How the fuck do you meet new people?
I just got out of a 10+ year relationship a couple months ago, rather suddenly and not of my own volition. I do not fault my former partner, she did what she felt she had to do to be happy. Unfortunately, turns out, I didn't really have any friends of my own, I was just a hanger-on to her group. I have done a bad job of keeping in touch with anyone outside of this group, and I find myself very lonely nowadays.
Things have been tough for me for this and several other reasons the last couple years, and while I am incredibly thankful for my family taking me back in and supporting me while I get back on my feet, they can't be the only people I interact with. That said, how does one actually accomplish this? I'm pushing 40, I live in a rural area (30 minute drive to anything that isn't run and populated by out-and-out racists), and I'm broke as hell. I'm not particularly even interested in dating, just making some new friends and not being so lonely all the time. Where can you go and what can you do nowadays that doesn't cost a bunch of money and people are willing to talk to strangers? Internet or IRL, I suppose, but IRL is better because God I need to get out of the house more.
Aside from meeting people at work, Ive only manually made friends twice. Once I found a hobby store that was near enough where they ran dungeons and dragons groups that were low pressure, so I was able to jump in and get taught and it was a good time!
The other was that I used reddit's "gamerpals" sub to find someone to play with. Went through maybe three clunkers and actually ended up playing with a dude that I still play with weekly and is my friend.
Do we have a gamerpals or LFG community here on Lemmy? This is a good plan and you're not the only one suggesting D&D.
We really should, Lemmy is d&d community light atm
despite the fact that everyone seems to play (or want to play) it on here.
I became the forever DM in my group, otherwise I'd run it all day
I'm not sure, but honestly in the interest of having the highest chance to meet someone since your happiness is important, I would use reddit for the amount of people in the pool, then just leave after that lol.
If you find such a community, I would be very interested in hearing about it.