Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected]. Previous installments can be found here.
Dear Aunt Acid,
I’m a recent college grad who moved back home to a small town. I’m lucky that I no longer live with my parents and got an OK job fairly quickly. When I say small I mean really small; the only real social activities we have in the community are church-based and I’m not religious at all. I have no friends and I’m desperate to make some kind of social connection outside of my family. There are no bars, no coffee shops, no places where I could potentially meet people. I also have no previous experience with people in this community: my parents moved here shortly after I started college. I’ve made great strides in self-esteem and being at peace with alone time, but I still crave some kind of social contact. Moving is out of the question for few years and I’m afraid of the ever-increasing toll feeling lonely will have on my mental health.
–Down and Out in the Boonies
Dear DOB,
My goodness. No coffee shops I understand, but no bars? That is rough. I applaud you on your self-esteem strides, but having no friends is hard. Ishmaels needs Queequegs (“Call me Ishmael” — I just realized, over like a thousand pages, no one ever does). Abbis need Ilanas. Xanders need Willows or the world ends.
There are some ways to work with what you have, though. Let’s go through them:
You have coworkers. Size them up. You’ve probably done this; we all do this when we start jobs. We x-ray our new coworkers as though we are airport security, looking through their baggage to see if it matches ours.
Let’s be honest, though: most of the time we’re disappointed. Coworkers often have nothing in common with us. They’re too young, too old, too chirpy, too sullen, too into shows you don’t watch and Xbox games you don’t play. They go home at 5:30 on the dot to take care of their kids. They stay at work all night and make us look bad for wanting to have lives. They’re not like us; they’re just breathing the same recycled air and smelling up the next stall. We want office family like on “The West Wing” and end up with office frenemies like in Bridget Jones or worse, office strangers like Colin from Marketing on that episode of “Snap Judgment.”
You could still choose the likeliest candidate and ask them if they want to get lunch one day, though. Can’t hurt.
You have a church. Okay, you’re not churchy. But churches, especially in rural areas, have more to offer than Al-Anon and the only path to Heaven. Do they have Bingo nights? Book clubs? Amateur theater? Depending on how extroverted you are, could you approach some of the churchy people about using their basement on an off night to start a group that interests you?
You have a car. You must have a car, if you live in the boonies. Get out of the wackadoo Footloose-type town you’re in for a night, a weekend. Go ten towns over. Twenty. Where is there a community college, an ag school, a Radical Faeries’ sanctuary? Where does the local radio station broadcast from? Where’s the nearest place you can play pool? Google Map it and go. Gas is cheap and life is short.
You have flexibility. Does your job include travel? It could, right? Maybe? Get creative. Look up conferences. Affiliates. Figure out how, with a little initiative, you could get yourself sent to other regions of the country, of the world. Volunteer for these kinds of assignments. They Add Value and, for bonus points, they get you out of Dodge.
Capitalize on the fact that you have got the kind of free time and resources that only a single, child-free person living with their parents can have and volunteer somewhere. Hospitals, food banks, a library, a school, an animal shelter. Be a Big Brother or Sister. Lead a Girl Scout troop. Offer to babysit for a single parent on your block. Ask something of yourself you have always wondered if you could give.
You have the Internet. That means you have MeetUp.org or some equivalent way of finding—or instigating—gatherings of like-minded companions. You have, if all else fails, Craigslist. The Internet offers online community, too, which is better than a kick in the head. Its slogan, in fact, is making people feel less alone since 1995.
You also have the ability to plot your escape.
People make friends less easily in their post-college lives. It’s not fair, but it’s true. “Friendship networks peak and start to decrease as you move through your twenties, according to a 2013 study published in the Psychological Bulletin,” reports Fast Company. It only gets worse once people pair off and make like rabbits.
That being the case, maybe it makes sense to hunker down for a year or so. Watch TV, read blogs, listen to podcasts, Skype with your friends, and chill with your parents. Meanwhile, save that money, and search for jobs and apartments somewhere you already have community, rather than trying to assemble an approximation of it from scratch…
…and/or apply for a job on a whale hunting ship. You’ll never be lonely again.
