Preface, nothing against those that do.
Its increasingly difficult to ever do fun things with my current friends. Now that I’m to the point where I have the space and the money and time to do pretty much anything I want, no one else has any time to hang out. I get ignored a lot, which I get, they care about their family more. But I’m the type of person who likes to host stuff and do things.
Not a huge deal to me, I’m fine being alone, but its like, man, its really fun hanging out and playing some IRL video games or just cruising or walking around outdoors etc. I guess nobody really has time as they get old though. Or maybe I need to find a younger crowd 😆 I have no idea.
If anyone is going to hang with younger crowds, try to make a rule for yourself. I’m in the mid-30s and I would not be comfortable anymore trying to hang with early 20-year olds. So, more of my flow is the later-20 year olds like the 26, 27, 28 and the like.
Agree. Different journey for everyone but most people I grew up with (including me) didn’t get over the heavy drinking phase and shake off the high school drama until their mid-20s.
Do you have many friends that are parents? If you like to host stuff, maybe hosting BBQ or potluck type gatherings that are more family friendly so your current friends are more able to participate?
Otherwise, the third space suggestions are going to be your best bet. Get involved in your hobbies with others, pick up a sport, etc.
I’m an uncle. I bring a popup canopy, extra chairs, and stuff that helps my siblings / other parents at gatherings.
At the last family funeral I brought a bunch of kids fabric colouring bags with markers. Kept all the little ones occupied during the ceremony.
I just got informed that my toddler nephew asks for me and tries to do somersaults like I ‘taught’ him once.
Kids can never have too many good role models. Takes a village to raise a child.
Yes!! My kid has many “uncles” and “aunties” in his life and it’s the best. Thanks for being that kind of uncle :)
Club.
Joined a choir and a wind band last year, now I’m on first name basis with the mayor. I didn’t realise that especially the wind band was full of well-connected people.
Join a club, try to find others that are like-minded. I’ve got friends who are recent parents and it made me have a look at my social circle and figured it was time to expand my social circle.
Lots of people are feeling lonely simply because they don’t know where to meet any new people. I’d say see if your place of residence has some sort of meeting center where you could organise something. If only one person shows up it might be a success already.
A/S/L?
jk, I’m old
It seems the only way to meet folks I like is on IRC or lately matrix ! Problem is they aren’t IRL friends.
Is there a reason you can’t put yourself out there to find IRL friends outside of the internet?
No, I can, I just dont live in an area with people of similar interests.
How can you be so sure? What specific interests are you trying to find common ground on? Your post only specifies finding people who aren’t parents.
Its more so that my friends are/were cool, but now they dont do anything other than kid stuff because they have no time. and ive known them for years. Its hard to find new nice people I can trust that are into music or gaming or cars etc. Or people already have their own friend group etc and I dont want to just butt in.
@Beacon @bridgeenjoyer the problem is the answer is 16/f/Cali
Always
What is fedia.io?
Oh, man, that takes me back to AOL chatrooms. Blast from the past!
SLPT: Sow the seeds of divorce. Then you get every other weekend to hang out with your friends kid-free. Bonus points if you manage to stay friends with both sides, you get 50% of your friends available every weekend!
Mwahhaha
Just to repeat whatever other people are saying here: Join any scheduled activity that happens weekly.
You can do yoga, spinning, sports when they have 30+ groups, dancing, pottery class, painting class, hiking groups etc.
You can also convert other friend sources to board game groups via house parties where you have easy games first then bring out harder stuff later.
Board games are great its just hard to schedule a night for them !
It is harder to make your friends play boardgames than making friends playing boardgames.
Join a social club. Join a boardgame club. Look online, sometimes people post stuff on Facebook. And go a couple of times, to get the feeling for the attendees. And never forget:
I rather play a shitty game with cool people than play a cool game with shitty people.
Look into volunteering some of your free time. Search for opportunities that put you out among people, do the things parents don’t have time or energy for. It’s okay if helping the community isn’t your main motivation, the work doesn’t care who does it. And it self-selects the other participants to be somewhat like yourself, especially if you let your interests drive your choice of where to donate your time.
I have thought community gardening would be fun
it is but I did not meet many people when doing it. Everyone is coming at odd hours as they get them to quickly go over their plot. Except for maybe getting it started I was only there for like 15min spans.
That makes sense. Its not really a time slot sort of thing
That’s a great idea.
Own a waterfront house and or a 24 foot pontoon boat.
I retired young, at 38 years old, and moved back to my old hometown. All my childhood friends have since moved away from this place, so I had no local friends when I came home.
I’m now 42. In those past 4 years, I’ve made exactly 3 friends. None of which live close to me. None of which I visit more than once or twice a year.
My wife has made no friends in that time. She’s a bigger introvert than me, choosing to stay in bed 60-70% of the day and going weeks without ever leaving the house. She laments not having any friends, but then won’t make the effort to get to know anyone.
