You need a hobby that forces you out of the house and interacting with new people. That’s how you’ll form new friendships and fill your time with things you enjoy.

I was in the same boat 8 or so years ago, when I first started transitioning, and what I did was find local groups for things I liked on Meetup.com and joined them. I also started attending conversions for things I liked too, if your area hosts any.

At a local anime convention, I met a gaming group which I liked and joined and would eventually meet my current partner in. I had also joined a local board gaming group which is where I met one of my closest friends who was also in a similar alone situation and we ended up bonding because of that and our shared interests.

I wouldn’t say it was unusual to have fewer friends as you age. Plenty of people seem happy spending time by themselves or with their partner.

That said, I’ve noticed in my 30s that some friends who’ve coupled up (some with new families tbf), are pulling out of more social plans or generally seeming less interested in hanging out. I think they are making a mistake there: friends are way easier to make in your 20s/30s and you need to tend to friendships to keep them alive.

I don’t live rural and I imagine the conservative bent makes the trans femmeness that much harder.

One thing I haven’t seen here though is volunteering. Doing good with other people is a pretty way to get to know people.

In my province, our rural areas practically beg people to volunteer as firefighters (for us, rural generally means the woods) and from every chat I’ve had with someone doing that, it seems very social.

If there are any Democrat offices etc, they love volunteers.

Hope those kinda help? Good luck!

I don’t know, cousin. Like my spouse and I are in the same situation: We’ve got each other but no other close friends. In our case because we got married younger and had kids younger than anyone else and they stopped hanging out with us.

I have a dog. she counts on me, and I count on her. all other humans are meh…whatever. I know I can’t depend on anyone so I don’t bother. I’ve stopped trying because it does nothing but upset me constantly, so I’ve just closed the doors and opened the windows a crack for some air but otherwise…I don’t even bother with humanity.

Also rural US here. For me: Play board games, find other folks to play with. Facebook group for better or worse, but over the years other methods help such as FLGS game night, or bar game night.

Also effective for another friend: “retro” / couch-friendly console video game nights. Invite over friends to join.

And another: book club.

These are not all necessarily things I am interested enough in to do on my own, but am happy to join others in. Persistence is key. Just because no one shows up a few times, that’s okay. Be flexible within the context of the activity. It’s fine to hate the book you’re reading, or just hang out to talk/listen even if you don’t want to fully participate. And allow others to do the same, but be welcoming and inviting!

Hope this helps.

If there is volunteer work available to you and you are able bodied enough to participate then that is a great avenue for making friends with the side effect of improving your community. There is also political organizing but you mentioned you are very rural so this is probably unavailable to you. Being around others, not just to hangout, but to accomplish a shared goal is a great way to become friends without feeling out of place or forced. Hobbies that get you out of the house and require active participation between people are also great for this.

I don’t exactly know. My wife and kids help me stay sane (or push me in the other direction). They are my everything, even though I wish I had some other outlets.

I have a friend I see every year or two.

I had another friend who transitioned and we drifted apart because every conversation revolved around that and as happy as I am for her, our relationship began around gaming and movies and nerd stuff and that glue just faded away. I’m still emotionally invested in her well-being, but we don’t have anything in common any more.

Another close friend lost his job and moved states to live with his brother and mom

And that’s basically it. Other than my family, I just have social media, but I’m pretty private and don’t really open myself up online, preferring to interact anonymously. So I don’t have any advice to help, but you’re not alone (in a totally unhelpful way).

I’m married and share a lot of your feelings. Never really had friends, super introverted and anxiety runs my life sometimes. I’ve been struggling with mental health for over 3 decades and it can feel exhausting sometimes. Life feels like a roller coaster at times that I just want off of.

I’m essentially in the same boat as you but I’m in my mid-30s and in Los Angeles. I don’t connect with people here anymore (now that I’m done partying and doing drugs all the time like I was in my 20s). It’s rough.

I tend to take some programming courses online as well as a Mandarin course with a tutor in China. Lately I’ve been looking for good places to study.

I border on loneliness quite often but I legitimately don’t really care for most people so I live with it.

I had a shitty abusive childhood with zero social contact, so I never really learned how to have friends, or thus how to need or really derive much fulfilment from them; all my emotional needs and regulation had to come from within, and I am the part of a person that’s left when all the bits that can’t survive that are gone.

I got out of there eventually, but by that time it had kind of grown over; I eventually learned to be (slightly) social, but honestly it’s a bunch of work for empty calories; I can spend the whole weekend’s time/energy/spoons on some group activity but don’t get to recharge and it’s like not getting a weekend at all.

so in answer to your question I do a lot of hiking.

I feel you.

I have a group chat with a few friends from high school, and we get together once or twice a year, but other than them, it’s just my wife and I hanging out at home. We’re both introverted and love being together, but we both get bored of doing the same stuff all the time.

We are also in a very rural location, so there aren’t a lot of options to get out and do something, without it being a major ordeal.

I’m going to skip over the “find a hobby that gets you outside the house” because I assume you will have thought of this and/or others will elaborate in the comments.

So my attempt at novel advice is not to sleep on online relationships. If your rural community is too small to support a group in your niche interest, find a group online. Be active in the group, asking and contributing, joining and volunteering. You may find it’s still 100:1 people you interact with to people you form any sort of lasting relationship with, but that’s not really any different than IRL.

One of my sister’s longest lasting friendships is with someone she met playing an online Horse Girl^TM game in the 00s. The game has been defunct for a decade, but they stayed friends. They only met in person for the first time when the friend was getting married. You never know when our weirdness vibes with someone else’s weird; it’s a beautiful thing. She values that online-origin friendship just as much as any IRL-origin friendship.

Mid-50s here. Maybe not quite as isolated as you. Stopped working (60 hour weeks) a few years ago; family all 4+ hours away - visit 2ce/year; couple of friends on the other coast I exchange daily-ish emails, but no hang-out-and-watch-the-game people.

Everyone’s different, and I don’t really feel the emptyness you describe. I read, both print and web. I post on lemmy maybe 1/day, sometimes twice, sometimes not for days, but reading threads here, I think, satisfies my need for interaction, even if it’s just voyeuristically watching other people’s conversation. Video games, all single-player. Youtube cooking channels and a bit of my own cooking - can’t really cook that much for one person. Some wood/craft/metal projects.

I thought I’d become lonely when I stopped working. Planned to look around for volunteer opportunities, maybe take up a yoga or other fitness-type class, but that loneliness or emptyness just hasn’t hit. I did spend a couple years sort of tapering off contact with the people I used to work with: get coffee on the weekend or consult on some project, but I haven’t even heard from them in years now.

All that just to say: the people you see flourishing may just have a different experience of social satisfaction than you, and just because you see someone apparently happy in a situation doesn’t mean you can be happy in the same sitch. There’s lots of good advice in this thread, but you can start even smaller. Check in with a neighbor - make up some pretense if you need, like baked too many cookies, harvested too many tomatoes, can’t lift heavy-thing into the right place. If they aren’t complete assholes for that 5 minutes, try something else. If they are, try a different neighbor.

On the ‘in case of emergency’ thing: the last time I needed a ride to a medical thing, because they won’t discharge you to Uber, my neighbor was right there. Lived next door to him for 20 years, but we exchange, maybe, three sentences in a month. I don’t even know his daughter’s name or the grandkids that visit periodically. I don’t know what I’ll do if/when I start to have medical stuff that needs recovery assistance. Maybe a home health worker. Maybe just hope I can hold out until Medicare will pay for inpatient rehab. But I was happy to see the ‘community pulls together to help its own’ phenomenon in person, even a recluse like me.