*
Illustrator: Liana Finck’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Lilith, Tablet, and The Forward. Her first graphic novel is called A Bintel Brief. Her webcomic, Diary of a Shadow, can be read on her website.
When I was in this situation, my mom (who is a teacher) told me that if a town is big enough to have its own school, it’s big enough to have a social scene. Because schools have teachers, and teachers are always down to grab a drink.
Another thing is that when you’re in a small community and you meet a person it seems like you have a lot in common with, you need to grab onto them in a way you might not have done in other settings. Because 1) that person is probably also in search of company and 2) you have no idea how much weird hidden stuff exists in rural America that you will never hear about unless you know somebody who already knows about it. That one person you see at the grocery store with the cool tattoo probably knows about the hippie just outside of town who hosts bluegrass jam sessions on their farm, or the bingo hall that turns into a bar on weekends.
The bluegrass jam session idea is not a bad one, since this would be an aces time to pick up a musical instrument. Find a teacher, get some skills, ask where the other musicians are playing, see whether any of them want to play Lady Gaga songs on the uilleann pipes.
I will also say that bingo is actually pretty fun and all of the old folks will be totally delighted to have you in their presence, and will probably buy you beer.
Yes. I grew up in such a town and used to go to bingo at the Elks Club with a small group of girls and one girl’s grandma. We always had a delightful time. 🙂
When the wife and I lived in a small town in the American Midwest, there was bingo at the local McDonald’s one day a week. It was surprisingly fun, even without beer, and we did meet a lot of people that way.
I live in a (larger) small town and people are meeting up SOMEWHERE. Maybe at the post office? Or the corner store? Go in there regularly to buy a lottery ticket or to mail a letter to someone and say hi to whoever you see there. Small towns warm up slowly but they do warm up eventually. And yeah, maybe go to church. Most churches are fine with people of other or not faiths attending, many will have that explicitly stated in a sign or a brochure. If you really don’t want to go, you could volunteer at the school or somewhere else looking for volunteers (Travelling library? Town council?). Also, Facebook. Buy and Sell-type Facebook groups tend to be pretty active even in small towns and people tend to post activities there that might not be advertised elsewhere.
Yep, Facebook is a great tool. I live in a small town and even the nearby city of 40,000 has like no meetup groups and Craigslist isn’t a thing, Kijiii doesn’t work that well, so where does everyone go? Facebook!
The suggestions posted already are great, but also you might want to re-evaluate whether moving really is out of the question. It may well be, I know nothing about your situation – but Carolyn Hax said something in a chat recently to the effect of, the thing that people immediately say is “out of the question” (moving, changing jobs, leaving a spouse, etc.) is often the thing they most need to do. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, and it’s making me re-evaluate my own situation.
If worst comes to worst and you do end up just hunkering down for some period of time, do yourself a favor and become a regular at all of the places you frequent. Try to go at the same time every day/week. Introduce yourself to the person behind the counter at the grocery, the gas station, the library, the post office, whatever. Even if you aren’t going to be friends with them, there is no substitute for having someone greet you by name.
I’m a pretty introverted person, so when I went through a few months at a job with no friends, in a strange place, I didn’t think it would bother me. But months of having no one really knowing my name really got to me. When I finally moved on and made acquaintances in a new place, the first time someone said, “Hi, [Girl Named Jack]” I almost cried, it felt so good.
Also, if it is really that small of a town, they have already noticed you and probably know who you are anyway, so you might as well be friendly.
Are you near a hospital? If so, tap into that market! A rural hospital is bound to have quite a few young, displaced docs taking advantage of the financial and/or immigration incentives that come with agreeing to practice in the middle-of-nowhere.
