Even when I get bouts of loneliness, the desire to make friends is quickly snuffed out when I proceed to think about all the effort it would take to not only go out and meet people, but how big of a pain in the ass it is to be a present friend who doesn't let connections just fade away.

Like, I know I'm capable of maintaining friendships if I care enough about someone, but in practice have neither interest nor energy enough to do it even when it's something I know I want in the abstract. None of my hobbies are really social in nature, so they haven't been a vector to meeting people I might actually be interested in knowing.

I was thinking this might just be a depression thing, but I've been like this my whole life, and the only close friends I've ever had were all a result of people intentionally becoming my friend, putting in all the initial effort until I became attached enough to care about staying friends. I do kinda feel like an asshole for this, like what kinda socialist is this much of a recluse? But I'm not really sure where I'd even start on working through this.

  • peeonyou [he/him]
    ·
    26 days ago

    never have.. i always thought something was wrong with me because once people are out of sight they're out of mind. there's one friend from high school that will ping me once or twice a year on steam, and there's a couple guys i worked with a few years back that will text a few times a year and i'll go back to that work to see them but other than that i have 0 friends and it doesn't really bother me