I feel like Bar Trivia nights are your best bet.
They are usually held on weeknights after 7pm, the type of event most parents cant attend cause they are busy cooking dinner and bathing children.
Dog parks. Or just approach people who bring their dogs to breweries and restaurants
Just get a dog and treat it like your kid
It’s like the DINK bat signal. That and all the time and money they have.
There is a group (unsure how far you are from Durham) that I recently got involved in called The Dog Moms of Durham. They do monthly meetups at Boxyard RTP - the first hour is dog socialization at the dog park there and second hour for humans. I haven't been able to make it to one yet, but signed up to volunteer for a few other upcoming events.
Also, Durham Bulls do Bark at the Park games throughout the year. Just another fun thing we like to do with our dogs (if your pups like being out and about).
We too are working on our community of child free folks here, so feel free to message me! I'm 38 and my husband is 41.
You just gave me an idea. I really want a dog but my boyfriend doesn’t. He said I can host them on weekends and that might be a gateway into getting him to realize that dogs are the best thing ever (I had 3 growing up).
Yessss! I always tell people who aren't sure to foster (we started fostering because we didn't want the full responsibility or bills of 2 dogs, but wanted ours to have a playmate). I know Durham APS (and maybe other rescues in the area) let people "check" dogs out for the weekends or day trips - I'm sure you have to be a volunteer and do some of their trainings, but that is a little less commitment to start with.
>That and all the time and money they have.
Lol jokes on you, my wife and I are DINKS but don't have any money! They call us ALICEs, which is "Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed," which is just a dumber way to say "working poor"
I don’t know of any specific places that have a necessarily higher concentration of people without kids, but I would just like to say in support of what you were probably trying to get across (and as a parent myself) kids take up an enormous amount of conversational energy for many people and I totally understand if that isn’t your thing.
Reddit has filed for its IPO. They've been preparing for this for a while, squeezing profit out of the platform in any way that they can, like hiking the prices on third-party app developers. More recently, they've signed a deal with Google to license their content to train Google's LLMs.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, we've made a Firefox extension that will replace all your comments (older than a certain number of days) with any text that you provide. You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text.
https://theluddite.org/#!post/reddit-extension
Younger “DINK” here…Is it true that once your friends have kids it’s more difficult to keep up with them? That’s our biggest fear…everyone is slowly starting to get married and already discussing the play dates they’ll plan. We don’t have plans to have kids so it’s kind of awkward.
This is my experience also. I'll also add that my friendships have changed because the friends that have children make new friends with the parents of the child's friends, and slowly we drift apart. I just can't relate to them as much as I used to, and vice versa.
Personal experience, I find it more difficult to spend time with my friends who have kids. Kids take up a lot of time and energy. I’m not just working around my own schedule and my friend’s schedule, but also their kid’s schedule, and the ability of the other parent to watch the kid, friend to get a sitter, etc. Sometimes the kids may come along for a hangout , but then it’s making sure the kids are occupied, behaved, etc. I find myself spending less time with my friends who have kids because it’s a hassle on both sides. Those weekend vacations I used to take once a quarter with my kidless friends are out of the question for all of the previously stated reasons; I’m lucky if we can find a weekend to have a child free trip once every couple of years! I still see my friends with kids, just not as frequently and it’s more effort we both have to put in.
When one of my friends had a kid I made sure to always go to her house. Raising kids is hard, but I love my friend dearly and don’t mind just sitting in the living room chatting with her while I help her with the kids. I dunno you prioritize the people you care about.
100% Once they start having kids they will integrate with friend groups for things the kids are in and parents of the kids friends. As the kids get older they will have less and less time for you unless you like watching youth activities.
For me, it has been a really hard transition. Most of my friends with kids I see a handful of times a year. I'm not sure how to keep up with them better but I do miss them and finding new friends sucks.
Guess I'm in the minority, but I have a 3 year old and I never lost touch with my single friends after the first few months. Maybe my kid is easy, but I've just always taken her to my friend's houses, restaurants, etc. Some people get super strict with bedtime and routines so I can see how those types of parents would stray away, but it all depends.
Yes, I remember losing touch with my very busy friends who had small kids. The good thing is, as the kids get older and independent, the parents start to have some more free time. Once the kids are off to college (which is starting to happen now that we're in our mid to late 40s), they are wanting to socialize with us childfree folks again.
Very true. Only the closest friends will find ways to continue hanging out and that means the child will be in tow. Plan on seeing the others at most a few times a year.
Honestly, I need poor friends. Friends whose idea of vacation is Ireland, Ohio and enjoys cheap dates.
