You need to find corresponding hobbies, my wife really likes to cook, so I learned how to restore cast iron, so now we are allowed to visit all the junk stores and re-store to look for new cast iron things and every once and while those are also stores where you get to find older odd lights and fixtures, and vintage copper pans are an awesome distraction to the all the lights in the cart and when they are cleaned up and re-tinned shining someone forgets about the lights and ballasts I just picked up...
We do have interest in common, and like you love to go thrift shop/salvage/Restore hunting.