Trying to make friends later in life without kids is hard. Especially as an introvert. And it’s not like I just sit around the house all day like my wife. I’m actively going into town and doing stuff. But it’s hard to strike up conversations with strangers and find common interests.
Your wife sounds like my wife and I. Mine has medical issues though so has a bit of an excuse. You know I think one thing is we introverts were a bit dependent on extroverts to get us to do a few things and since covid the extroverts have a hard time even getting other extroverts together much less looking around for people they have to work hard to get to go out. If the person is not married its going to be even harder becuase the married folks are less motivated to go out.
Your wife sounds like my wife and I. Mine has medical issues though so has a bit of an excuse.
Same here, we’re both 100% disabled according to the VA. Doesn’t mean we’re immobile, but our mobility is a bit restricted at times and my wife uses that as an excuse to avoid doing things. The less she moves, the less likely she’s going to be in pain that day.
I personally just fight through the pain to be productive, and if I need to take a rest day to recover, oh well. It’s not like I have to be anywhere.
basically my wife can move around for an hour without much consequence but like 2 and she will have to recover a bit and 4 or more she will be laid up the next day. Mainly from her back. If she has good enough chairs and can go from sitting to standing the times can go a bit longer. So like we have a minivan which is actually a very good seat. don’t have to climb into it but don’t fall into it either. so if she is driving and going to places and the driving is not to long and the places are not to long in one place it works out. Does make it darn hard to be social.
That sounds very similar to my wife’s situation. Except the few times she’s feeling good, she’ll just bail on social plans as we’re trying to leave the door. I end up attending social events by myself a lot.
yeah we don’t really try as I know that will be the case. Again I don’t blame her but she can’t handle it. She does a fair amount though around the house and shopping so she does what she can within her capacity.
Wait, why would you move back to a town everyone left? If i retired at 38 I’d be traveling and not living anywhere near my home town.
I feel like it is harder for women to make friends. Idk why that is.
Buy yeah its hard. I also feel like I scare people off by being too friendly, especially in today’s “stare at your phone all the time” world.
Wait, why would you move back to a town everyone left? If i retired at 38 I’d be traveling and not living anywhere near my home town.
I spent 20 years traveling the world and living abroad with the US military. I’ve explored most of Europe, Asia, a little of Africa, and a brief visit to the Middle East (that last one was not fun travel), and as much as I enjoyed it, I realized I was starting to miss my hometown.
My hometown is nearby to a massive US city, so most people here just move to the city. Or get their college education there and then move on to another large metropolitan area in the US. My hometown is a beautiful place to settle down, but most people my age aren’t ready for that yet. Hence why all of my friends have left town.
My wife and I still have plans to travel, but we’re waiting for our elderly dog to finally pass away. He gets stressed with us just being gone for a day, so leaving him in a kennel while we go on vacation might kill him.
We paid for an expensive kennel where he got his own “suite” with a soft bed, tons of toys, TV playing doggy films all day, and multiple one-on-one play sessions with employees outdoors, and he still lost 5 lbs from stress in a week! And it’s a place he’s familiar with; we used to send him and our other dog there before she passed away. Since losing his partner, he just can’t handle being away from my wife and I for extended stretches of time. He’s extremely needy and anxious.
So one day we’ll get back out and revisit some of the wonderful places we lived abroad again. But for now, we’re just enjoying the quiet life back home.
The military was stressful for us, always having to be somewhere, accomplishing something, and adhering to a strict schedule. Our personal lives were always secondary to our jobs and you couldn’t just quit. You were locked into a multi-year contract that could only be broken by doing something illegal and going to jail. So having the freedom to plan my own schedule and do whatever I want with my life is kind of nice.
I’ll be honest I don’t know how much the advice will work.
The advice is simple: do social stuff, be social, and you’ll end up in a social group.
That being said, the advice is (a) mind-numbingly “have you tried putting one foot in front of the other foot” for someone that knows how to make friends, and (b) the advice is damn near useless/impossible for someone that doesn’t know how to make friends.
Personally, I’m in group B. I don’t know how to find clubs where people do stuff. I don’t know how to find a place to volunteer.
It sounds crazy in 2026 but check your local library.
I have unironically tried that. They looked at me like I was in fact crazy once I clarified that I did not wish to enroll a child in their arts and crafts thing.
that depends on a very large number of variables such as where you live (country), where you live (rural, city), where you live (how close to are to specific meetup locations) etc.
buy an island and you’ll find lots of people without kids that like them.
🧐
Step 1: move to a big city with high rental cost in which having kids is not feasable for young families. Step 2: start a social hobby there Step 3: life the hedonistic lifestyle!
Perfect !
cons. go to the next dragon con.
Real talk. Got a small con near me that attracts some surprisingly big names. I’ve made a couple friends there not even trying.
oh yeah and small ones are almost better. I have never even been to dragon but I know its the largest outside of worldcon.
Lemmy needs a DC community
My hope with federation was that more groups would actually make an instance and a few communities around their specialty. like the world science fiction society or various large cons or like maker spaces.
