DH and I have been empty nesters for ten years now. I remember fondly day after day of both of my sons having their friends over to our house and the kitchen being full of people. I also love having people (adults) over for dinner, especially in the summer months when we can use our beautiful deck. And one of my favorite memories is when my sister’s family and mine rented a house for a week – it was ten of us together, and making dinner, grilling, eating together and playing games was great fun.
I greatly miss having people around. I am generally an introvert and can happily spend most of the day alone, but I love entertaining and cooking for friends. So I"m frustrated that I can’t seem to make more of that happen.
We recently had for dinner a group of 11 – my monthly breakfast club ladies and their husbands – and I realized how much I enjoy it. I’d happily have a dinner party for 12 or so every month, or even just for six or eight twice a month. To me, it’s not work – I’ve gotten the drill down pretty well. It’s not fancy, but I think it’s thoughtful. We generally stand around the kitchen for a while, go on the deck or maybe to the living rooms for a while, and then eat. I don’t do white linen tablecloths and candelabras, but I do remember to keep the ice bucket filled and pitchers of water on the table.
The date for the 11 breakfast club ladies and husbands was planned three months in advance. When I try to create other events, I am constantly frustrated. People are too busy, it seems – or maybe they just don’t like us.
I have to say, as we have gotten older, we have made advanced plans less and less often. These days, it is often than a not a text saying"anyone around?" Then we might end up going out with another couple or arranging a bbq. Until about three years ago, I was still doing a couple of huge summer bbqs and as Halloween party. We do love attending and having dinner parties. My preferred number is 6-8 total. Larger than that, it’s too much work, frankly.
We’re more likely to go out to dinner to socialize, unless we have guests coming for the whole day or overnight. Coordinating multiple schedules to arrange a large dinner party is more work than I’m willing to do at this point.
A few times we have had regular groups that got together every month or 2, rotating who is hosting. One we called dinner club and someone always hosted a niceish meal, one was for playing cards, one just kind of happened by accident and we went out as a group as often as someone hosted. All 3 fell apart after a while just because we could never get dates that worked for more than half of us. I have been hoping that once we are empty nesters that would change but maybe not.
Right now our social schedule largely revolves around what activities our kids are in. During soccer we hang with soccer parents, during wrestling with wrestling parents, etc. I do golf league just to keep myself sane and have a bit of non work non family adult time, at least in the summer.
This! I’m not sure if it’s because we live in New England, or it’s just our modern age, but we have the hardest time getting people to come over! Even if they accept, people tend to cancel, sometimes at the last minute. Really?!?! I don’t get it. We have next-door neighbors who like to get together, so that’s been nice, but they’re the exception.
We belong to a couples euchre group which meets once a month. We also get together once or twice a month with another couple or two and go out to dinner. It seems as if we don’t have people over as often as we used to.
I would like to socialize more , but aging out of town parents, grown kids who don’t live near us and a now having a budget allowing “fun” travel means that we are in town less often. I suspect this is true of many empty nesters.
We take dinner invitations seriously and don’t cancel. We often attend family gatherings. We do go out to family & friends homes from time to time and enjoy that as well. We don’t have dinner guests often. Will have to clear dining room table to do that! I do like socializing but it is challenging with scheduling and having to help aging elders. We do go out to eat often as well.
We socialize less than we used to. Before kids, we went out with friends or had them over quite often. Once kids came, our social life involved our kids’ friends’ parents - we were fortunate that we really liked a lot of them. As the kids got older & drifted off, we didn’t see the parents anymore. For a time, we played euchre with a group of friends every month, but other interests and obligations resulted in the group falling apart.
At this point, we don’t socialize much at all beyond occasional visits with family and a few close friends. I do miss doing things with friends, but we just don’t have any couple friends that we feel close to. We like our neighbor but not her husband, and our other neighbors are all nice but not anyone we socialize with.