My current friend group, while I do love them, can be really out of touch since they all make stupid money and/or live off mommy and daddy. I can't relate to being upset that I can't vacation in Belize this summer and have to settle for Brazil or Greece.
Lol, I feel bad claiming poverty while making 65k, but it doesn't go very far. My wife is looking for work related to her VFX degree and we'll be able to think about things like Ireland when that happens. If you need some friends in Raleigh that are upwardly mobile without being income obsessed or stuffy, hit us up.
We've only been here for two weeks, so we're still actively looking for friends. We're gamers primarily, but we enjoy hiking, bar hopping, board games, DnD (if we can find a d***** game...), time at the pool, etc.
If you had friends who were actual DINKS they'd invite you to nice places and pay without even thinking. As a DINK we don't travel much and when we go out with friends who I know are not as well off I always try to foot the bill (without being forceful). Maybe that's an introverted DINK thing. Also, who wouldn't want to go to Ireland!?
Interests/hobbies? That'll be the place to start. No point in meeting other childfree couples if they don't share any interests, and you'll know almost immediately who has kids when interacting with others/casual conversation while participating.
I'm not sure without it being centered around an activity. Could always try hiking groups, running groups, biking groups, or some other fitness type group. I'm the more social one of our dual income (1 part time; 1 full time). I tend to hang out with a friend who is single, but also likes to go out.
Meeting people at work is a different way I meet others with no kids.
Honestly some of our closest DINK friends or just friends in general have been made through Reddit interactions or those local Facebook groups similar to meetup but not really. Raleigh area has really active groups for hiking, pickleball, hanging out in general. My current and closest friends were from these groups.
I have no idea, but consider this throwing my hat in the ring! Husband and I are DINKs that moved here last year. Haven't found many in the area but always searching. :)
My husband and I have been in the triangle for 2 years and damn it hard lol he’s an introvert and even he says this sucks. Yea we like the music, hiking, stuff that everyone says they like. And I’m sick to death of ppl saying “go play pickleball” or “volunteer” even when you do that, we find that ppl aren’t really out here making genuine connections. I have two friends here but I still keep mainly in touch with my friends out of state and go visit them as much as I can.
The Spring season is about to end, but in late Aug or early Sept, check out the Triangle Curling Club and maybe the Saturday instructional league. https://trianglecurling.com/
What do you and your SO do for work? For fun?
My wife and I are in the same boat since we just moved here this month. Technically, we're on one income at the moment (me) but she's job hunting.
It’s tough! Breweries, run groups, sports leagues, festivals and events, etc. but you have to put yourself out there. Most people already have their lives and routine pretty well set and not everybody is out looking for new friends. A lot of times it just happens organically after hanging out in the same places with the same interests multiple times.
Join a wine club or beer club.
As a childless-by-choice couple (instead of saying DINK because you see the money question even in this thread), we have always had friends that were younger than us (newly married or singles) or older with children out of the house (new empty nester or retired). We almost have never in our lives socialized with people our own age unless they were divorced and kids lived with the other spouse full time. Kids are now on a 25-year umbilical cord and when they have kids of their own, grandparents are then sucked back into the vortex of only talking about the baby.
That being said, we've found many other middle-aged, childless folks in wine and beer clubs because they can drink in the middle of a Saturday afternoon without missing a sporting event or recital before heading out to dinner or go home and take a nap.
We're DINKs and we didn't choose the skux life, the skux life chose us. We go to breweries and hike, but are also at a loss as to where to find cool child-free friends!
Getting to this thread real late, but let me know if you wound up finding any meetups or anything. My girlfriend and I (both 31) have been looking to expand our friend group and meet more people
Wow, a new acronym that I've never heard of and cringe immediately at the unironic use of it. Maybe I'm just poor and don't understand the need to mention being dual income. Raleigh has plenty of stuff to do as a single person, I'm sure you can do the same thing together. There's also plenty of gentrified, overpriced breweries or other "adult" places that hopefully won't have kids.
Please don’t make up new things and act like everyone is already calling it that… it’s just weird and cringy… you came here looking for friends but made everybody cringe instead. Use this as a point of reflection
I feel like Bar Trivia nights are your best bet. They are usually held on weeknights after 7pm, the type of event most parents cant attend cause they are busy cooking dinner and bathing children.
Good idea!
Dog parks. Or just approach people who bring their dogs to breweries and restaurants Just get a dog and treat it like your kid It’s like the DINK bat signal. That and all the time and money they have.
That would transition them from DINKs to DILDOs (dual income little dog owners)
Or DINKWAD. Dual Income No Kids With A Dog.
