Its hard making friends as a single woman in your 30s

Honestly I think it's hard making friends as an adult, full stop. I have 'friends' from gym classes, we see each other every week and chat loads but although we keep saying we'll organise some drinks it never happens. Any new friends I've made have been either through work or through DH, so from that point of view it would be harder as a single woman. But I do also understand the criticism from PPs... The jealous wives schtick is a bit Samantha Brick.

What about your old friends from before you moved? Do you keep in touch? Are they too far away?

I moved abroad in my 20s and new no-one.
I made the effort and joined a few things and made loads of friends.
4 very very close friends and 2 best friends.

But what are you actually interested in and what do you spend your time doing? You haven't got children and it sounds like your job isn't so taxing it takes up all your time (you haven't mentioned it does, anyway).

If I had no kids and was less tired, I'd be doing :-
swimming at the lido - and joining the choir and knitting/ bake sales crowd there at weekends they are all between 30 and 80!
Go back to the lino printing course I did at Camberwell a few years ago and get more qualifications on that, there were also a few chatty people around as I recall
Be a trustee of a few local charities and do stuff with them or be a magistrate or clerk a parish council or something
Visit my uni friends in the various places they are around the world, one lives abroad, one likes the Edinburgh festival so we could plan to do that, etc
Join a band even - that might be a laugh, I reckon there are adverts for that sort of thing out and about.

All those are not very villagey (except the local charity I guess, and there will be a village drama club or yoga group or something surely).

I feel like expecting to meet friends through dog walking is quite low key. For new friendship, you need a shared activity that is both fun and challenging, with some emotion to it, that matters to people; plus you need regularity of access to the people; plus you need "weak ties" (ie a gang of folks you aren't massively friends with but will say hello in the butcher's and ask when the next meeting of the drama society is, etc). This is quite a well known formula for friendship.

In short I think people with plenty of friends get them because they first try to be interested in lots of things, and they go "thing-first" not "people-first" as it can be a bit smothering to feel someone is "people-first". But then when they come across people they are generous and warm and make others feel good and as though they'd like to be drawn into the other person's exciting world.

I grew up in a bigger village, everyone already knew everyone and had long established networks. I moved away almost 30 years ago but still end up chatting on the main road as it’s the same faces though just older if I go back. London schooled grew up commuter belt to London DH couldn’t quite get his head round it at first.

I would never choose to live in a village as an adult and I have no desire to move back to the one I grew up in.

It was just like Hot Fuzz when they chase that lad and Nick Frost already knows the culprit because it’s Jackie’s sisters brothers cousins lad or whatever the relationship was. I bought a gift in one of the small shops a couple of years ago back home and it was a lad who I had gone to school with behind the counter , who had been expelled, you could tell he was still a bit of a bugger. I bumped in to another ex school mate in the chip shop that night, I remembered him as he was still the shy heart throb he had been at school. Then another the next day in a restaurant who was very drunk and kept hugging me.

What @Crichel has written is true of many villages, not all I’m sure but many. There is an incredibly strong local accent where I grew up. It’s an instant give away, I do not have it but slip in to it a bit when home. Woe betide the few Londoners who have moved there, despised would be the word I would use. They moved in or just after lockdown, some are selling up now and don’t like rural life.

So go to activities populated by singles.

You just need to think this through.

Well I think if you want to make life difficult for yourself, then create a story about jealous wives, while ignoring the obviousness of your choices having consequences, you're free to do that.

You have decide what you really want and do things likely to make that happen.

Have you had close friendships in the past? School, uni, jobs etc? Your phrase about acquaintances batting away efforts to deepen the relationships is interesting. Can you give an example?

Are you near a city OP?

you basically need to find your own kind.

im in a ltr and in my 40’s now, but i remember this before i got married.

i think you

Women in their thirties with jobs, children and partners are generally really busy. I had to keep making younger friends without children in my thirties when I was single. I’d just keep trying different things thst you enjoy until you meet people with time for new friends, maybe in the nearest town.

Honestly I think friendships are the first thing to go when people are juggling too much in life. I'd probably feel guilty starting a new friendship deeper than a few coffees atm because I know I just don't have the time to maintain it! I focus on the few close friends I've always had (though we've also drifted apart a little) and that's pretty much it.

I don’t think I agree with the motive attributed in the OP.

I see my friends on my own. I see couples friends with DP. He sees his friends on his own.

I am not “keeping them away from my husband”, I am socialising with my mates and he with his. Just because I enjoy someone’s company doesn’t mean she and DP will get along, nor that I need them to meet and approve my partner (nor my partner approve my mates).

I have meals out with friends, or go to the cinema or theatre, go for walks, meet for lunch - loads of things that aren’t inviting them over for dinner. I also exchange birthday presents. But I maintain friendships on my own, I don’t rope a partner or spouse into it.

This. I moved to a village in my 30s, with a DH and a baby whom I took to baby/toddler groups and who later went to school in the village school, and as a socially-confident person who’d never had any issues making friends previously, and it was the loneliest period of my life.

It had nothing to do with my marital status — it was just an insular place with very few incomers, where most people had grown up together and didn’t really have a concept of ‘making friends with a stranger’.

You're just limiting yourself significantly by moving to somewhere with fewer peiole.

And... join things full of other singles. There are plenty of single people in their 30s making friends. Just not by doing what you're doing.

And... why make this about the women? Are men flocking to be your friend? If not I guess they're not very 'kind' either.

My question would be, why isolate yourself in a village if you want to make friends?

You need to recognise that your choices have consequences and prioritise.