I am open to downsizing in the future, and I would want to move to a neighborhood where there are others like H & me. Our current neighborhood (and area) is comprised of people that for the most part don’t share many of our views and values. The polarization of our country has affected our area, and we feel pretty much odd-man-out these days.
I’m getting ready to head out for lunch with two, maybe three, friends. I socialize a lot more than dh, best lunches or book club or whatever. We generally just hang with the neighbors and cook out occasionally. And as it gets closer to primary season, our political activism will kick into gear. I have a friend who is giving up Jason Isbell tix for later this month. We don’t have the discretionary income a lot of our friends do. If we did, we’d do more with them.
Now that we are retired, I don’t like having too many events calendared far in advance. I want the freedom to just spontaneously pick up and drive off somewhere without having to call and cancel attendance at something.
We travel quite a bit and end up having to re-schedule some things. We often try to keep plans no more than a week ahead, unless they’re for larger or more formal events.
My socializing consists of meeting one friend for coffee, drinks, or a movie.
Even that presents a scheduling hurdle. I will sometimes do as @Lindagaf mentioned and toss out a text to several friends. This movie, this Thursday, anybody?
My main source of socializing is the hiking club I joined last summer. They meet once a week, year round, no matter what the weather. There is often tailgating after the hike or going to a fast casual restaurant, or a potluck at someone’s home. There are weekend trips. Sometimes club members will get together other days of the week with people that share other interests. Other club members plan big trips together. It’s nice. Easy. Low pressure.
We found that small gatherings here and there work better for everyone involved than a large pre-planned party. Sometimes, Mr. would call our friends in the morning and ask if they would like to pop in for a dinner. Costco is less than two miles away, always well stocked with things for grilling, and a grilled something is quick and usually gets thumbs up.
Our neighbors are hosting a neighborhood party soon… we will finally meet people from our new 'hood!
@VeryHappy: I could have written your post — word for word. DH and I love to cook and entertain; it has been our top hobby for the 40 years we’ve been together. When we downsized and moved to a mostly adult community three years ago, we specifically chose this place because it was designed for spontaneous interaction; the homes are entertainment/kitchen centric and there is a beautiful club with restaurants, bars, pools, spa, fitness center, etc. all tailor-made for encouraging friendships. BUT, try to get our new friends out of the club and over to our house, not happening much. It’s frustrating. We have been successful moving a few small club gatherings to our home for post-dinner nightcaps, but we’ve not had many home dinner parties. The irony is that most people here don’t want us to go to all that trouble when the club is right there for that purpose. We feel we’ll just have to plug away with the invites until we establish the reputation we had in our old neighborhood for great (free) food and fun.
One suggestion I do have that we used when we first moved into our hold home (almost 20 years ago now) is to see if anyone is interested in starting a revolving home dinner club. Ours started monthly when we all had kids and evolved to a weekly round-robin of dinners among six neighborhood couples where we would each bring a complementary dish to the host home and enjoy drinks, appetizers, dinner, dessert, music, and relax later in a pool or in front of a fire depending on the weather. The host provided the main dish, communicated in advance, the others brought sides and appetizers, and one couple brought dessert (no one wanted too much of that). It was pretty casual but what “worked” was the fact that it was a scheduled routine. Everyone knew they had Friday night “out” with friends with little or no cooking until it was their turn to host. We were always the substitute whenever anyone else could not host and, eventually, it became very easy for us to turn a Friday night into a bigger event at our house by extending invites beyond the circle. People were also enthusiastic about coming over for spontaneous things like “Boat Drink Night” (try out the new blender), “Make Your Own Pizza Night” (try out the new peels and dough recipe), “Cocktail Night” (let’s drink martinis and listen to some new jazz CDs)… Make up something fun under the guise of being guinea pigs for your latest thing/idea.
It takes time to establish your home as a gathering place. I don’t think there is a magic formula. Keep it simple, keep inviting, don’t take turn downs personally. People are busy but most look forward to someone else entertaining them and doing most of the work. If you make it comfortable and enjoyable for those who do accept your invites, they will want to come back, and you will start to establish a reputation. If you do this, they will come.
