Board 8 > So I let friendships spread thin and I'm approaching depression land...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Going to preface this by saying I'm ok, no one should seriously worry or anything like that. Pre-emptive thank you to anyone willing to listen to my ramblings.

And you know what is worse than creeping depression? Opening up a bit in a GFAQs rant and then mislcicking and losing the entire thing. Why I usually type in notepad first but oh well, retyping half of this.

Anyway, way way back I used to do way too many things on the internet at once, competitive Pokemon, RTS, MOBA's, MMOs, some mafia and a whole bunch of way too many things. Those were high school/college days and I definitely don't have that kind of time anymore. But important part of that synopsis is I made a bunch of friends along the way hurray.

And I know some people think this is lame, but I've kind of always valued my e-friendships as much or more than those in-person. Just easier to find people with things in common with a much larger pool of people. Hell I had somehow come across a lot of really close friends in high school but my best friend at the time was still someone that was actually a b8er.

So friendships, good. Other important background portion, I had a lot of different groups I was comfortable hanging around. Lots of people to talk to. Hell too many, mentally I was always concerned I was spread thin and juggling too many things. Maybe I was, but I was always reasonably happy and that was good enough for me and I'd say it lasted awhile. Friends in a few of those places, some of those friends I'd join in other ventures, fun times for all etc.

But this is where my problem is, and as I know I have people here on b8 that know I think of them as friends, I'm going to say that I know this is very much a me problem. I am not a particularly socially confident person, I'm very much an introvert. While I always have had lots of people to hang out with or asking me to hang out and do things, it would be very rare that I am the initiator in conversation or anything. It is always people asking me or me jumping into conversation I felt comfortable jumping into. I always worry that people think I don't value them or enjoy their company because on the outside I very much know that I never appear to seek it out.

This gets closer to today, where the groups I used to hang with have kind of, well dwindled. As I've gotten older my circles(Both in-person and online) have gotten smaller. I know this is normal. But the e-side of things, I'm...particularly not used to this. And in more recent years, I feel like maybe I let them shrink too small.

Through the years, when I'd come home from wherever and have nothing better to do but hop online(At a reasonable hour or sometimes as a night owl), I always had somewhere to hop on with reliable group of close friends I could just talk to. That had been getting smaller, when my WoW guild broke up, it got even smaller but I still had people that'd talk to me.

To even more recent times, the last group I was really close to online that I hung out with regularly, I almost feel like an outsider. We still do things together at designated times, have a dnd night, fun times etc. When these times are going, feel great. But some of them used to hang out beyond that, quite a lot, I'd generally be around and included, more fun times. But now when those times are up, they splinter off into their smaller friend groups, and I'm not a part of any of them. It has left me feeling forgotten/unwanted/abandoned. I've had internal debates about whether everyone kind of secretly hates me. I think I know they don't, I don't even think intent is even a little malicious. But I had grown used to always having close friends that were always around to bounce stuff off of and were eager to have me around and I just...dont know what to think anymore.

I don't want to type too long, but the short version of what I've been constantly feeling is that I've left myself with a bunch of people that don't mind my company, maybe even enjoy actually having me around. But I've been stuck with this nagging feeling that enjoying having me around is different from actually wanting me to be around. That if I did the irrational thing and just vanished(No don't get morbid here, I dont mean it in that way I just dont have better phrasing) that people would hardly care.

The depression talk starts a whole rabbit hole of bad things. Did I hang with people that never really liked me much anyway. If I werent such an anti-social dummy would I have been happier. Did I do something stupid and actually make people hate me. Am I just too fucking boring(I am definitely pretty generic). Way deeper than this but I've managed to tire myself out. Thanks for always being here to listen as always b8.

I think about this sometimes. Then I go 'If they wanted to hang with me they would ask I guess' and go back to whatever it is I am doing that particular day. I know I have thought about you specifically a lot when I think this tbh. We should do some dumb shit sometime like arena in WoW or something.

also before typing this I banged the upper part of my cheek bone into a shelf while doing some housecleaning and completely destroyed my night.

I literally talk to no one in real life basically anymore or go anywhere anymore. It sucks. = /

Almost every single friendship and relationship I have been in has been one-sided. It's weird the people I have surrounded myself around in life.