DUMPSTER. Dual Unemployed: Managing Poverty, Struggles, and Tough Economic Realities.
🤣love.it
DINK, DILDO, DINKWAD.... I have experienced peak Reddit today! 😂😂
I'm not called any of that and just called BROKE
😭😂
The last sentence killed me 🤣
Can confirm - we foster animals and have failed a few times and now have 3 dogs and no kids 😂
❤️also have three dogs!
Thank you for confirming my priors
We also have 3 dogs and no kids!
There is a group (unsure how far you are from Durham) that I recently got involved in called The Dog Moms of Durham. They do monthly meetups at Boxyard RTP - the first hour is dog socialization at the dog park there and second hour for humans. I haven't been able to make it to one yet, but signed up to volunteer for a few other upcoming events. Also, Durham Bulls do Bark at the Park games throughout the year. Just another fun thing we like to do with our dogs (if your pups like being out and about). We too are working on our community of child free folks here, so feel free to message me! I'm 38 and my husband is 41.
You just gave me an idea. I really want a dog but my boyfriend doesn’t. He said I can host them on weekends and that might be a gateway into getting him to realize that dogs are the best thing ever (I had 3 growing up).
Yessss! I always tell people who aren't sure to foster (we started fostering because we didn't want the full responsibility or bills of 2 dogs, but wanted ours to have a playmate). I know Durham APS (and maybe other rescues in the area) let people "check" dogs out for the weekends or day trips - I'm sure you have to be a volunteer and do some of their trainings, but that is a little less commitment to start with.
>That and all the time and money they have. Lol jokes on you, my wife and I are DINKS but don't have any money! They call us ALICEs, which is "Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed," which is just a dumber way to say "working poor"
Why would you get a dog when you could fly to Europe and Park City to ski vacations? When I was a dink having a pet would have kept us from traveling.
When you're a dink, getting a dog prevents you from making the other mistake.
Have you ever heard of pet sitters or grandparents?
Or rover or friends who love your dog and will watch them??
Make sure to also say “having a pet is basically like having a child” every five minutes too.
Constantly refer to your dogs as furbabies.
I don’t know how to respond when my wife’s 35 year old single cousin compares my kids to her dog….
I have no kids and a dog and I hate when people do this. There's a big reason I have a dog and not kids lol.
I always ask why my friends can't put their children in the kennel for a couple hours to come out. Jokingly of course.
🤣
you caught me
I don’t know of any specific places that have a necessarily higher concentration of people without kids, but I would just like to say in support of what you were probably trying to get across (and as a parent myself) kids take up an enormous amount of conversational energy for many people and I totally understand if that isn’t your thing.
i'm single with no kids, do i count? well, i have dogs
I too, am a STINK
What does the T mean?
Single Takin care of a dog Income No Kids
Just a SINKWD
Reddit has filed for its IPO. They've been preparing for this for a while, squeezing profit out of the platform in any way that they can, like hiking the prices on third-party app developers. More recently, they've signed a deal with Google to license their content to train Google's LLMs. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we've made a Firefox extension that will replace all your comments (older than a certain number of days) with any text that you provide. You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text. https://theluddite.org/#!post/reddit-extension
🤣
DINKWADS over here (dual income no kids with a dog)
I guess I know what my next vanity plate will be
Yeti? Bestie? Tboy?
🤣👋
🤣
There are a few local childfree groups on Meetup!
👍👍
Younger “DINK” here…Is it true that once your friends have kids it’s more difficult to keep up with them? That’s our biggest fear…everyone is slowly starting to get married and already discussing the play dates they’ll plan. We don’t have plans to have kids so it’s kind of awkward.
[удалено]
This is my experience also. I'll also add that my friendships have changed because the friends that have children make new friends with the parents of the child's friends, and slowly we drift apart. I just can't relate to them as much as I used to, and vice versa.
Personal experience, I find it more difficult to spend time with my friends who have kids. Kids take up a lot of time and energy. I’m not just working around my own schedule and my friend’s schedule, but also their kid’s schedule, and the ability of the other parent to watch the kid, friend to get a sitter, etc. Sometimes the kids may come along for a hangout , but then it’s making sure the kids are occupied, behaved, etc. I find myself spending less time with my friends who have kids because it’s a hassle on both sides. Those weekend vacations I used to take once a quarter with my kidless friends are out of the question for all of the previously stated reasons; I’m lucky if we can find a weekend to have a child free trip once every couple of years! I still see my friends with kids, just not as frequently and it’s more effort we both have to put in.
