OK to go on a cruise alone, but not other vacations. Why?

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I think it get a bit tired were people are so absolutist about the point they are trying to prove. I take Aspie1's perspective on board.

There are going to be social situation that are harder an easier, that is real life.

Aspie1 may not be 100% accurate, but the naysayers are just as guilty of generalising.

That's why I give the guy some credit, plus this is a positive thread, and a worthy discussion.

I'd definitely feel like a fish out of water at a resort. Cruising the canals on a narrowboat at one to two miles an hour would almost certainly be enormously enjoyable to me.

I got to thinking about whether or not something like that might work in the US. We used to have the Erie Canal. I didn't know if it is still in use, so I looked it up and found the New York State Canal System

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Canal_System:

That might make for a very interesting vacation.

My experience is that a cruise puts a bunch of people into a confined space for the better part of 7 days. By the end of 7 days, a lot of people get to know one another from constantly bumping into each other.

It's often a night vs. day phenomenon on how chummy people get from the first day to the last day.

Other "solo" vacations don't tend to keep people confined in a given space for more than a day or so. On cruises, it's usually by day 3 or 4 people start getting to know one another.

London has started using the waterways again for construction, for the Olympics, and the massive Crossrail project.

It has become cheaper to haul large semi-constructions, and raw material by water, in certain areas.

That is very true. I know from experience. Granted, you don't become friends in the traditional sense with everybody from the ship, but people you've spoken to at least once treat you like a friend right away. Especially if did something fame-inducing, like volunteer to go onstage during a theater show or win a prize in a ship-wide contest. (I've done the former.) With that said, this is where it's important not to fall into the trap of latching on to the first friendly person/group. Otherwise, you'll be remembered as "that person who won't leave"; sorry, it's true.

One other thing I noticed is that cruise ship passengers passively neglect or actively reject two highly sacramental unwritten rules: (1) prohibition on eating alone in nice places and (2) prohibition on guys going to a club alone. I lost count of how many people I saw eating alone, although the service crew encourages solos and groups of less than four to share large tables (which makes service easier by "condensing" people), which works wonders for meeting people. Even if you do choose to eat alone, you're just "that person eating", not "that person all by their lonesome".

I broke the "no guy at the club by himself" rule at the resort, and almost got beaten and left for dead as penalty. On the cruise, while I haven't actually seen men coming to a club alone, I've done that in plain sight of single women, couples, and groups, and never caught any heat for it. Quite the opposite, women danced with me when I asked, and many a time, even approached me first. Of course, having three times as many single women as single men on the ship tends to make the age-old rules go out the window, since the opposite ratio exists "on land".

That reminds me. Some restaurants have a large table that they will gladly seat a single person where they can eat in the company of others.

Some will even group two or more groups together to sit at a single table. At one restaurant once, they set the four of us (three Texans and a Peruvian) at a table with a party of three (all Germans). It was pretty interesting.

Here's an article on it from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/alone-together-the-return-of-communal-restaurant-tables/284481/. From the article:

In the restaurant next door to my office, they push two or three tables together at lunch for people to come in and sit down with others. Of course, in this small town, they've all known each other for years. At their communal table, it is usually the wealthier ranchers and farmers who sit there.

Yes, i would say so! Now I understand what you mean by "resort" - so it wasn't just a nice motel on a beach in Florida. (I was thinking of where I like, Treasure Island, Florida. Mostly deserted some months with school not yet out and it being warm enough the "snowbirds" are all back north, though of course March and first week or 2 of April would be jammed becasue of spring break. Good motels on a nice, wide beach and a shuttle to take you places or you can walk to some nice restaurants/shopping. Very quaint, not a big, flashy place but super nice.)

I think the difference between a "resort" and just a motel/condo on a beach like above is that a resort seems to me to be someplace that's expensive enough that people figure it has to be a couple going. In some ways nowadays you have to have 2 incomes to afford it, in some minds. Whereas on a beach, you can just lounge around in a cabana all day and I don't think anyone would look oddly at you.

Also, you have the whole idea of the honeymooning couple - or couple who can finally afford a honeymoon after spending a fortune on the wedding years earlier - at an expensive resort. Whereas while it's true that quite a few couples enjoy the lower prices of a Treasure Island, for instance, enough would eschew it for the ritzier places that it doesn't seem like you *have* to have someone along with you.

that being said, your experience shows why sporting activities are so big, although I can see if you were int he Caribbean that might not be your thing. I'm sure some people are a lot more troubled by lots of stimuli than I am. Although even there, the man-cave extension idea isn't that bad. For instance, you want to go to Philadephia and spend all your time in the museums and Independence hall, just buy a bunch of Phillies/Eagles/Flyers/76ers gear and wear it all the time. People will presume you came for the game. And, if they ask, just start talking about the last night's/week's game like you were there or at least saw it in a local sports bar.