I’ve spent some time in some verrrry small towns (300-500 people) and there is always some way folks communicate. The demographic in small towns tend to skew older and less tech savvy so maybe be on the lookout for bulletin boards. Check out gas stations, laundromats, and post offices. Even if you don’t actually need to use the laundromat being new in town is the perfect excuse to poke your head in and see what’s what.
Also if you’re in a small town chances are you have a lot of outdoor space around you. Find out what people like to do outdoors! There might be a group of hikers, birders, geocachers, whatever. For the most part nature-y people love to teach newbies!
ETA: Okay, maybe the people posting on town bulletin boards and/or birders aren’t going to be your bosom buddies but they’ll know more people in town than you will and maybe they can introduce you to people more likely to be your future friends. Breaking into a small town is so much easier if you are friendly to everyone, not just the kind of people you want to drink wine and watch netflix with.
Rural socializing and urban socializing are definitely different in terms of how similar you’re going to be with the people you socialize with. Chances are you’re not going to meet someone who shares all your hobbies, your politics, your life experiences, and your favourite TV shows. But that can be fun, too! I was disappointed to find out that I was the youngest person in my book club by at least a decade, but I’ve come to love spending time with a bunch of opinionated older women, and if one of them can critique the realism of a book set in World War 2 because she still remembers the war, that’s pretty cool!
Yes!! Also out of school socializing is vastly different than you when you were in school and literally binned by age. When you were a senior it may have been scandalous to be friends with freshmen or graduate students but no one cares after you graduate! This was a tough and weird lesson for me (and I think a lot of people) to learn.
Useful advice for people in small cities as well. Not all of us want to/ can afford to live in NYC… or even Chicago.
I’m trapped in the boonies – a town of under 2000 people in the rural Bible Belt; I wish I had some good advice but I’ve pretty much failed to make the urban to rural transition. I work from home so meeting coworkers isn’t an option. I tried joining the library book club, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest : (. There’s one bar in town, but it’s not my kind of place…let’s just say that one time I felt unsafe there, and another time I got invited to a house part, only to flee once I realized people were smoking meth there. The fact that I’m like, really queer probably isn’t doing me any favors here, especially when it comes to dating. Right now my plan is to save every penny until I can flee back to a city.
Your poor soul. Do you want a pen pal? Someone to follow on Twitter/ Tumblr? I feel like we should furnish you with our contact info.
Aw, thanks! My internet social life is pretty active, lol. I also stay in contact with friends who are currently living in funner places — they’re my lifeline.
High school sporting events might be a possibility? Home basketball and football games can be huge social occasions for small towns. You can buy a shirt from the boosters club and some concession snacks and introduce yourself, and if all else fails you can watch the game! (Which is more fun if you actually like the sport, but can be entertaining regardless.)
OH. And if any of them ever run fundraisers (for, say, new uniforms, or (god forbid) a team member becomes very ill), volunteer for that. Then people have to talk to you, and if you’re able to laugh cheerfully when people ask you which kid is yours and say, “Oh, no, I’m just here to help out!” then you score even more points for your efforts. If you have a talent or skill like photography (or even if you have a good digital camera or camcorder), maybe ask the coach if they’d like some game photos taken? I made an awesome new friend after realizing that her daughter was in all the pictures I took of my niece, and now we hang out and her sister just asked if I’d teach her to ski.
Find out how old the local pastors are and where they went to college/seminary. Lots of denominations send their pastors to rural postings for their first posts, for 3-5 years, so you have these 26-year-old kids who went to Duke or Harvard or Notre Dame, with graduate degrees, who read three languages, who can’t get too chummy with their parishioners and are supposed to be offering life advice to people in their 50s. IT’S REALLY LONELY AND THEY GET REALLY BORED. They actually WANT to be friends with you because you are NOT a member of their church. (I mean some of them are lunatics who have fake degrees from low-end Bible colleges, but mainline Protestants and Catholics typically require graduate degrees from accredited university seminaries, and there are plenty of evangelical Protestants out there who went to big-name seminaries too.)