@VeryHappy, I feel the same way. Even though I’m an introvert I’d like to see more of our friends! I think one thing that happens is other people don’t like giving parties so then they feel like they can’t attend your parties.
Our other problem is that we have a lot of friends who are vegetarian or vegan so I can’t just throw steaks on the grill and open the good red wine. We do have one good friend who is party central.
I am having fun with a cookbook club at the library. We have a theme each month and bring something related to the theme. Last month we did food memoirs - so we actually had to read a real book! It’s a nice group.
What I’d really like is a board game group, but not too pressured.
I live in a social town and neighborhood, and have a number of events with people. Single, with no family around, I need my friends. But as the years go by socializing seems increasingly restaurant based, which gets expensive and is less healthy. Frankly, getting set up for entertaining in my downsize house has taken some time, but I think I am finally there, more or less. Getting people together in a certain way is a community service, as we all need social connections. I do think it is ironic that people socialize more in restaurants when many of us have nice houses and cooking can be relatively simple.
This week I have been thinking on this topic, as I hosted a party for about 50 in my yard this past weekend, as part of the celebration for D and new son in law here in town (wedding was near DC and smaller) and as a goodbye party for Peace Corps. People are thrilled to have a reason to get together and visit and a multi generational gathering was nice for all. It seems prepping the yard has taken most of the summer, but it now looks great and the house is better set up as well. My son in law is a dedicated cook, and we work well together. I am having another dinner party this weekend, using up some of the leftovers.
And while on a roll, am planning a block party with a friend.
Winters around here are getting a bit sparse, as folks head south. One friend is good at organizing quarterly dinners with friends, and it has keep some of the groups from when kids were young intact.
The only entertaining I do are family events. And I don’t miss anything else. I
But @VeryHappy if you are willing to host 12 (and be happy if you get at least half of those to commit) - go for it! Have a group over monthly!!
If I were you I’d also let those you invite know that this is just something that you love doing and you do NOT expect an invite back (or do you??!) - then people might accept more readily - if I knew that me going was an expectation to host another time I might not accept that invitation!!
We have always done a lot of entertaining, but I’m slowing down the last couple of years. Ten years ago, as empty nesters, we had the opportunity to move to an area of the country where a bunch of long time friends already lived, and then we became good friends with our neighbors, and for at least seven years it was an almost continual party. We also travel with good friends regularly. I have two friends I lunch with separately and regularly, at least twice a month each when we aren’t out of town. Husband has a weekly lunch with a friend. We have a couple we are friends with we meet for lunch at least monthly.
Even though I feel like we have really scaled back, we had a dinner party last Friday, with one couple staying the weekend, and have out of town company coming this Friday for five days. Two local couples will join us on Saturday. And this morning there are two email invites for as soon as the company leaves.
I have transitioned to smaller dinner parties, only three couples when possible, usually with white linen table cloths, silver, china, crystal. It’s just a lot less work for six than ten or twelve, especially since a lot of friends enjoy wine pairings (me too!) and that requires a whole lot of stemware that I handwash. We have a couple of large garden parties a year, with a buffet. Outside we set up a collection of antique tables and chairs that are stored in the barn otherwise. Casual cotton table cloths, silver, china. I’m using the garden parties to pay back as many invitations as possible now I don’t have two or three large dinner parties a month. It seems to be working pretty well, folks enjoy themselves and, going forward, I’d like to make them an annual event to take care of most of our entertaining.
It seems to me it all goes in cycles. As empty nesting 50-somethings, with launched kids, we all partied like the pre-kid days. In our 60s, most of us are becoming grandparents, and we slow down as we plan around our kids once again, and now their kids. This is a very nice life stage, too. Grandchildren are a new experience and way more entertaining than dinner parties. It sounds like you will have one soon, VeryHappy. Enjoy!
