I’ve always loved to travel. But for most of my adult life, there were two kinds of travel, and they had almost nothing in common.

The first was work: two or more flights a week, usually alone, with a running tab of guilt for the time away from home. The second was a real getaway, and that meant people. My wife, family, friends, and a full table.

Going somewhere just for the pleasure of it, on my own, was the rare exception, and never something I went looking for.

Then, a year ago, I stepped back from full-time work. My wife didn’t. We’ve spent our whole marriage planning the next trip together, and we still do.

But my calendar cleared, and hers didn’t, and it hit me that I’d been treating “we’re both free” as the only green light worth waiting for.

Not who you’d picture

So, I started reading about solo travel, and the first surprise was the company I had. The people doing this are not who I pictured. One long-running survey of solo travelers found that more than eight in ten were women, most of them past 55, most with a degree, most taking more than one trip a year.

Interest has only grown. Searches for solo travel are up about 230% over the past decade, according to Google Trends data.

The industry has finally noticed. Analysts estimate U.S. solo travel at nearly $95 billion and expect it to double by 2030.

The thing I had wrong

Here’s what I had wrong for thirty years. I treated solo travel as something you settled for, either because it was work or because no one else could come.

It turns out almost nobody sees it that way. Asked why they go, only about 7% of solo travelers point to a lack of anyone to go with. The rest give reasons that sound like a first choice: their own pace, their own plans, the freedom to change the plan on a whim.

And a growing number have simply stopped letting someone else’s calendar decide whether they travel at all.

Married, and going alone

That last part is where I found myself, and it turns out plenty of people are standing in the same spot.

Road Scholar, the non-profit that has run educational trips for the over-50 crowd since 1975, has watched its solo bookings rise for a decade. When it looked at who those travelers were, 60% were married and traveling without their spouses. The reasons were the plain ones: the husband or wife wasn’t interested or wanted something different from a trip.

And because it’s a non-profit, Road Scholar doesn’t mark up the solo traveler the way most operators do.

I still haven’t booked anything. My wife and I are already mapping the next trip we’ll take together.

But I’ve stopped assuming that’s the only kind worth taking, and one of these mornings, while she’s at her desk, I think I’ll go ahead and plan one of my own.