About 8 years ago, I moved to a new city with my wife and went fully remote. It looked different for me- I was with a consultancy and started by out flying out

About 8 years ago, I moved to a new city with my wife and went fully remote. It looked different for me- I was with a consultancy and started by out flying out to customer sites every other week, gradually fading to one a quarter or less before the pandemic. It took a long time to adapt- about 3 years before I feel like I really adapted, but I feel better about my social life now at any point before the transition. On work relationships- for me, one of the biggest learnings was that every interaction when you are remote is intentional. If you are going to get to know your coworkers, you have to make time for it. I have 1-1s with peers just to talk on a fairly regular basis, and for meetings of appropriate size (5 or less people) I find it perfectly acceptable to spend the first 5 minutes or more chitchatting. I’ve also worked on “scaling” these interactions by organizing presentations on peoples hobbies, which has been really fun and improved everyone’s feeling of belonging. As a result of this I have a number of people I consider dear friends who I have never met in person. I do think organizations need to encourage in person get together a on a semi-annual or more basis. In my consulting days those get togethers created an enormous amount of bonding and trust in a very short time that increased communication for years afterwards. I actually found it harder to find a social life in my new city than I did to maintain or develop work relationships. I’d previously used my college network or social sports teams to find out of work friend groups and the new city didn’t have either of those. In addition, I was a new father and we quickly had another child, which quickly limits your availability. What eventually worked for me was a combination of finding a true 3rd space (for me, a teach your kids to ski club), moving to a neighborhood with lots of similarly aged families, and meeting other parents through my kids school. So I really get the OPs feeling- that the 2nd space has collapsed, and that its tough build the 3rd, but with time, intention and repetition I really think it’s possible to have it all.