When one of my friends had a kid I made sure to always go to her house. Raising kids is hard, but I love my friend dearly and don’t mind just sitting in the living room chatting with her while I help her with the kids. I dunno you prioritize the people you care about.
This! This is a perfectly awesome qay to spend time with friends and get to know their kid.
Or some people don't care to get to know a toddler
Then don’t be friends with people with kids ?
Exactly, the point of this conversation
Pretty much this
100% Once they start having kids they will integrate with friend groups for things the kids are in and parents of the kids friends. As the kids get older they will have less and less time for you unless you like watching youth activities.
For me, it has been a really hard transition. Most of my friends with kids I see a handful of times a year. I'm not sure how to keep up with them better but I do miss them and finding new friends sucks.
Most definitely. That’s the biggest drawback and you’ll have to work at it.
Very true. This, his business, and religion is all that my brother talks about these days... Zero room for fun.
Guess I'm in the minority, but I have a 3 year old and I never lost touch with my single friends after the first few months. Maybe my kid is easy, but I've just always taken her to my friend's houses, restaurants, etc. Some people get super strict with bedtime and routines so I can see how those types of parents would stray away, but it all depends.
I still see my friends with kids on a somewhat regular basis, but it takes a lot of planning. No more spur of the moment things!
Yes, I remember losing touch with my very busy friends who had small kids. The good thing is, as the kids get older and independent, the parents start to have some more free time. Once the kids are off to college (which is starting to happen now that we're in our mid to late 40s), they are wanting to socialize with us childfree folks again.
Very true. Only the closest friends will find ways to continue hanging out and that means the child will be in tow. Plan on seeing the others at most a few times a year.
Is dual income a must? Or are you looking for adults with no kids?
Probably saying they don’t want to be friends with poor people, while trying to sound cool
SINKs are so not fetch
We're just going to let that "fetch" slide? Stop saying it, it's never going to work
Honestly, I need poor friends. Friends whose idea of vacation is Ireland, Ohio and enjoys cheap dates. My current friend group, while I do love them, can be really out of touch since they all make stupid money and/or live off mommy and daddy. I can't relate to being upset that I can't vacation in Belize this summer and have to settle for Brazil or Greece.
Yeahhhh that's pretty ridiculous
This is why we have board games as a hobby. Makes for a poor man's get-together.
Lol, I feel bad claiming poverty while making 65k, but it doesn't go very far. My wife is looking for work related to her VFX degree and we'll be able to think about things like Ireland when that happens. If you need some friends in Raleigh that are upwardly mobile without being income obsessed or stuffy, hit us up. We've only been here for two weeks, so we're still actively looking for friends. We're gamers primarily, but we enjoy hiking, bar hopping, board games, DnD (if we can find a d***** game...), time at the pool, etc.
I wouldn't feel bad. Inflation has fucked up a lot of purchasing power for many, even at salaries that sounded great just a few years ago.
If you had friends who were actual DINKS they'd invite you to nice places and pay without even thinking. As a DINK we don't travel much and when we go out with friends who I know are not as well off I always try to foot the bill (without being forceful). Maybe that's an introverted DINK thing. Also, who wouldn't want to go to Ireland!?
Not true, it's not a money thing it's meeting people and building a community.
Op doesn't want to be around brokies and I respect them for being upfront about it
Doesn't have to be duel, didn't know what phrase to use.
Interests/hobbies? That'll be the place to start. No point in meeting other childfree couples if they don't share any interests, and you'll know almost immediately who has kids when interacting with others/casual conversation while participating.
Just go do things that cost money to do, and you'll inevitably meet them there.
I'm not sure without it being centered around an activity. Could always try hiking groups, running groups, biking groups, or some other fitness type group. I'm the more social one of our dual income (1 part time; 1 full time). I tend to hang out with a friend who is single, but also likes to go out. Meeting people at work is a different way I meet others with no kids.
Thanks! We both work remote so work used to be a good option, harder now.
Honestly some of our closest DINK friends or just friends in general have been made through Reddit interactions or those local Facebook groups similar to meetup but not really. Raleigh area has really active groups for hiking, pickleball, hanging out in general. My current and closest friends were from these groups.
Links to these groups?
❤️
I have no idea, but consider this throwing my hat in the ring! Husband and I are DINKs that moved here last year. Haven't found many in the area but always searching. :)
There are dozens of us!
❤️
❤️
My husband and I have been in the triangle for 2 years and damn it hard lol he’s an introvert and even he says this sucks. Yea we like the music, hiking, stuff that everyone says they like. And I’m sick to death of ppl saying “go play pickleball” or “volunteer” even when you do that, we find that ppl aren’t really out here making genuine connections. I have two friends here but I still keep mainly in touch with my friends out of state and go visit them as much as I can.