I don't mind being by myself in a restaurant or someplace else alone if I'm enjoying it. I'll take a book to a nice restaurant and sit there and eat and read my book. If somebody looks at me funny, let them look. Lots of people have a problem eating alone in a restaurant, so maybe they are one of them and wish they could do it. If they are looking at me wondering why I'm alone, let them wonder.

I wasn't trying to be ugly to you, OP, when I mentioned your previous posts. I was just wondering if maybe you were doing like I used to do and keep on about certain topics when talking to people, and that tends to make them not want to talk to you. I have to watch myself or I'll do it now. I mentioned your old posts because I thought that maybe the fact that some things from long ago or things that could possibly happen might worry you a lot so you might be somebody who would get a certain thought train in your head and talk about it a lot to other people. Those two traits kind of go together, I do both of them sometimes and have learned to police myself with that.

If there is nothing about you that strikes others as odd, then I wonder if you are imagining that the looks you get are mean. maybe people are just looking at you while thinking about something else, or something and you are interpreting the looks as mean because you feel funny being places alone. It's common for a lot of people, not just aspies, to not like going places alone. I never had tons of friends but I had some, and sometimes when I wanted to go out, my friends would be busy or not want to go, so if I wanted to go out I had to either go alone or not go, so I decided to go alone. I started doing that in my late teens and early 20's though so I was able to get used to it easier. I think that the younger you start doing things against your nature, the easier it is to get used to them.

I've known some singles who went to Club Med destinations alone and loved it.

Interesting thought, my answer would be that people go on cruises specifically to get away fro life for a while, and that means going solo. That being said, I'm sure there have been single men people find creepy that go one cruises alone, but I can't say for certain because I've never been on one.

@OliveOilMom
When you have four guys that you haven't even spoken to, follow you out of the club, to beat you up and leave you for dead in tropical heat (the resort was in the Caribbean, after all), you can't help but question everything about yourself. Not to mention be afraid to go to resorts alone again! But not on cruises, apparently. That's exactly how I wound up there by myself: my friends were too busy or they get seasick. So it was either a cruise solo or never vacationing again for the foreseeable future. I didn't stop worrying until I saw my ship for the first time, but long story short, the cruise was nothing like the social war zone I imagined it to be.

@Pitabread123
You know, you just might have brought up the Occam's Razor: I simply stopped acting creepy, which caused fellow passengers on the ship to respond well to me. Whatever I did to provoke those resort thugs in the club (without directly interacting with them, mind you), it must have been pretty damn bad! I wish wish I knew what it was; maybe I stared at women or something. Or maybe the 3:1 ratio of single women to single men on the cruise worked in my favor; it caused age-old gender roles to flip-flop, with women approaching me first. And in most NTs' minds, a man who women flirt with isn't creepy; hence, no violence toward me.

Aspie1 you probably simply more vulnerable, and therefore and easy target for people who get a kick out of that sort of thing

If you look at the floor, wear headphones, don't appear pay attention to your surroundings, lean against walls, or have hand behind back / in pocket when people get near to you, you will be more vulnerable.

Stiff body language is a dead give away. So therefore self confidence can help. Not brash becuase that can also attract the wrong attention for different reasons, but someone who know where they are going and what they are doing.

Note creepiness, never really has anything to do with, whether you are a "wrongen". If someone feels creeped out by someone, this not a reflection of how at risk they are, it actually quite a bad indicator, becuase many psychos are personable, and convincing.

Source: years of self defense training, and also some assault i have been in and witnessed.

People talk about fight or flight, but actually equally common is just to freeze in my experience. It take conditioning to get the freeze mentality out of people.

I don't even remember just how vulnerable I was. I was pretty drunk in that hotel club, so maybe I wasn't acting so much vulnerable, but stupid/weird, enough to make those guys want to teach me a lesson. That, and stare at women on the dance floor (with a "hungry" look in my eyes, I'm sure), which didn't help my case. Combined with however I was sitting or standing "vulnerably", no wonder those guys followed me to beat me up.

