Oh how very true. I’m going through at this very moment. As a dad(of a 4 year old), having moved to a new city during COVID, it has been a struggle to find friends. Although I do attend a few meet-ups every now and then, play tennis in a group, take Dutch classes, I just could not meet anyone often enough to become friends with.
Whenever I try to organise something to hangout, it’s a nightmare to find a time that works for most. Often a couple of months away.
The anxiety of “do they think I come off too weird trying to force them to be a friend” is very real.
I wish there was a commonly used app like Tinder with explicit intentions of making friends, hanging out with a wider user base than one-off local apps which is dominated by a handful of people.
Trying to schedule things with people gets harder with each new element. So I usually schedule with my best friends (3 people) and just let the rest know about it: if they can join, cool, if they can't, there's always next time.
But I've disconnected from some people who are really bad at this, eg asking for lots of changes and rarely taking initiatives. I'm an introvert and reaching out to distant friends feels weird to me, even if it happens the conversation doesn't flow.
(but one thing that helps me is pushing myself to thinking out loud, instead of being insecure of what to talk about. Weird topics sometimes make the best chats)
School may help as your child gets older. We've lost touch with a lot of people we knew that way--they moved or their kids left the school. But we knew a lot of people that way.
For moms there is the Peanut app (https://www.peanut-app.io/) which my wife has had a lot of success with setting up playdates. Doesn't appear that there is something similar for Dads, though.
I tried this at one point and it was a bad experience. It was mostly gay men. While I'm not against being friends with anyone who is gay, I very much got the feeling most people on there were looking for something different than I was.
I’ve used it and met some relatively normal (and straight) dudes. You’re right, the majority of the men using it are gay, and often fairly predatory with their intentions, but if you’re discerning you’re able to find folks there to hang out, not hook up.
This is why bolting on a "friends" feature on a dating app wouldnt work. It must be a solely dedicated place with explicit purpose of making friends based on interests to remove the anxiety of "What would they think if I said this?"
Whenever I try to organise something to hangout, it’s a nightmare to find a time that works for most. Often a couple of months away.
The anxiety of “do they think I come off too weird trying to force them to be a friend” is very real.
I wish there was a commonly used app like Tinder with explicit intentions of making friends, hanging out with a wider user base than one-off local apps which is dominated by a handful of people.