How do you find friends without kids ?

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.

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.

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.

Real talk. Got a small con near me that attracts some surprisingly big names. I've made a couple friends there not even trying.

hobbies

Oh, man, that takes me back to AOL chatrooms. Blast from the past!

In my core friend group, there's one couple that started a routine "third Saturday" dinner party. They'd host consistently basically every month, kind of open house. If you can make it, great. If not, see you next month! It did wonders for keeping the group together in spite of kids, job changes, life disruptions, etc.

Maybe something similar would work in your case?

Yes, this works well!

I did this with my mates at the pub once a month. An hour or two over a quiet beer, no pressure, just a casual catch-up if you could make it. Couldn't get everyone each month but across the year we had seen everyone much more than normal

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.

oh yeah and small ones are almost better. I have never even been to dragon but I know its the largest outside of worldcon.

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.

I thought it was absolute genius when they first explained it when I started hanging out with them. It started with an RPG I was playing, one of the guys in that group said "Hey, a buddy might like to join us..." and that buddy was one of the people who hosted the monthly party. That was ... oof, like 20 years ago.

Dammit, now I feel old.

Lemmy needs a DC community