Everyone's lonely but no one can hang out

This year my husband decided to set an ambitious New Years resolution:

Every Saturday of 2025 that we’re in town, we’ll have people over for dinner.

Objectively, this is a crazy thing to try to do. I was dubious when he told me — “seems like a lot of work for you,” I said, since he’s the one that does all the cooking, and the idea that we’d be able to keep this up with everything else going on this year seemed bananas.

His case for trying was twofold.

First, quite practically, we had to fill the time.

Over the last year, we’ve built a delightful Saturday morning routine, putting our parenting philosophy of “get out of the house as much as possible” into practice as we bounce from tot shabbat to storytime at the library to the bagel place and back again.

But the few hours between nap and bedtime are tough, especially in the winter — even in the warmest clothes, it’s too cold and dark to have fun at the playground and there are only so many times we can go to the grocery store in a day. (That number is one, btw).

Having people over on Saturday evening fills that window. We’re starting dinner at 5pm, so friends with kids can come, eat, play, and leave all before bedtime — and friends without kids can entertain ours, or shoot the shit with us while we build our one millionth magnatile tower of the day, and then hang out for as long as they’d like.

The second argument for his resolution was more emotional.

It’s cliche to say it at this point, because there has been so much written about the loneliness epidemic — but truly: I don’t know a single person who says they have enough friends or a vibrant enough social life.

And yet, when you invite people to do things, it seems like no one can hang out.

We ran into this constantly over the last year. In an effort to give our weekend with our kid some structure, we’d send a barrage of texts every Thursday or Friday to try and schedule a weekend get-together. Every week, it felt like we’d get back a stream of no’s or maybe-next-times, or just no answer. Sometimes we’d have something on the books and a few hours before, someone would flake.

This sent me spiraling. Does everyone secretly hate me? Do I suck? Am I needy? On and on and on.

And then whenever we’d finally get together, the original invitee would share what’s going on in their life, and without fail, there was a valid excuse. A health issue, a work thing, a pregnancy they weren’t ready to share, whatever — there was always something. It was nearly always reasonable, and never personal.

But still, our ad-hoc attempts to ~build community~ weren’t getting the job done in the way we wanted. Running into people around the neighborhood was nice, but it just wasn’t enough. There’s no way to have a real conversation when you’re always interrupted by a kid who needs to be stopped from throwing themselves off the playground Wile E. Coyote-style.

We needed to put some structure around this and create a regular container for the kind of hanging out we used to do in our 20s that built the friendships that lasted.

Thus, Saturday night dinners.

The goal is to make it easy for people to say yes. If they aren’t free this Saturday, great, we’re hosting again next Saturday. Aren’t free then? Good news, there are more Saturdays.

No one needs to get a babysitter or shell out money for dinner at a restaurant. Just come over, BYOB, and hang out for a few hours. It’s as low stakes and low cost as it can be.

My husband set up a spreadsheet and we started scheduling them up through the next six weeks or beyond if needed. (If I know you IRL and you haven’t gotten a text yet, don’t be offended — you’re probably on the list for next month! Or, send me a text yourself and let me know what Saturday works for you!)

So far in 2025 there have been four Saturdays so we’ve hosted four Saturday night meals.

And you know what? My doubts are laid to rest. I am a hater no more. The dinners have been great.

We’ve had old friends come over for ribs and “let” them take on the task of reading our two year old approximately one million stories before bed.

Another group joined us for BLTs and fries while three kids happily took out every single toy we have; new-ish friends ate tacos and played a raucous game of peekaboo.

Two new parents let their fresh baby hang in the bouncer while ours kicked happily on the playmat — we all chowed down on some meatballs as the toddler delighted in being the Big Girl in the room.

Over the next few months, we’ve got plans to eat with old friends, our neighbors, parents from daycare we only see at the playground or pick-up, people we’ve only recently become friends with, and more.

A month in, we’ve got a good system down. While the kids nap, my husband cooks and I get the apartment into “clean enough for guests” condition — I don’t try for perfect, just hygienic, sanitary, and neat. If it’s more than two adults, we’ve been eating on our couch, plates perched on our laps while kids play in the other half of the room.

When everything feels so bad, it’s nice to know that every Saturday, there will be a few hours that will be good.

I’ve seen so much ~discourse~ about the need to build community right now; about leaning into IRL relationships and logging off from social media more. It’s been really hard to know how to actually do that.

But we’re trying, and as long as none of our invited guests flake last minute and ruin the streak 👀 👀 👀, we’ll keep it up. I’ll report back on how it goes.

If you’ve got a similar effort going this year, or are trying a resolution like this, let me know. This is hard; more ideas welcome!

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Book rec:

After dragging my feet on it (including starting and not finishing it earlier this winter) I finally got through The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, after some pushing by a friend whose taste I trust.

It is, somehow, a very hot book about two women in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It took me until the twist in part two to really enjoy it, and phew, the ending was so tender.

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A few other things I’ve been reading:

• “Lately, [Rebecca] Yarros has been spending time in her garden, where plants behave more predictably than people. She signed up to receive text messages when it needs to be watered: “I named it Reb’s Mental Health, and it’ll send these texts like, ‘How long since you checked in on Reb’s Mental Health?’ And I’m like, ‘I know. Be quiet.’” (Elle’s profile of Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing writer turned literary-super-seller is so endearing)

• “The weepy confessions are, ostensibly, gestures toward intimacy. They’re meant to inspire empathy, to reassure viewers that influencers are just like them. But in fact, they’re exercises in what I’ve come to call McVulnerability: a synthetic version of vulnerability akin to fast food: mass-produced, easily accessible, sometimes tasty, but lacking in sustenance. True vulnerability can foster emotional closeness. McVulnerability offers only an illusion of it.” (The Atlantic, on a topic I write about a ton in my upcoming book…)
  

• Why everyone suddenly wants to be perceived as well-read. (Arch Digest on the aesthetics of book clubs, book bars, and BookTok.)
  

• “You can find the little gaps that separate "almost powerless" and "almost nothing" from "powerless" and "nothing." You can focus on those hard, and you can make the absolute most of them.” (This entire thread from BlueSky user Quest Authority on how he survived the anxiety of his wife’s deployments.)
  

• If you missed it - this Reddit thread about federal government workers basically telling Trump & Elon to fuck off into the sun is both hysterical and so deeply moving. (Reddit.)

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