You need more than one dive buddy, I had one for travel but she isn’t interested in local diving. The answer is to belong to a dive club, preferably more than one. Before I got married I also belonged to SingleDivers.com and did a few trips each year with them. In the NYC area is OceanBlue which offers trips and local dives.
A not so LDS has two clubs, offshore and a beach club plus they do training dives one night a week at a local river beach and divers are welcome to join in and practice skills or test gear.