We are the same. We moved here after grad school. So no family, no school friends.

Friendship is all about unstructured time and proximity. You don’t make friends in knitting class; you make friends by going to coffee after knitting every week. Same with work — people are too busy at work generally, so it’s after work that matters.

For us, we don’t live anywhere near coworkers (nearest is two towns over) so meeting up outside work is difficult, and most people don’t stick around after work for events because of long commutes. Neighborhood friends are a work in profess — we just moved here but rarely see our neighbors because we all are working parents with kids in multiple activities. No unstructured hangout time. We would love to invite more but our house is always a disaster. Old neighborhood had zero families so was a bust in that regard.

Most people make friends when they are young at first jobs before kids or early on with neighbors when walking babies (or dogs, get a dog). That’s generally only time to meet neighbors. Home on maternity leave, hanging with neighbors at park, etc. but they have to live close so dropping in is possible or they either.

Finally, family friends are driven by the moms. Social dad can help, but moms drive calendar

Ok. My husband and I rarely drink and have friends that are drinkers and non-drinkers. We have a lot of friends and a lot of acquaintance type folks.
Here are a few things I would say.

1. All our teetotaler friends are from church. Church is a good place to find that group. They are also going to be older typically. We have always joined marriage enrichment groups at church and you make deep relationships with couples if you have a good group. Our current group is six couples and we have been a group for 8 years or so. One couple in the group is really one of our “best friend” type couples.

2. You have likely made the mistake of trying to find friends in the same age and stage as you. Our friends are all over the map. Older, younger, married, unmarried, with kids, without kids. We have a child with profound special needs so making “family friends” was basically off the table for us very quickly. We hire sitters and do grown up stuff mostly. I will say our low amount of drinking and profound SN kid means we don’t have friends in our neighborhood as much. The families around us are whooping it up drinking in their backyard around a fire with all the kids running around — that isn’t what we typically get invited to. The neighborhood families are our “acquaintance friends.” We like them and go when invited, we also invite them to larger stuff we host — but we know how far it will go. Our friendships tend to be with people we can connect with about work, movies, etc.

3. We made good friends by inviting, inviting, inviting. My husband is insanely good at this. Total social extrovert. He is good at identifying women I will like as well or asks enough questions about wives to have a good sense of what might be a couples fit. It isn’t enough to attend an activity. It is “I met this new person, let me invite them to lunch, dinner, a game night, a basketball game, etc.” We invite people to individual stuff with only one spouse, couples stuff and large group stuff. We have hosted large events at our home where we stick invites in peoples mailboxes and probably 80 people float in and out. Covid killed so much of this and we are working our way back to this. During Covid, we pivoted within 2 months to set up an outdoor movie set up. We had people over every 2-3 weeks to sit in our driveway. We might invite 40 people to get 4-12 to come and sit far apart in the driveway brining their own chairs and snacks. Now, we are getting back to game nights in our home.

Agree with the PP that you guys are at a really tough age. I’m in it as well and shule I do have friends we aren’t really hanging out or even connecting all that much. Especially as our kids are moving into tween and teen years.

Keep making the effort, but lean into yourselves and find hobbies that nourish your soul. And stay optimistic that once your…our kids are older then there will be time and space to nurture friendships.

Maybe you’re uptight and rigid, with a touch of desperation. People don’t consciously pick up on desperation, but they do hate it and move away from it.

Hey OP, I totally understand what you mean. It’s a lot easier to make friends when we are younger. Pre kids and once the kids reach HS (or at least MS) things get a little easier in terms of finding and spending time with friends. During the in between years, it’s really difficult to maintain friendships. People you meet in kids groups are rarely actual friends. They’re people that are thrown together because of their kids activities and not because of any shared interests, values, or personalities that mesh. These “friends” usually disappear when the kids stop participating in the same activities.

I’ve managed to make a few new friends over the last year. I had to meet a lot of people to do this. I spent time with some people that ended up being more acquaintances. That felt kind of disheartening because I put in a lot of effort and time to try to cultivate friendships with them but they weren’t to be. That’s perfectly okay but it’s still hard. I have like two friends that I like to do things with. We go out for coffee and talk. Or we will have dinner together with my spouse. I have a third friend who I had to step back from a bit because of toxicity but I don’t want to abandon her completely, I just can’t be as close with her.

It’s incredibly hard to prioritize friendships when your kids are very young or in ES because you have to spend all your time with your kids. How do you spend time with friends? How do you find new friends when all your activities center around your children and those children are the only thing that you have in common?

My new friends are not related to kids or kids activities. They’re people that share common beliefs and experiences as me. I hope you can find more friends.

If you initiate do they come? I don’t think I get invited to do a lot but I initiate a lot and people usually say yes. But for me it’s things like hiking or going for a walk, getting kids together at a park, stuff like that. I’m not going to gourmet dinners, shows, with friends.

