> But how do you meet your spouse at restaurants? Restaurants aren’t very social places.

They can be, and they also often have bars that are just as social as a bar-as-distinct-venue.

I met my spouse at a restaurant.

Organize a big dinner between two distinct social groups with only one or two linkages. In my case, my coworker was dating my future spouse's coworker. Very different companies. Those two arranged a dinner so their friends could meet. We had the big room at the Clay Pit in Austin where it's possible to hold a cross-table conversation.

Don't sit near only people you know. Don't talk in-jokes with the people you already know. As dinner's wrapping up see if anyone wants to go dancing or whatever. Anyone with mutual eyes on each other will definitely continue to hang out into the evening. And it's easy to ask someone to dance or hang out again at that point because you just spent hours with them at dinner.

> Organize a big dinner between two distinct social groups with only one or two linkages

Unfortunately it’s difficult enough to get one together now. Particularly after Covid it seems no one wants to do anything anymore.

At that time we were in the habit of doing big group dinners but we had ramped up from 4 or 6 people to 10 or 12 being common and, that night, 16ish. Organizing dinners and getting people to come out is a muscle to train, like any other. It snowballs as people from the last time talk up the next.