A meal cooked for one can be an act of preference rather than a reduced version of hosting.

Eating alone gets filed as the small version of eating together, as though the proper form were always a table with other people at it. Sometimes that is true and sometimes it is not. Cooking something exactly to your own taste, at the hour you want it, with nobody to accommodate, is its own thing rather than a shortfall. The assumption that company is the standard makes a lot of contented evenings look like consolation prizes.

Cook yourself something this week that takes real effort and would not suit anyone else. Lay it out properly, and notice whether it feels like less.