Looking for local "Couple Friends" (Pittsburgh, Penn: houses, neighborhoods)

[Michael-n-Jen]

Originally Posted by Love2Golf09

Try going to some lame places, like cooking classes or salsa lessons. Wine tasting classes are always popular with couples. I'm sure you will eventually meet some people from work. Have you tried going to bars that are frequented by an older crowd?

Bars really aren't our thing, and that does seem to make things harder- but it just isn't something we do. Classes sound like a good possibility
Haha, and here I am thinking "it'd be cool if we had couple friends to take a class with" haha.

[Hopes]

Have you and your girlfriend formed individual friendships independent of your relationship?

That's where all of our couple friends came from. My husband made friends. I made friends. And eventually we started doing things as couples with our friends and their spouses.

I think that's the natural way couples develop couple friends. The investment is first made in a separate friendship. If you guys don't do anything without each other, that could hinder your ability to make friends.

I recommend that you both pursue separate hobbies. Make separate friends. Eventually couple friends will develop from those. You can't be a couple bubble. It tends to turn prospective friends off if the "spouse" is always tagging along.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Are yinz from out of town? My fiance and I are of "couple age" (27 and 25). I actually met a really nice young couple at the shooting range of all places believe it or not.

Also the ol' "take a class" still works. We took a glass blowing class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center and there were plenty of young couples there.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Hopes

Have you and your girlfriend formed individual friendships independent of your relationship?

That's where all of our couple friends came from. My husband made friends. I made friends. And eventually we started doing things as couples with our friends and their spouses.

I think that's the natural way couples develop couple friends. The investment is first made in a separate friendship. If you guys don't do anything without each other, that could hinder your ability to make friends.

I recommend that you both pursue separate hobbies. Make separate friends. Eventually couple friends will develop from those. You can't be a couple bubble. It tends to turn prospective friends off if the "spouse" is always tagging along.

Excellent advice from Hopes, as always.

[ebyrnes]

I agree 100% with Hopes advice (I usually do!). While DH is still in Philly, I'm meeting people in the neighborhood and thru volunteer projects; we don't go to bars or church either. We don't have many couple friends in Philly either because we work different shifts and our couple friends were "shared" with our exes, and who wants that kind of drama (:

[robrobrob]

I realize that you are not bar people but you could eat at the same restaurant on a regular basis. Each time you eat there you should eat at the bar. Avoid the chains and try a local place. Doing it this way almost forces you to talk to other people. I would also bet that you will evetually recognize people.

With Spring around the corner, maybe a co-ed tennis or golf league. Both sports are pretty popular with couples.

[DaBurgh]

Originally Posted by Michael-n-Jen

Hello city-data forum!
I've been using this site for years, but am just now signing up for the forums...

My fiancé and I are having a very difficult time finding other couples to hang out with. I'm originally from the Pittsburgh area but had moved away for several years- and my fiancé had never been here before I brought her here. Needless to say, we're pretty much starting from scratch.

I've seen tons of suggestions about finding couples friends thru kids activities; but, we don't have kids just yet... So that's clearly not an option here.

How do we find other couples in the area- for dinner dates, cookouts, movie nights, etc???

We live North of the city, and spend much of our time in Cranberry. We're looking for couples, to join us for fun activities as couples, not the singles and bar scenes....

Help?!?!?

buy a his and hers Steelers or Penguins jerseys, read the sports page a couple of times per week, wear the jerseys/shirts in public or the park, out to eat, or for walks. Invite people to your place for a cookout to watch an upcoming hockey playoff game.

[onwardandupward]

Originally Posted by DaBurgh

Buy a his and hers Steelers or Penguins jerseys, read the sports page a couple of times per week, wear the jerseys/shirts in public or the park, out to eat, or for walks. Invite people to your place for a cookout to watch an upcoming hockey playoff game.

That's all you need to do

[SorryIMovedBack]

Originally Posted by Michael-n-Jen

...
How do we find other couples in the area- for dinner dates, cookouts, movie nights, etc???

We live North of the city, and spend much of our time in Cranberry. We're looking for couples, to join us for fun activities as couples, not the singles and bar scenes....

Help?!?!?

Childfree couples doing cosmopolitan urbane activities with other childfree couples just isn't a norm of western PA. It's more of an educated-populace thing, a white collar urban professional thing, and a big-city thing.

You're bucking a couple of demographic patterns here:
1. The culture of this region is the working class Catholic family. The Catholics of the region have larger than average extended families, and their major social outlet and circle of friends and group of people to do activities with is their blood relatives. They don't need to meet any "outsiders," or add to their circle of friends. Family is enough.

2. Per that Olde World culture, the women stay home with the kids and/or hang around with other mothers, and the men go out and do whatever they please without the wife and kids in tow. Couples doing things together, unless it is a family event, would, in my experience here, be sort of rare. I know people in Baltimore-Washington, and Charleston, WV and Houston, TX who do activities as a couple with other couples, without taking the kids in tow, but they don't do that here. There's a thread (old one now) in this forum about "what's wrong with PA women" or some such title. Another woman made that same observation: Here, men and women don't do things together.
3. Maybe a third problem, too: Pittsburgh is a city, but it's made up of segments that act small-town. (There are threads on that here, too, why people never go very far from home around here. and such.)

I suggest joining civic organizations, joining a walking club, card games clubs, keeping an eye on the Meetups announcements, and looking outside of your age group for childfree couples who can get out and go w/o kids in the picture. College alumni groups, business and professional organizations, etc. Churches, unless it's a Protestant charismatic type with a focus on individuals and singles, will just be pushing kids and family. Catholic churches look askance on child-free couples, lol. The Jaycees used to be good in some areas, years ago. I don't know what they are like now.

But basically, when you're up against a small-town-closed-family social structure, it's hard to make friends. Figure out what the young urban professional transplants do for a social life, and maybe that will lead you to the kind of "available" people that you need to make contact with. The sit-at-home family people are going to be very hard to meet, and probably not available for much non-family fun, anyway.

If you think your situation is frustrating, I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids, living in a small lower-socioeconomic rural town that's 100 miles from Pbgh, no siblings or cousins in the area, and let me tell you, there's NO way to have adult friends to do activities with in the midst of poverty, totally-trashy loser single males, and the suffocating small-town mama life. (That was rude and snarky, but not directed at anyone on this board, and not at Pittsburgh. It was aimed squarely at the UN-changable situation.)

That comment that was made about the "swingers": It was rude, snarky, condescending, and a personal attack on Michael-n-Jen. I reported it to the mods. It's all-to-common in this forum that anyone who posts anything to the effect of "I want something better than what I'm finding. How do I find this better situation (whatever it is)?" is immediately bashed for it. "Crabs in a bucket" is what we city people call that. As in "OMG, somebody's trying to climb out and escape this misery to find happiness. Must thwart them! Pull them back down!" ;-D

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Originally Posted by SorryIMovedBack

Childfree couples doing cosmopolitan urbane activities with other childfree couples just isn't a norm of western PA.

While I agree with a lot of your post (I myself have experienced many of my peers who base all of their social life on the family) there are just a many young, local couples who like to socialize with folks outside of their family. I myself am a local who was born here and I don't use the family as the primary source of socializing.

Like I said before, if the OP would take some classes and do some "hip" activities they're bound to meet friends who aren't typical yinzers.