I will say one of the nice things about living where I grew up is I still have my childhood friends nearby and see them often. In fact I just had lunch with three of them today. My neighborhood is very social and I’m thankful for all these friends who are much better planners than me.
I’ve always wanted to try living somewhere else- my DH turned down a few offers for career moves and now I’m pretty thankful- don’t think I would be great at putting myself out there.I admire all of you that do!
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If they are really sending a “go away” message, they wouldn’t accept your invitation.
However, definitely not saying you should continue to extend invitations!
H has always taken the lead nurturing our friends relationships. We have long term (40+ years) friends who mostly live in town. Neighbors with kids same age as ours (now grown and flown). Friends we made through philanthropic organizations.
This means we do more than our share of entertaining. The lion’s share of this falls on me, but I’m glad he pushes me a bit. Everyone we keep in our social circle is also generous to us.
May have been mentioned upthread, the three things you need for a happy retirement is good health, sufficient financial security, and strong social connections.
Edit to say you’re lucky if you get two of the three. H’s health isn’t great, but he’s doing the best he can to take care of himself.
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I agree it’s difficult when it feels like you’re always the one initiating. My sister and I used to discuss how there were planners and acceptors in our friend groups. Some people always seemed to be arranging and inviting others to do things. She was definitely one of the planners. She was excellent at it and enjoyed doing it as well. I used to be a planner but post-Covid I’ve morphed into an acceptor and a kind of picky one at that. The acceptors always seem happy to participate and appreciative of the planners. The planners don’t complain but I occasionally wonder if they feel as you do. We have a number of couple friends where this dichotomy exists even between the spouses. One is the planner and the other happily joins in the itinerary.
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I often think that grieving puts such a hole in us that we just can’t find the energy to do much at all. I don’t have a solution, but this second holiday season without my dad is taking it out of me. Like, the first year I was numb, and this year I am thinking “okay, so the universe wasn’t kidding, he’s reallyreally gone, isn’t he”.
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Yeah, we lost both my parents and my brother since covid started. We miss them all but are moving forward. My brother was only 2 years older than me and had been in pretty good health—before cancer.
Each died with cancer but NOT covid.
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Not sure applicable this is to this topic but I’ve decided I’m not a good friend. I’m more of a lone wolf.
We just spent the week with our kids, staying at their houses. It was nice to see the kids but the beds were uncomfortable, we didn’t have our own stuff there and we had to go down the hall to the bathroom. I mean we were staying with our own children! We spent 2 nights in a hotel and those were a bit of a relief. TBH.
I do have friends. In the summer, I have 2 different steady groups to play golf with. We socialize afterwards. Many of our friends went south for the winter but we still have people we do things with. Just less than in the summer. My husband and I have couple friends, we made a new friend who lives in Florida in the winter. I have another friend in Florida we could visit. My sister and my mom are in Florida right now for the month. I have no desire to go to Florida. We could visit people, they’d like us to visit. But we’d rather be in our house in the snow.
I was talking to my husband about this tonight. His parents (and mine also) went to Florida every year for 2 weeks to visit their friends. Always staying at friend’s houses. My in laws even stayed with my mom one year on the way down. I don’t think my in laws ever thought of staying in their own accommodations, at least until everyone got too old. Now most have died or are too old to travel. But for 20 years that’s what they did.
My in laws always took their vacations with a group of friends. They went on bareboat cruises, regular cruises, trips to Europe. Trips to friends every year to their cabins or cottages. I remember one trip they took without friends and that’s because I planned it for them. My mil doesn’t like to plan so they would go where others made the plans.
I had friends ask us if we wanted to go on a cruise to Italy in February. I like these people. But we want to go to Italy and Greece, the cruise they were doing and the timing didn’t work.
Maybe because the cost feels like so much for us and because we did very little traveling, we like to do what we like when we like. Or we are just not that social.
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I find traveling with others to be hard. And vacation time is such a premium that I don’t want to compromise either.
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I really dislike staying with other people and much prefer a hotel.
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I posted in the other thread about finding out our 65-year-old Computer Guy died in October. That’s one thing I hate about getting older, losing so many friends, loved ones, and colleagues. He was only 65!! Just the nicest guy. 
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There are very few couples we can travel with
Wish I could stay at a hotel instead of with my mil when we visit. It’s nice to have a place to retreat.
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I hated staying at my in-laws. Three bedrooms and the bathroom all opened to a small landing. MIL kept their bedroom door open so you couldn’t budge without her knowing. Husband’s room had two twin beds pushed together, no wastebasket (I would use a paper bag) and no nightstand (I would use the desk chair since it was only two feet from the bed). And the half bath on the main floor was tucked into the corner of the kitchen, sharing the wall that was next to the kitchen table.
Privacy was an unknown concept. Staying in a hotel would have been an unpardonable offense.
I know this is bit off topic but that now being long in the past is a benefit of growing older.
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I’m ok staying with a loved for a few days. At my BIL’s place he’s rarely home and we have a the run of the place and he bought a bed just for H. We are pretty comfortable there and stayed 9 nights there this last visit. With S’s smaller 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo, a few days (long weekend) is just right. D rather come and spend time at our place than us visiting LA.
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We have an extraordinarily full social life because of ShawWife. She can make friends anyplace and this is funny but true. She has a whole bunch of women who want to be her best friend.
We entertain quite a bit. There are a few people who don’t reciprocate and we also give people a couple of chances and then don’t initiate. Sometimes we will call when we are going to go for a hike and see if they want to join, but don’t extend ourselves for meals. Where we live in New England, everyone has a dog or cat and ShawWife is allergic to both. Many with dogs or cats either invite us out (though often we split the tab with them) or bring dinner to our house. But, I would say there is less reciprocating post-Pandemic.
We are trying to make our place as inviting as possible for our kids. ShawSon and his wife have been here since the day before Thanksgiving and will head home this weekend after ShawWife’s opening. They are in the tech world and this week they have been working intensely while on a CA schedule. We don’t push any socializing with them – we see them in the morning and then usually for dinner. But, they love coming.
We just cancelled our NY hotel reservation to accept the invite of an old grad school roommate who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. He’s a marvelous chef so we will probably have one great meal with him. So, we don’t have a problem staying with others as long as they are easy to deal with unlike @Marilyn’s MIL.
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Will turn 71 next week and things are so different now even compared to the days I used to visit this group all the time while the kids were in college a decade ago. Significant changes in physical and mental health and harder to keep active in both these dimensions.
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Someone should do study - I think CC helps keep mental stimulation and acuity! 
(Not actually joking about that!)
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For a few laughs on getting older, check out Andy Huggins Andy Huggins
ps Is anyone else on this thread not married?! I am intrigued by expressed loneliness or reclusiveness by people who are actually living with another person.
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[raises hand] never.
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This is me, exactly…including the involuntary retirement but due to ageism and not driving in the dark. You don’t realize until you retire how many of your friends, are really just acquaintences tied to activities (work friends, soccer parent friends, band parent friends, etc). I’ve stayed in touch with only two of my work friends since I left and meet them occassionally for lunch. But even those lunch dates have started to fizzle and I realize I’m now reaching out to them to schedule instead of the other way around… and no more after work get togethers. I have a neighbor who was a stay at home mom her whole life, is 1 year younger than me at 67 and she and I have kind of latched on to each other to walk every day. I didn’t think I really needed many friends since I’ve always enjoyed my own company, but ALL DAY is a long time when you don’t have 8-10 hours of work 5 days a week interupting your free time. I really need to start looking at volunteering soon. I’ve been retired going on 2 years now.
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