The loneliness that nobody mentions before you move — anyone else go through this?

This comes up constantly across every kind of mover — retirees, families, young professionals, doesn't seem to discriminate by life stage. I think it's worth naming explicitly like you have, because so much advice focuses on the practical checklist and quietly skips over this part entirely. For what it's worth, this forum existing and people responding to threads like yours is itself part of rebuilding that fabric, even in a small way — glad you posted it.

Doing this alone as a single parent, I felt this hard. It’s less about being physically alone and more about not having anyone who just already knows your context — you have to explain everything from scratch to everyone.

Retired here too and I know exactly what you mean — it’s the loss of the person you’d casually call about nothing in particular. Took a while to admit that was even a real thing I’d had.

This hit harder than I expected reading it, thank you for putting words to it.

What worked for me was finding one recurring thing — a weekly activity, same people, same time — rather than trying to build a whole social life at once. The regularity did more than the activity itself.

OP here — thank you all, genuinely. We took Kwame’s suggestion and joined a local weekly group. Too early to say it’s fixed anything but it’s the first thing that’s felt like a start.

From a fellow retiree: expect a dip specifically around month four to six, once the novelty has worn off and the admin tasks are done. Knowing that in advance would have helped me.

Following, needed to read this today.

Small update: the group is genuinely helping. Nothing dramatic, just less of that specific ache on a Sunday afternoon.

Same, and nobody warns you it’s not really about being alone physically at all.