Corrik7 posted...

Almost every single friendship and relationship I have been in has been one-sided. It's weird the people I have surrounded myself around in life.

As I've grown older and more self aware i am worried that everyone I've been friends with sees it as one sided the other way because I'm too timid to make it seem otherwise.

You definitely aren't alone on this Red. I feel almost exactly the same way and think about this constantly every day.

I mean hell, I have a discord channel specifically for close RL friends and close online friends and it gets posts in it once every two months these days to the point that I don't even really have any RL friends any more. They've all gone off and are doing their own things. It's incredibly depressing.

I'm part of scarlet's DC DnDlike discord and things happen there often but I absolutely feel like an outsider a lot of the time, though I think the situation is slightly different than yours there.

Often I would ask people to do things, or try and get people into something and it seems every time I try, it fails. Maybe my interests are too specific, or maybe everyone just secretly hates me. So slowly over time I just stop asking people, I stop trying to initiate the "fun times". And now I just often sit on my PC or laptop in my free time and just watch Youtube or Twitch alone. The fun times barely happen outside of the DnD stuff.

Maybe part of it is due to the health problems I've been having over the last year, making it difficult for me to do anything enjoyable for too long. But I always sink back to a space where I'm thinking that it's all my fault and I'm just a huge screw up.

For what it's worth though, I always appreciate your company Red and we've had lots of the fun times together.

don't have a ton to add, just that i am very familiar with the feeling of being on the outskirts of friendships, someone who's convenient rather than desired.

that said i've also felt like i've been the only one to reach out in relationships and have often felt like i was only valued as a peripheral piece because of that. if you value your friendships then you should try for reciprocity - or at least try to let the people who reach out to you know that they're valued

not exactly deep advice or anything, but this post did hit home for me in some ways

I'm just going to drop this here. I don't really have any advice but they say misery loves company so maybe it will help

I moved to Japan in 2018. I had a lot of friends in America and have drifted apart from most of them. While I'm extroverted, I am similar to you in that I just waited for people to invite me to stuff. While I had friends here when I moved, most of them lived in different parts of the country. I also moved a lot of work (I'm using past tense because I'm hoping not to do this again, but it could happen), so every time I finally started to make friends I could hang out with I moved away and had to start over. Luckily there is no language barrier for me to worry about, but I did grow up in the US obviously so there are culture differences that can make it hard to get close to people. The second most recent time I moved was in late 2019, and by the time I had settled in the pandemic had started. You can imagine how hard it was to make friends then.

Not only that, the time zone difference makes it difficult to keep up with friends back home and online friends. I know you're aware of the trouble I have playing mafia these days, but also finding time to game with friends is tough. Haven't seen any of my family in over two years for obvious reasons, nor have I been able to travel to see my friends in other parts of the country much.

There are definitely a lot of lonely times, and the pandemic made it so much worse. Some days are worse than others (Christmas time has been rough the last two years). I wouldn't say I'm depressed but I do feel really down sometimes.

Yeah, this is something I've been working on recently. Honestly I've found that just reaching out to some people you haven't talked to in awhile helps a ton. I just think it's something a lot of people go through and become afraid to reach out to each other.

I definitely feel like I am in a similar boat. Barely talk to anyone online and the only couple of people in real life that I talk to is still through text and Discord. Even if those interactions aren't everyday, I still appreciate any time they spend with me but the thoughts of being too boring definitely resonate with me. Even when interacting with friends, I'll barely say anything sometimes or just react to what others are saying but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying the time spent. I just find initiating conversation or expressing opinions very difficult to do. There's always the part of me thinks that I'm being a bother or that I'll rub someone the wrong way.

Zigzagoon posted...

I'm part of scarlet's DC DnDlike discord and things happen there often but I absolutely feel like an outsider a lot of the time, though I think the situation is slightly different than yours there.

I'm definitely an outsider since I'm not part of the actual group!

I have a different problem than everyone else here - I ask people to hang out but they either ignore me, say they're busy, or agree to meet up and then flake out, sometimes without even telling me. It's been a long time since I've hung out with someone just for the sake of hanging out.

