This one arrives by email more than any other question except the one about crying. Somebody has decided to come and then stalls on the second decision, and writes to ask whether it is better to bring a friend or to turn up on their own.
I never answer it with a recommendation, because both work and they work differently. What I can do is say what each one changes, so you can pick on something more solid than nerves.
What the seventy-five minutes does either way #
For most of the evening you will not be aware of which one you chose. You lie down under blankets in low light. There is a formal opening, seventy-five minutes of sound played live over a composed bed, and a formal close. The FAQ on this site puts the relevant part in one line: you will not be asked to share, to speak, or to be anywhere but on the floor.
Your phone stays in your bag. Whoever you came with is under their own blanket a few feet away, doing the same thing you are doing, which is resting. Neither of you is keeping the other company. If you drift off they will not know, and the same goes the other way.
What you are choosing, then, is the forty minutes around the session rather than the session.
What a companion changes #
Arriving somewhere new is the part people underestimate. You park, you find a door you have never opened, you take your shoes off in front of strangers, you draw a card on the way in and read one line on it. Doing that beside somebody you already know is easier.
The other end changes more. There is tea after, and an open door for anyone who would rather go. If you came with someone, you have somebody to not-talk with for a while and then talk with in the car, and that conversation tends to be better than the one you would have had over dinner, because you both just spent seventy-five minutes without a screen.
The cost is small and worth naming. You will probably check on them. You might come out of the session and read their face before you have finished noticing your own evening. Some people find that they spend the first ten minutes afterward being a host.
What coming alone changes #
You have nobody to look after. You arrive, you lie down, you leave when you want to leave, and you drive home with whatever you have got without having to put it into sentences for a passenger.
That last part is the real difference. There is a version of an evening like this where you decide in the car, out loud, what it meant, before you have had a chance to sit with it at all. If you come alone that conversation does not happen. Some people book specifically to avoid it. Other people would rather have it, and I think they know that about themselves already.
The practical worry, that arriving by yourself will be awkward, is thinner than people expect. Everyone in the space spends most of the night lying down with their eyes closed, and the tea afterward is something you can stay for or skip.
The one place it matters #
Some nights I offer one invitation, like a moment of meeting another person’s eyes. You hear about it beforehand, never as a surprise, and every invitation is optional.
That is the single point in the evening where who else is in the space becomes something you can feel. If you came with somebody, it is a different moment than if you came alone. Neither is the better one, and you can sit it out.
If the answer is a partner #
There is a session built for that rather than adapted to it. Couples Reconnection is an evening for two people side by side with no screen and no task between them, and you spend the whole night beside each other and no one else. It is on the sessions page with the rest.
Bringing a partner to a general night works fine. The couples session is the one where the whole evening is built for two.
The question underneath it #
Almost everybody who writes to ask this is asking something else, which is whether they will be all right. I think that is why the question arrives with so much apparatus around it, the explanation of the friend’s schedule, the note about not usually doing things like this.
The answer to the real question is that you can leave. The door is beside you and nobody will make it a moment, and if the whole thing was not for you, say so and your ticket comes back.
So the thing to decide is the car ride, and whether you want somebody in it. Whichever you pick, you spend the middle of the evening on the floor under a blanket with your eyes closed, and there is tea after.