCs.

I'd give anything to go away on holiday on my own.

What difference does it make if I wanted to try solo travel or not.

If she’d yes or no, her answer isn’t all encompassing. People have different experiences, some would find it lonely and others wouldn’t. I was just making small talk.

Just to note I don’t stand by responses like this. I didn’t post to diminish her character or make her seem like an awful person. She’s a nice person which is why I bothered to make small talk in the first place, I was just taken aback as I hadn’t realised I’d asked a rude/offensive question.

Wow imagine laughing at someone experiencing loneliness. Someone you don’t even know. Isn’t that one of the main causes of suicide too.

Maybe one day you’ll be the lonely one and then I don’t think you’ll find it that funny.

Just to note I don’t stand by responses like this.

Good for you. There's been some weird stuff on this thread!

If she'd gone with someone else you wouldn't have said "did you fall out and argue a lot?"

I think you need to ask yourself why your small talk is negative, though.

Didn’t you get lonely? vs Did you eat lots of amazing food?

Leaving aside whether or not you’d travel solo, imagine doing that with a topic you do like/would enjoy:

Your hair looks great short! vs Ooh, I’d never dare do that.
How was your birthday? vs Shame it rained on your birthday wasn’t it?

”didn’t you get lonely?” is such a bleak, joyless response to someone’s experience, unless you’re interviewing, like, Terry Waite.

Don't beat yourself up OP. You didn't intend to upset her. By any chance is she a little older and you a little younger?

In my 20's it was common to travel alone and I wouldn't have been in the least upset by this question.

If the colleague is of an age where it's more common to travel with spouses/families then the question probably provokes different kinds of feelings.

If she is a nice person then she's probably feeling bad right now for having snapped at you.

I agree that you need to think why your small talk is so negative. India is such an interesting place that you could have picked up on any aspect of the holiday. What you asked was strange, especially considering you aren't thinking about doing solo travel. It wasn't small talk. Loneliness is very subjective. You don't have to be alone to experience it. Some people never experience it, just because they are physically alone. You could do with reading around loneliness. I solo travel because I don't have to compromise. If I'm spending time and money I want to set my own itinerary.

”didn’t you get lonely?” is such a bleak, joyless response to someone’s experience, unless you’re interviewing, like, Terry Waite

😆

I was just making small talk.

You weren't though, you were judging and being negative. Small talk is meant to be nice, casual questions like what was your favourite area of India etc.

”didn’t you get lonely?” is such a bleak, joyless response to someone’s experience, unless you’re interviewing, like, Terry Waite

love it! 😄

I think it was a pretty clumsy thing to ask a solo traveller, although obviously your intentions were not malign.

But single people are SICK AND TIRED of it being assumed that they are lonely etc etc etc. People in couple do not get it. And being "lonely" is often treated as a personality "problem" for single people - it's part of the generally negative social characterisation of people who are not coupled up - that they are sad & lonely, etc etc etc.

If I were you, I'd apologise. You treated her as a lesser human being because she's single. Even though you didn't mean to.

Small talk ideas:
What was the food like?
What was your favourite part of the trip?
What did you see while you were there?
What would you want to see again if you went again?
How was the weather?
Meet any interesting people?
How was the accommodation?

I think your question was too personal for small talk. Generally stick to facts rather than feelings.

It does sound a bit like a criticism of the fact that she didn't go with family or friends. Surely there were more interesting and less personal questions you could have asked?

Just trying to be supportive, I just don't like it when people are snippy when a simple 'yes' or 'no' would have done. I'm sure she's a lovely person really.

I traveled to Iran a few years ago (obviously ages before all this stuff kicked off). It was absolutely mind blowingly wonderful, and I came home as high as a kite. Did anyone ask a single positive question? Not one. Not a single one.

I went to Russia on my own about 20 years ago (obviously wouldn’t do it now). It was fascinating.

When I got back the majority of the questions and comments I got were so small minded it blew my mind:

Did you have insurance?
Would you have felt safer travelling with a bloke?
Do people speak English?
Arent the Russian planes really dodgy?
Oh I don’t fancy that. So bleak.
Theres nothing in the shops there is there?

There was just this overwhelming sense of how closed people’s minds are in general and how suspicious they are of anyone doing anything non vanilla.

Those of you who are assuming this woman is defensive are part of the problem
. A woman goes to India on her own and the first thing that pops into your head is “where was your bloke?”

Its like the 20th century never happened…

You know who makes it all good though? Other people who travel and live in places away from their homes. When they ask where I'm from and I ask where they're from and they say somewhere like Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Colombia and I say, "oh I'd love to go there, it looks stunning"

There used to be a poster on Twitter who would post pictures of Afghanistan and the Pamirs and I said one day how lovely it looks and how sad I am that I'll probably never visit and we had a lovely chat.

Uzbekistan is fabulous. Went there in 2000 when I think there were about three tour groups in the whole country. We saw Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand - places I'd wanted to visit since I was about eight years old.

But OP didn't ask a supportive question, did she. It was a negative question. Supportive would have been those like brighterthanthemoon has listed upthread.

No, I was trying to be supportive of the OP because she'd had her head bitten off unreasonably.

Because if you were interested in solo travel it would provide a rationale for why you asked that question out of all the others you could have asked. Obviously?

The fact that you aren't even interested in solo travelling yourself makes it weirder that that was the first question you asked (after did you have a nice time) rather than literally anything else.

From her POV it imbedded that the first thing people thought of about her experience - which to her could have been exciting, interesting, educational, thought-provoking, scary....was a negative. That the fact she went alone was more relevant than anything else about the trip. That nothing else stood out - not the travel time, the culture, the food, the weather, religion, as the fact she went alone.

Plus you keep defending your question as "just being small talk" but asking about loneliness isn't normal small talk! Small talk usually means innocuous comments about the weather, what you're having for lunch, the commute to work. Not asking about people's emotions!
What if she had turned around and said "yes actually I was really lonely everyday and found it hugely depressing and actually cried myself to sleep most nights?" Hardly a chatty small talk conversation then is it? But I'm sure you'd have blamed her for making the conversation awkward rather than yourself for asking a stupid question!

But single people are SICK AND TIRED of it being assumed that they are lonely etc etc etc.

So much this. And the 'Oooh, she's travelling alone, what's wrong with her that she hasn't got anyone to go with her?' as if you've some dreadful personality defect that makes your company unbearable.