You do acknowledge this, but this is just completely normal as time goes on. This is why family/coupling/having children is stressed so much culturally because there comes a point where people just don't have friends anymore cause of kids/work. It sucks.

I've been thinking about this myself lately. I can count how many friends I have left on one hand, and I always have to initiate conversation. When I do, I rarely hear back from them, and replies are getting fewer and further between. I haven't seen any of them in person for over a year, and by now, I doubt I ever will again. I have no way of making any new friends either. Besides, it's not worth it since I have nothing of interest to say or do anyway. If I did, my friends would still want to talk to me.

JONALEON1 posted...

I just find initiating conversation or expressing opinions very difficult to do. There's always the part of me thinks that I'm being a bother or that I'll rub someone the wrong way.

Ugh I got a lot of this going on right now. I'm in a constant worry that even if I talk to people and they give me a positive response that on the inside I'm actually just a bother and they'd rather I stfu and keep to myself.

SeabassDebeste posted...

don't have a ton to add, just that i am very familiar with the feeling of being on the outskirts of friendships, someone who's convenient rather than desired.

that said i've also felt like i've been the only one to reach out in relationships and have often felt like i was only valued as a peripheral piece because of that. if you value your friendships then you should try for reciprocity - or at least try to let the people who reach out to you know that they're valued

not exactly deep advice or anything, but this post did hit home for me in some ways

Yeah, my friendships all ended basically the moment I stopped the one way in roads. Unless someone needs something.

Hell some people don't even have the decency of responding anymore and leaving me hanging a lot and when I am like hey I don't know whats going on because you said maybe and haven't told me for sure, they get shitty and are like if someone doesn't respond it obviously means no. And, I am just like... coulda just said no. The weird thing is, I know almost no one in my life who isn't that way. Maybe barring one person or so.

Zigzagoon posted...

I mean hell, I have a discord channel specifically for close RL friends and close online friends and it gets posts in it once every two months these days to the point that I don't even really have any RL friends any more. They've all gone off and are doing their own things. It's incredibly depressing.

Damn I'm sorry. There have been times in convos there I've wanted to say things and then think "no i dont want to bug anyone i'll stay quiet".

red13n posted...

I'm in a constant worry that even if I talk to people and they give me a positive response that on the inside I'm actually just a bother and they'd rather I stfu and keep to myself.

I have fallen into this mental trap many a times throughout my life. To the point where I practically stopped talking. I could go days without uttering a word out loud.

It's important to remember that people, everyone, says stupid shit at some point. Think of a time when a friend said something that you didn't agree with or you just thought was outright dumb. Did it lessen that person's value in your eyes? Probably not, chances are you brushed it off and continued thinking of them as a friend.

Therefore, we shouldn't be afraid to speak up about something if we feel like our input might be even the slightest bit useful. It's definitely a tough thing to gauge and why I resorted to lurking since it never felt like I had anything useful to say. Even now I'm skeptical about whether I should post this message... but I gotta right

Hopefully it isn't completely useless

Not useless, no worries.

I've been struggling to get over the constant feeling like I've done something to shove people away and if I say something dumb I'm going to make it worse so I stay even quieter and just get stuck in my own head even further.

Had very close to this exact crisis in 2019. Thought my friends didn't care about me, had only one real family member whose health was rapidly declining and was refusing to get any treatment. I'm not going to presume that we're exactly the same, so just take what I'm saying with the appropriate amount of salt with that in mind, but I do think my experiences could be relevant as someone who has lived with people suffering depression my whole life and have teetered on the verge of it myself a few times.

What I had to do to start improving my life was just change how I was living. I hung out with different people, did different things-- just put myself out there, moved to a nearby town, and flipped everything upside down. Now I'm very happy with everything, met my near 3 year girlfriend around that time, and I'm pretty sure if I hadn't made such a drastic change with Covid sapping energy from the world + my mom dying I wouldn't be posting here right now.

Speaking of my mom, in addition to being totally crushed by losing my only real family member, I was left with a lot of debt when she passed and those same friends who I thought didn't care about me somehow figured out about the debt (I didnt mention it but its a small town-- pretty sure someone at the bank who was friends with a friend was loose lipped about it) and were invaluable emotional AND financial support during this time. When you need them, your friends WILL help you.

