Living alone does not make a person’s home an available venue for everyone else’s plans.

Living alone is often read as having spare capacity, as though an empty second bedroom were a public resource and a quiet Saturday were an opening in a diary. The person living there has a life in that space, with its own rhythms. Being unaccompanied is not the same as being unoccupied, and the assumption usually goes unspoken, which makes it harder to refuse.

If you host often because it seems expected, you are allowed to say no to a particular weekend without explaining your calendar. And if you are the one asking, ask rather than assume, and accept the answer the first time.