My wife the other day gave me a challenge... and I'm looking for suggestions. I'm calling it the "I Love You, Man Challenge" She wants me to find atleast one good guy friend I can hang out with by the end of summer.

How do guys make friends outside of college? I moved away from all of my college buddies when we graduated. Being a SAHD it's difficult to find time to go out and make friends.

I posed this question on my blog so I won't go into it in depth but you can see the discussion I have had with some other dads so I'm hoping to get some other suggestions.

The Rookie Dad

BJ,

My wife and I have made some new friends through our childbirth class, baby & me groups, Gymboree, and things like that.

Now that we have a new baby we are forming relationships w/ people in a similar place in life - I think that's a natural things to do. When I was single, most of my friends were single; after I got married, we mostly hung out w/ couples... etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a "dads of young kids" meetup group in your town as well.

Roger

I have my clubs. I smoke a pipe and I make beer. The first Thursday of each month, I meet up with my pipe smoking brothers for dinner and smoke. On the second Sunday of each month, I go to my brewing meeting. From those meetings I've made some great friends.

If not for those I probably meet the most other guys at church. But maybe my church is a bit different. I lead a Lenten Brew project each year. I was considering starting a group of guys at church that would be underground and called Plymouth Vice. We'd get together, drink beer and smoke cigars. But now we're moving. I'll get to start over.

I'd also say that any SAHD should be frequenting DadStaysHome.com. Having a group you can relate to helps adjusting to being in public in my experience.

I spent a lot of time travelling after college, then ended up in a completely different region in my mid 30's.

But between owning a paddlesports business, white water kayaking, sea kayaking, kayak racing, mountain biking, road biking, playing in two different hockey leagues at once, and then being an outside sales rep for a construction supply comapny, I had over 90 friends at my 40th birthday party (killed a keg of ESB cause old guys rule ) Every activity comes with it's own set of friends.

But lately my new friends have come via the internet. I recently got into overlanding and while doing research on a large international overlanding forum, I met a guy that also has a 4x4 camper van and low and behold he lives in my own freakin neighborhood, only three streets over.

The two summers ago my brother n law was diagnosed with CLL. We live an hour and a half apart from each other so we never really got to know eachother well. His big hobby is enduro riding, and I spent a lot of time on a dirt bike when I was a kid, so I told my wife that maybe I should buy his enduro so he can buy the new enduro he wants and we can go riding together. (She immediately handed me a signed blank check). So I started posting on a few different enduro forums that we were going to ride at a certain trailhead at a certain time and next thing you know 5 to 20 guys would show up. One of them is my new best friend and his wife is my wife's new best friend.

Whatever hobbies you have or want to get into, do an internet search for a local group or forum. Then right away you can meet guys with similar interests and the hobby is the reason to get together all the time.

Keep us posted.

Ben,

Thanks for the idea of dadstayshome.com! I did some more research and found some SAHD groups in the KC area.

I've tried connected with some guys on twitter to see if they are interested. We will see.

Yep, nothing new to add. The above posts got it covered.

I skate about once a week. Have met a great group of old dudes about 8 years ago... we "became" the Concretins about 3 years later... www.Concretins.com

Concretins'll make ya famous.