Hi all!
My hubby and I currently live in Phoenix, and we're planning to move to Charlotte or Atlanta. We think Atlanta may not be for us since they have a HUGE traffic problem down there. Having lived in Los Angeles and Phoenix, we're sick of some of the things that come with living in a huge city...like ridiculous hour-long gridlocked commutes...so we're leaning away from Atlanta.My husband has lived in Charlotte before (he interned for ESPN during college eight years ago) and always raves about it...says he'd love to go back.
We're looking for a place with a community feel, instead of a big city lost-in-the-crowd environment. We are both 29, friendly, outgoing, down-to-earth people. We'll be selling our home in Phoenix, and probably renting for a few months to a year in Charlotte, to decide where we'd like to purchase a home there. Areas that we are possibly interested in include Matthews, Mint Hill, Ballantyne, and Indian Trail, among others. We'd love to find a safe, established neighborhood, where homes are anywhere from 5 to 20 years old, with large, maturely-landscaped yards, in the $300k - $350k range, where neighbors know each other and children play out in the yards...like the neighborhoods we grew up in in Louisville and the Philly burbs. (We don't have that in Phoenix). We don't have any children, and we honestly may never have any. Don't get me wrong, we love kids....just other people's kids!
A major concern of ours is that we may be singled out because we don't have children. Do you think if we move into a family-friendly neighborhood in one of the suburbs listed above (or any suburb, for that matter), that people would not be as open or friendly towards us, or that we will possibly feel singled out because we aren't part of the "club." Obviously, we won't meet people through our children like many parents do, and we won't be attending PTA meetings or the like. Do you think that we might feel segregated in a place like Charlotte, since it seems as though most of the married folks there have children, and it's a very family-oriented city? Or, would you parents be willing to form friendships with people like us who move into your neighborhoods with no kids? We want to meet other couples in our neighborhood who can come over/go out for coffee or drinks or a barbecue/dinner, with or without their kids, but we don't know if other couples with kids would want to hang out with couples like us, without kids. Are these stupid questions?
What do you think? Thanks!
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