Because small towns are so, well, small, people will go to almost anything. When I used to go to Ren Faires near the big city it was all nerdy-types like me; the Ren Faire near my small town is everyone I’ve ever met in a 3-county radius, with their kids, joyfully joining in the nerd fun, because it’s the only thing going that weekend and, hey, everyone you know is there! Civil War reenactment groups are often surprisingly educational and have roundtable discussions where they talk about different battles and things (and you don’t have to dress up).
If there’s a local school, they would love for you to sponsor/assist a club focused on one of your interests — Shakespeare? Robotics? Programming? Assistant track coach?
If you are at all musical, there are a lot of people in local church choirs who aren’t particularly religious, but do it for the music and socializing. Wander down to the town hall or county building, and find out what they have going on and need volunteers for. They ALWAYS need people to be appointed to the zoning board, or the alcohol permits board, or the Fourth of July festival planning committee. (Plus civic people know EVERYBODY, they will hook you up.)
Once you get to know a few people, you can organize just about ANYTHING — the church will let you use a room! — and some people will come to it. Maybe you go through a Shakespeare play as table reads, assigning parts and reading an act a week and then discussing. Maybe you organize a barbershop quartet that sings once a year at the Fourth of July festival. A monthly group that meets to hear a lecture and discuss? College professors (and even more particularly, grad students) will come lecture to just about ANYTHING if you promise them pizza and an audience. (Your state may even have a formal program for this through your County Extension program, which does agriculture stuff, but also lots of other stuff, like sending professors to small towns to talk about entomology or modern Irish writers or whatever.) Invite student string quartets from nearby colleges to give concerts. Organize an art exhibit of local folk art. (Regional and state museums may have formal lending programs of traveling exhibits!) You will be surprised who will come to these things because — again — it’s a small town, so EVERYTHING is a happening. Some camo-coat-wearing farmer who takes vast pride in being a redneck will come out to hear a lecture on modern art because “I always wondered why those guys got so much money for throwing paint, now I know!”
One of the great things about living in a small town is that you CAN’T just be friends with your “tribe” — you must make friends with people who are very, very different from you, and live in a community with a lot of different kinds of people. You can’t retreat to a social group made up entirely of like-minded, similarly-aged people. For me it’s been enormously broadening — I’m well-educated, I’ve traveled a lot, etc., but I’ve definitely never been friends with people who chew and spit tobacco before and I definitely had a lot of snobbery about “that sort of person.” Now I know how ignorant I was!
Everything in Small Town Gal’s post is spot-on. I will only add these small notes:
If there’s a Unitarian Universalist congregation in the town, go. You don’t have to be religious, but an interest in peace and justice helps.
Also, BINGO. Go. No matter who is sponsoring it.
If there is an historical association, or a gardening club, or a friends of the library association in town or in a neighboring town, join one of them.
If you like animals and there is a local veterinarian’s office, ask about volunteering.
Are there really towns without bars? This is not meant to be sarcastic – I just have never heard of this before. The smallest town I’ve ever been to (granted, just on a brief visit!) had at least two.
I came from such a town. It makes me shake my head like “ohhh you do not know” whenever I read any YA “small towns” that have a mall, theater, McDonald’s, etc. Sometimes small towns are a traffic light and a school and a gas station and a gazebo to do drugs in.
TBH I similarly shook my head at some of the suggestions on the article. Some places, it really seems like nothing is going on. People do drugs and shoot deer and pray at church and drink at home. Taking walks is weird and suspicious. And there’s nothing to walk to except like a big drainage ditch you can sit in or natural wonders you can get shot in. Maybe just go.
Wait I tell a lie, people do go muddin’ at times.
it’s funny how much more variety there is in the world than “city vs. country.” I went to college in a town of about 10,000 that to me seemed like living on the moon at first. But I made friends with a lot of people who grew up on the side of a gravel road 30 miles from the nearest grocery store. They thought they had died and gone to heaven to live in a place with pizza delivery.