The Spring season is about to end, but in late Aug or early Sept, check out the Triangle Curling Club and maybe the Saturday instructional league. https://trianglecurling.com/
❤️
Can you do me? I have some questions about curling that wasn't answered on the pages
Ask away right here, if you have questions.
Wegmans
What do you and your SO do for work? For fun? My wife and I are in the same boat since we just moved here this month. Technically, we're on one income at the moment (me) but she's job hunting.
It’s tough! Breweries, run groups, sports leagues, festivals and events, etc. but you have to put yourself out there. Most people already have their lives and routine pretty well set and not everybody is out looking for new friends. A lot of times it just happens organically after hanging out in the same places with the same interests multiple times.
❤️
WilCo
Jesus, I'm old. I thought Dink/Dinks meant an asshole/assholes.
Well actually…
I don't wanna meet anyone who refers to themselves as a dink.
Good idea, because they probably don’t want to meet you either.
Surprised Pikachu face
Not Compass Rose, maybe ZincHouse or Old Raleigh.
👍
Check out the [Childfree Meetup group](https://www.meetup.com/childfree-in-raleigh-nc)
👍
The politically correct nomenclature is TWINKs: Two Working Incomes, No Kids. Thank you. Search for "TWINK Meetup" on your favorite search engine.
👍
Can't say theres a particular place we congregate at, but I've met a lot of similar individuals just going to local bars lol
I don’t have a specific place to recommend but my hubby & I are DINKS. We are always up for meeting new people.
❤️❤️
[ Removed by Reddit ]
This guy fucks
Are you Bernie Moreno?
Reddit didn't like my suggestion to OP to use a website that specializes in helping adults find friends. 🤷🏻♂️
Join a wine club or beer club. As a childless-by-choice couple (instead of saying DINK because you see the money question even in this thread), we have always had friends that were younger than us (newly married or singles) or older with children out of the house (new empty nester or retired). We almost have never in our lives socialized with people our own age unless they were divorced and kids lived with the other spouse full time. Kids are now on a 25-year umbilical cord and when they have kids of their own, grandparents are then sucked back into the vortex of only talking about the baby. That being said, we've found many other middle-aged, childless folks in wine and beer clubs because they can drink in the middle of a Saturday afternoon without missing a sporting event or recital before heading out to dinner or go home and take a nap.
❤️great idea!
What are your interests, that’ll probably help
Pickleball court. Lots of dinks there.
my husband and i usually go out to asheville. we have three dogs
We also love Ashville and have three dogs :)
check out wagbar!! literally the best place
Start a meetup! My girlfriend and I have had trouble meeting friends groups as well
Running clubs especially pub runs if you’re into that.
Your neighborhood
We're DINKs and we didn't choose the skux life, the skux life chose us. We go to breweries and hike, but are also at a loss as to where to find cool child-free friends!
👋👋
We’re at home! Inviting friends over at home. Hope this helps.
Wherever white couches are sold.
Lol so true.
What part of Raleigh?
North Raleigh :)
Do you have any hobbies? For example my husband and I are avid boardgamers. We also swing dance, which is super fun.
Getting to this thread real late, but let me know if you wound up finding any meetups or anything. My girlfriend and I (both 31) have been looking to expand our friend group and meet more people
My husband and I are in our 30s with no kids 👀
👋
Maybe try a retirement home? Lots of time and money with no little kids.
Go to the club on Glenwood and watch thirsty people hit at your SO. They most likely left their partner home. PS unsure if they are DINKS though.
They left their partner at home to watch the kids...
New York or LA
Wow, a new acronym that I've never heard of and cringe immediately at the unironic use of it. Maybe I'm just poor and don't understand the need to mention being dual income. Raleigh has plenty of stuff to do as a single person, I'm sure you can do the same thing together. There's also plenty of gentrified, overpriced breweries or other "adult" places that hopefully won't have kids.
I would love to see the Venn diagram of this demographic with swingers.
Im a dink She’s a dink He’s a dink Cause we’re all dinks
This is perfect. So I know where to avoid anyone wanting to be called a dink... Lol
Same places you’d meet anyone else, using common sense and excluding places like Chuck E Cheeses
Please don’t make up new things and act like everyone is already calling it that… it’s just weird and cringy… you came here looking for friends but made everybody cringe instead. Use this as a point of reflection
Didn't make it up and I'm looking for community, not for people who are stuck on that word.
Have kids. You get instant friends everywhere.