There's a technique I used in the bar/club on my cruise, while watching women on the dance floor, so it doesn't look like I'm staring. It was described in an e-book I owned (but lost when my hard drive crashed ), that teaches you how to survive prison. Yes, you read that correctly; given how often we aspies get wrongfully arrested, this could be life-saving knowledge. I lost count of how many times it helped me avoid very nasty encounters in bars. Still, it's very sad that we aspies have to turn to prison-survival manuals to get by in the human society.

The technique is called "diverging your eyes". You have to move your pupils so that you're looking at the entire space in front of you and not focusing on any single point, as opposed to converging your eyes and focusing, which is natural for humans to do when looking at objects or people. NTs know this instinctively, and use it for avoiding fight-provoking eye contact, which is a vestige from eye contact among other mammals, that use it for challenging each other to fight. Dogs are a great example of that, and dog interaction books teach people not to look a strange dog in the eyes.

It's not easy, but can be done. Pretend you're looking at those Magic Eye pictures, where you have to see an image in a colored pattern. Focus your eyes so you can see as much of the 180-degree space in front of you as possible, as opposed to tunneling your vision to wherever you're looking. Whenever I did this, no one ever gave me the old "what'cha looking at!?" A far cry from when it happened all the time in my late teens/early 20's. Perhaps this is what helped me on my cruise.

If four guys followed me out of a place, in a foreign country and wanted to beat me up I wouldn't think it was my fault and wonder what was wrong with me. I'd wonder what the hell was wrong with them. I'd wonder if they simply hated Americans or people who weren't from their country or were planning on robbing me or thought I looked like somebody they knew or hated or something.

Somebody doing something like that shows that there is something wrong with them, not the person they go to beat up.

The heat probably had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had to do with people from the Caribbean, I don't know. I'm from the Deep South and we have temps in the low 100's during the summer and high humidity. We aren't used to having it that high as much as those in the Caribbean are, and very occasionally a heat wave will drive somebody crazy but usually heat just makes you lazy and want to sit still and lay around. I doubt the heat has anything to do with it.

I had brought up a few things that I wondered if you did when interacting with other people, but those are the only thing I can think of. The only things I can think of about your appearance that would cause a particular kind of guy to want to beat you up would be as follows; 1. fanny pack. 'nuff said about that. It's a big no no and guys with fanny packs are usually the same guys that say and do things that others make fun of. 2. buttoning your top button on a shirt. 3. ironed blue jeans with that crease in them 4. dressing over the top in a way that obviously doesn't suit you - ie; skinny guy with nerdy hair, big glasses and acne drinking a fruit and umbrella drink while decked out in biker leather or 70's sans-a-belt pants and an open shirt. 5. nerd hair 6. excessive, nervous body language 7. looking scared with wide eyes and being jumpy 8. being filthy - greasy hair, gross teeth, stained wrinkly torn clothes, lots of acne and a shiney face, body odor. Thats all I can think of that would cause them to do something like that.

Unless you were looking like one of the above reasons, I'd just assume there was something wrong with those guys. Also, looking like one of those above things doesn't give them a reason to beat you up. It gives them a reason to laugh at you among themselves but not to beat you up. Something's just wrong with them.

#1. Nope. (I was already aware of the "no fanny pack" rule.)
#2. Nope. (I wore a T-shirt that night.)
#3. Nope.
#4. Check! (The high-fashion Armani T-shirt I wore probably clashed with my bad books and abysmal social skills.)
#5. Check! (Bullies have told me multiple times that my hair was gross.)
#6. Check!
#7. Check!
#8. Check! (I don't know if "gross hair" referred to the style or the lack of cleanliness, though.)

That said, I dressed kind of gross on my cruise too: (1) sweaty T-shirt from being in the hot sun, (2) shorts covered in wind-blown salt from the ocean, (3) shoes covered in dust from Third-World streets in ports, (4) body smelling of sunblock and bug spray, (5) and frizzy hair from the high humidity. And yet, not only did no one try to beat me up, I had women act quite handsy and with me while I was dressed like that. Of course, come nighttime, I'd take a nice long shower, change into a nice outfit for dinner and shows, and put on cologne, all of which I got compliments for.

So it's not just the outfits. I'll stick with the theory that I was staring at women too much, which made the guys at the resort want to teach me a lesson. Maybe those women were their girlfriends that they weren't dancing with. That, or violate a social rule that prohibits people (or maybe just men) from being on a resort by themselves. What's even weirder is that on the cruise, people understood that looking like crap is a given after being active in port under the hot Caribbean sun all day, while at the resort, other people my age expected me to look impeccable at all times.