A peer support community, independent and not for sale. Since February 2024.

GLP CircleA peer support community

Dining out

A first date and a plate I barely touched

Started 11 June 2026 · 9 replies · 49 hearts · read 803 times

NolCork, IE · 11 June 2026
1 month ago

Something I have been sitting with: A first date and a plate I barely touched Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

What I am after is the version of this that works when nobody is helping, because that is my situation and most accounts assume otherwise.

The social side of this is harder for me than any of the logistics, and I have not found anywhere else where that is discussed practically.

Sorry for the length. The logistics take longer to describe than they do to do.

16

AmbroseYork, UK
#1

My honest experience is that most people are far less interested in what I am eating than I imagined for the first year.

5

Bell ANorwich, UK
#2

Nol, I have been where you are and I would rather say so than stay quiet.

The commentary from one particular relative was relentless and I eventually said, once, that I would rather not discuss it, and that was that.

3me too 9

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA
#3

Nol — taking your question as you asked it, because I think the thread has widened it.

What helped was having one sentence ready. Mine is that I am not very hungry today, and nobody has ever pursued it.

4

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#4

Adding a marker so it does not get lost: the most practical sentence in a thread like this is almost never the first one, and somebody arriving late will scroll straight past it.

9

OttiHarrogate, UK
#5

The work lunch is the hard one because you cannot leave and there is a social script. I now eat something small beforehand.

5me too 5

WystanCheltenham, UK
#6

Something practical: I look at the menu before I go, always, because deciding at a table with eight people is where I get it wrong.

3

WinkleWeymouth, UK
#7

No advice, just company. Here if it helps.

7

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#8

I am adding this thread to the circle's standing resources because the practical answers on this page are the best set we have.

8

DelphiThessaloniki, GR
#9

Picking up Wystan’s point rather than starting a new one.

I do not owe anybody an explanation and it took me a year to be able to say that at a table rather than only in my head.

5