One of the more common bits of advice about meeting new people (and new prospective dates) is to take a class, join a club or take up a new hobby. This is cool, as I there are a lot of hobbies and such that I might like to try. What’s not so cool is that most of the hobbies that interest me are pretty girly, like yoga and knitting.
What are guy-friendly or gender-neutral kinds of clubs? Sports seem like a good place to start, but it’s not really my thing. I’m not going to try something that bores me just to meet men, but I’d like some help brainstorming.
A good way to meet people with various interests is meetup.com it’s free to join and you can find groups in your area for many different topics. For example my area has over 800 meetup groups. When you join you are asked where you live and then you can search the groups in your area.
Groucho Marx once famously stated that he “wouldn’t want to join any club that would have someone like me as a member.”
That’s almost how I feel. I’ve never been a “club” type of person although as the kids get older I can certainly see myself joining a golf club at some point.
How about a night school course? Years ago I took a few, and although I was in a relationship at the time it seemed like an ideal place to meet girls. You have homework and other common things to discuss, and it’s pretty easy to go for a coffee or a drink after the course.
How about ballroom dancing? I have a friend who’s into that and he really enjoys it (he does it competitively now, in fact). I’m not sure if they match you up with a partner if you don’t have one, but I would assume they have some way to arrange that, especially in classes.
Hiking (long distance or just day long) and paddling/canoeing/kayaking (serious whitewater or just tame slow streams/ponds/lakes/ocean) clubs both seem to be fairly gender balanced/neutral…so good for the boys and girls looking for boys or girls without the meat market feel of bars. Or in other words a nice place to just meet nice people, or meet nice people you might want to “take to the next level”.
Oh, astronomy clubs arent bad either, but they are, or at least used to be, a high fraction of men.
Another suggestion for coed sports. I know two guys who met their SOs in sports leagues. One was a semi-serious co-ed soccer league. The other was some bar kickball league which seemed to be purely an excuse to drink (but there was a national tournament in Las Vegas so maybe I’m wrong).
Your local community theatre group likely needs volunteers for all sorts of backstage stuff…building scenery, working with costumes, props, lights, sound, taking tickets, ushering, publicity yadda yadda.
If there’s a Habitat for Humanity type outfit nearby, they may have some volunteer opportunities–even in bad weather, they sometimes have shopwork to do…
What age range are you interested in meeting, by the way? That might help although it’s probably not essential.
How about some sort of volunteering? Some organizations might be female dominated but I think in general most things would be gender-neutral. It could be anything important to you… working on a political campaign, volunteering for a hospital, teaching some free class for the community…
Would you consider any sports? I took a tennis class this summer and met a bunch of women. It was actually more women than men but I think that was an anomaly. Lots of fun, low stress, and nobody was at all competitive.
Not sure where Happy Valley is but around here (Seattle) there are a bunch of meetup groups. As people up thread mentioned they are casual get togethers of people with common interests. Do you like to play cards? Poker is ubiquitous but you can also find cribbage, hearts, bridge (probably older folk though).
You said sports aren’t your thing. Does this mean you loathe them? Just not athletic? As people mentioned if you don’t want to play soccer there is also softball, kickball, dodge ball, etc.
The local community colleges here have classes for the community. I took a guitar class once and it was filled with men and women of various ages.
In my neighborhood (Ballard) they have “mixers” sponsored by various community groups. Are you Irish? Scottish? Scandanavian? I’m sure they have a group/club for that in your area.
Go to book readings, art openings, lectures, etc.
Of course all of this advice is worthless if you aren’t going to engage anyone in conversation. Are you a wallflower? Shy? If so maybe you can get friends to tag along with you
I don’t know what your stand on firearms is, but if you’re open to it, shooting sports events are always quite short of ladies. The folks I’ve me have all been of a decent income (it’s kind of an expensive hobby) and many have a bit of a technical bent. Ages range from 16 to 76. Consider some NRA classes to start, and see if there are any skeet / IDPA / IPSC clubs near you. (You can google these to see if they strike your fancy)
YOu want a new hobby, thats different, and fun, something that you can get out and meet a lot of men(and others) who will not only be friendly, but will actually fawn over you?
Go to a gun club, a sportsman club, and take up shooting, sign up for classes and lessons to learn how, sign up for events, and if you like it, join it.
You will ALWAYS have a bunch of men around you trying to help you, teach you, shoot with you, wanting to be your friend, etc. Men love it when women want to learn, and the other women already there always like more friends.
Skeet, trap, handgun, cowboy action shooting, and archery are all fun.
Best place is a local sportsmans club, where a lot of the shooting is outdoors, where they have a lot of classes, a lot of events, a lot of membership meetings and non-gun activities, dinners, etc, and where men, women, and children all come to have fun. Even though there are lots of women and children, the vast majority of members in a sports club, are men , and lots of them single.
You can meet some people who will end up being… very good friends .
Its MUCH better than Elks, Moose, Rotary, etc, and a whole lot less boring, and the people/men at gun clubs are not old men, there are all ages at a sportsmans club, lots of younger men.
I really dont see these as “social” activities, and I dont see where you would get to meet very many people and know them well enough to become friends.
I ride and I swim, but I dont see much socializing with new people. These arent really social activities. Besides, its kinda expensive to own, or rent a horse.
I guess I dont like these ideas if you want to make new friends. How are you gonna get to know them?