The smallest town I’ve ever lived in was still about 5,000, which is vastly different than a town of 500. Everything is relative!
Huntin’s still social, tho.
The first town I moved to post college was actually not that small, but dry, so no bars. I think you can get booze there in restaurants now, though. There are places in my state where you have to drive more than an hour to get a drink.
Yeah, I don’t know of many places where you can find a job but not a drink. But then my small-town experiences have all been in the Midwest, where they like to have a bar on every corner.
The town I grew up in didn’t really have a bar when I was a kid. Then we got one, and it was called “Ale Mary’s” but all the Christians found that wildly offensive so they had to change it.
Oh, that is a goddamn shame!
Just wanted to emphasize the value of a local library! A lot of really small towns still have great libraries (thank you Carnegie) which, along with the post office, are where community activities are frequently posted. They are also often staffed by retired volunteers, who are generally awesome people to get to know.
Another suggestion: go to the local high school sporting events. Everyone in town might go to football and basketball games, even if they don’t know anyone on the team. This might be even more successful to do with your parents, because people will 100% talk to the new family. Make small talk with people at the concession stand, the boosters table, etc.
OH. And if any of them ever run fundraisers (for, say, new uniforms, or (god forbid) a team member becomes very ill), volunteer for that. Then people have to talk to you, and if you're able to laugh cheerfully when people ask you which kid is yours and say, "Oh, no, I'm just here to help out!" then you score even more points for your efforts. If you have a talent or skill like photography (or even if you have a good digital camera or camcorder), maybe ask the coach if they'd like some game photos taken? I made an awesome new friend after realizing that her daughter was in all the pictures I took of my niece, and now we hang out and her sister just asked if I'd teach her to ski.
Huntin's still social, tho.
I moved to a small town to be a professor at the local university. The adjustment has been hard, and it’s been a challenge to make friends with people who aren’t my co-workers. I am not religious, so that’s also been a challenge. My advice is to join activities at a methodist or UCC church. You can scope out their websites for how liberal they are, but in my town people are friendly, weird, nice, all the things that people are elsewhere. I am also white, which impacts my lived experience of the rural midwest.
I moved to a small town to be a professor at the local university. The adjustment has been hard, and it's been a challenge to make friends with people who aren't my co-workers. I am not religious, so that's also been a challenge. My advice is to join activities at a methodist or UCC church. You can scope out their websites for how liberal they are, but in my town people are friendly, weird, nice, all the things that people are elsewhere. I am also white, which impacts my lived experience of the rural midwest.
I live in a town like this. My husband grew up here, but I’m an outsider (I actually grew up in a really small town too, but school provides instant socialising, so that was different). Not only do I not know anybody, but I have found it really hard to connect with people because I’m a professional and most people in the area don’t have a university education. That isn’t a problem for me, but it has proven to be a problem for many of the people I have met.
My solution was to get involved in online communities (fandom for me, but there are other options). I have made some friends with whom a I have a common interest, and some of them live close enough that we can be friends irl, getting together for an afternoon or a weekend. Others live further away, but we talk regularly via text/kik/whatsapp or even *gasp* on the phone. It’s not the same as when I had a big group of friends who I saw every day, but having people to talk to all the time is a huge improvement, and I don’t feel nearly so lonely.
Good luck!
I don’t have many friends and I live right near Boston. I do rely on
meetup groups and the like. Local libraries often have book clubs, Lectures and show films. I’m in a suburb but its it tiny but besides the library I go into Bostoneben for things on my own.
Everything in Small Town Gal's post is spot-on. I will only add these small notes:
If there's a Unitarian Universalist congregation in the town, go. You don't have to be religious, but an interest in peace and justice helps.
Also, BINGO. Go. No matter who is sponsoring it.
If there is an historical association, or a gardening club, or a friends of the library association in town or in a neighboring town, join one of them.
If you like animals and there is a local veterinarian's office, ask about volunteering.