This is kind of OT, but idk where else to vent about this, so here we are. Not looking for advice; just want to complain / commiserate with anyone else who might be going through something similar.

I'm living back in my hometown against my will (family issues; not relevant, but suffice it to say I can't just leave). It's a small city, a little under a million people in the whole metro area, just small enough and with just a tight-yet-broadly-knit enough sense of community that everyone knows everyone else and gossip spreads quickly. You'll definitely run into at least one cousin or someone you knew from school on every trip to Walmart.

I originally left my hometown to get away from my abuser and all the mutual "friends" who sided with her after our breakup (which was ALL of them). I'm on "go to hell; even seeing you around triggers my PTSD; knowing y'all are still out there motivates me to never go out so I can avoid running into you" terms with huge swaths of the communities for my most sociable hobbies. So "just put yourself out there" isn't actionable advice; since everyone knows everyone else, encountering someone from the bad ol' days is all but inevitable if I try. So I don't try.

Soooooo, how does one meet anyone and/or get a date these days? Dating apps, of course! Except even opening Tinder would make my profile visible to the entire city, including the people I'm avoiding. And the gossipy conservative cousins who don't know I'm poly, but do know I'm married, and would assume the worst about me and then gab to the whole family. Is there a way to search and pre-block profiles before they encounter yours through swiping, so I can make sure a whole lot of people never see me? I literally can't check for myself.

Also, because I have no friends left here, I'm staring down the barrel of "don't try to fuck your way into building a support network." I've been achingly lonely since we arrived here a year ago. My husband is sick of being the only person I interact with 95% of the time, my boyfriend keeps an opposite daily schedule to mine so I rarely see him, and the pandemic various other traumas killed off my ability to even want to invest in making friends. I'm not any good at building interpersonal relationships, but I am good at sex, and with all my other avenues of meeting people effectively closed off, I'm not sure what else I could even do.

Anyway, thanks for sticking through this post, if you did. Again, not looking for advice; just wanted to get this all off my chest. Thanks again.

(Edit: proofreading)