What happened to the mom friends you made when the kids were little? Did u all just stop initiating stuff once the kids went to school? I have a 10yo but was in a moms group from when DD was 8 mos. The core group of moms I made then I am still friends with. We don’t see each other a lot but we do dinner without kids once a month, and get together with our kids now and again on the odd weekend of over the summer. We will do an Easter Egg hunt in April because we always have and our kids still like it. I do think I initiate a lot. If I didn’t I probably wouldn’t have as many friends.

OP, why don't you two have close family. Are your parents alive?

Sounds like your neighborhood/E.S. feeder area is toxic. I'd consider moving. At the same time, you work full-time with 2 young kids. You're in the working mom grind. The chummy moms are usually the ones who don't work and have time for 10am coffee or park meet ups. You need to see a mom regularly, outside of school, to build a friendship. To get to that point, you obviously have to see them outside of school a bit. It's hard. Try connecting with working school moms, and coworkers. Invite people over for dinner or drinks. As for your husband, I think he's doomed. He will need you to provide buddies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want to say, my DH and I have friends, while we are both somewhat awkward (ADHD, both) but also we drink and live in the city. This is good/bad/neutral depending on your POV, but drinking brings people together. Drinking is also very bad for human bodies, especially if you do it daily for tens of years out of a life expectancy of 70-80.

That's the sort of thing I contemplate. My friends are really good we do vacations, get kids together, create community. We also are mostly functional alchohol abusers with excellent jobs and enough money not to worry.

There are others, above my class, who enjoy the above as well as happiness, health, functional relationships, etc. Raised by actual loving, healthy people. The ones I see jogging when I'm hungover. I am assuming they also have amazing friendships too.

Other factors: living in a place for an amount of time. Taking the initiative to get involved. Joining, being a member of a hobby group. Giving, taking time to give what you can to your community. It's how to meet people, improve yourself, and help others. Even drunks can manage that.

This is quite possibly the finest piece of writing I’ve ever seen on the mommy group.
Thank you

You are welcome, I love you, thanks for the appreciation. I am Charlia Bukowski.

+ 1 If you’re going to be a problem drinker, it certainly helps to be charming, literary and self-deprecating. DCUM is sorely missing the latter trait and is filled with passionate intensity.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. For those who were wondering, neither DH nor I drink. However I don't think any of our acquaintances/friends even knows this. We have not been invited to anything where alcohol would be served. No one ever invites us to do anything either together or separately.

Neither of us is from this area and we moved here when we got married. We also have no local family. We did have college and grad school friends but we both went to different colleges/grad schools that are nowhere near here and our friends all live in different places. I keep in touch with my college/grad school friends by email or text but only see them at school reunions. DH does not keep in touch with any college/grad school friends.

As another example, when we got married we eloped and the main reason was that we had no one to invite to our wedding.

You didn't answer the question about what happens when you extend invites. You did say you started a book club, which is good, but the social aspect is limited.

I think you need to start entertaining people in your home. And expect disappointment but keep going.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want to say, my DH and I have friends, while we are both somewhat awkward (ADHD, both) but also we drink and live in the city. This is good/bad/neutral depending on your POV, but drinking brings people together. Drinking is also very bad for human bodies, especially if you do it daily for tens of years out of a life expectancy of 70-80.

That's the sort of thing I contemplate. My friends are really good we do vacations, get kids together, create community. We also are mostly functional alchohol abusers with excellent jobs and enough money not to worry.

There are others, above my class, who enjoy the above as well as happiness, health, functional relationships, etc. Raised by actual loving, healthy people. The ones I see jogging when I'm hungover. I am assuming they also have amazing friendships too.

Other factors: living in a place for an amount of time. Taking the initiative to get involved. Joining, being a member of a hobby group. Giving, taking time to give what you can to your community. It's how to meet people, improve yourself, and help others. Even drunks can manage that.

This is quite possibly the finest piece of writing I’ve ever seen on the mommy group.
Thank you

You are welcome, I love you, thanks for the appreciation. I am Charlia Bukowski.

You both probably have undiagnosed high functioning autism.

Do you have a religious affiliation/community?

OP here. For those who were wondering, neither DH nor I drink. However I don't think any of our acquaintances/friends even knows this. We have not been invited to anything where alcohol would be served. No one ever invites us to do anything either together or separately.

Neither of us is from this area and we moved here when we got married. We also have no local family. We did have college and grad school friends but we both went to different colleges/grad schools that are nowhere near here and our friends all live in different places. I keep in touch with my college/grad school friends by email or text but only see them at school reunions. DH does not keep in touch with any college/grad school friends.

As another example, when we got married we eloped and the main reason was that we had no one to invite to our wedding.