For people in single households, living alone has become literal and absolute during the social-distancing measures related to COVID-19 and can lead to decreased health and wellbeing. In this article, we examine how solo-living women think, feel, make sense of, and practice COVID-19-related social-distancing measures and, consequently, physical isolation. During lockdown, we interviewed 23 solo-living women between the ages of 25 and 69 years living in Slovenia. We present three levels of responses to social-distancing measures: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. We identified dissonances between these levels of responses, and we learned that affective responses play a significant role in shaping one's orientation toward and respect for the social-distancing measures.
Keywords: COVID-19; Europe; Slovenia; adaptation; adherence; behavior; cognition; cognitive dissonance; compliance; coping; crisis management; enduring; indepth interviews; inductive analysis; isolation; pandemic; prevention; qualitative; quality of life; resilience; women.