For many language learners, studying a foreign language is a compulsory, high-stakes activity. It is perhaps for this reason that positive feelings about language learning are rarely mentioned in the literature on language learning. The focus is predominantly on negative feelings: the anxiety caused by being asked to speak in the foreign language or the feelings of disempowerment when unable to call on familiar linguistic resources. To counterbalance this prevailing view of language learning, this paper reports on a study that investigated positive feelings about using foreign languages. The participants were an under-researched group of language users: adult first-language English speakers learning a foreign language for pleasure or using it in a social setting with other L1 English speakers. The findings showed that operating in the foreign language gave certain L2 users a sense of freedom and enabled them to speak and behave in ways that were different from their usual modes. Based on the findings of the empirical study, the paper suggests language teaching approaches that focus on types of performance that aim to offer learners a new experience of the world through another language.