Anyway regardless I don't think those feelings are just gonna go away on their own. You need to change something in your life. It might be as simple as getting psychiatric help, or you might need to do something else more drastic, but changing things is the key.

tl;dr Your friends do care about you but it's almost irrelevant. Your perception is that they don't so you need to change something you're doing to start the road to improving your life because things don't ever get better by themself. I know we're not exactly chummy chummy, but hopefully something in this rambling helped.

Lopen posted...

tl;dr Your friends do care about you but it's almost irrelevant. Your perception is that they don't so you need to change something you're doing to start the road to improving your life because things don't ever get better by themself. I know we're not exactly chummy chummy, but hopefully something in this rambling helped.

You aren't wrong. I know maybe some people remember, but my cat got hurt real bad about a month ago, my friends were very much there for me. It was the most anyone had been for awhile and despite being almost traumatized for a few days it had actually pulled me out of the hole I'd been digging into for a few months. But then my pets got better and everything kind of went back and now I'm trying to process if I feel even worse.

And then I realize that I feel down and I worry that I come off that I feel noticeably down and if that just turns people away from wanting me around even more.

Just stuck feeling like everything leads to worse places and it sucks.

I would-- and this is again just what worked for me-- advise that you try and actively find new friends or just be a pest and really try hard to rekindle that waning friendship with some of your friends who have less social responsibilities (ie have free time) right now. Can't hurt.

Not online though. Go to some social stuff, friends will come. Even something as simple as a local comic book shop or something. Basically anything outside of your comfort zone which is providing precious little comfort right now.

i appreciate you sharing this

the whole process gets easier if you can figure out exactly what you're looking for in friendship, or what you need in your social life. after that, it's straightforward to pinpoint the actions you can take to start feeling better

it's a more difficult challenge than it sounds, especially if you're stuck in a depressive "i feel bad, i'm not sure exactly why, and just want to feel better ASAP" mood

for me, i'm usually stressing out because i'm lacking in one of three categories

1) i want a community
2) i want a regular connection with someone who will understand what i'm thinking/going through via regular contact
3) i want to have more fun

each of those those requires slightly different strategies

if i catch myself feeling generically needy, i try to pin down which of those three i'm most looking for

banananor posted...

1) i want a community
2) i want a regular connection with someone who will understand what i'm thinking/going through via regular contact
3) i want to have more fun

This is probably fair. I have plenty of 3, having stuff to do to kill time isn't a problem. But 1 has dwindled and 2 has become almost nonexistent.

I would probably redefine 1 and 2 more into large bubbles and smaller bubbles, but same thing.

Only thing I would add is to make sure you are going out and doing things. Meetups group/ club / dating / whatever but make sure you are leaving your house regularly and interacting with people

masterplum posted...

Only thing I would add is to make sure you are going out and doing things. Meetups group/ club / dating / whatever but make sure you are leaving your house regularly and interacting with people

At worst I have a job I like that forces me out and forces social interaction. Talk to a lot of people that at this point I've known for a long time. So I can't go complete hermit even if the urge was there.

banananor posted...

the whole process gets easier if you can figure out exactly what you're looking for in friendship, or what you need in your social life. after that, it's straightforward to pinpoint the actions you can take to start feeling better

Anyway, this is where I have problems. Mainly...I feel old. The things I used to be able to do to find people arent there anymore, or if they are, they are things I don't feel like doing anymore.

Hell I tried to return to WoW to see if talking to that crowd, many of which were people I knew prior, but it just...didnt fill the void. It was something I had been happy to mostly put behind me. I didn't have the drive. Worse is I started to feel uncomfortable talking to people about how I was feeling. It wasn't a game, crowd, or environment I wanted to return to. I tried to fill a void with old habits and it was a mistake.

hell even if I wanted to, a lot of games these days have actively locked out socialization as people proved they couldn't handle them.

I don't have a great sense of where to go where I can feel like anything but just a bystander stuck in a crowd. Worse is that isn't even a feeling I usually dislike. Hell I'm a frequent visitor to theme parks and about half those visits are on my own. I used to like the feeling of being able to just kind of have fun lost in a crowd. But now I've got too much of the feeling and its overwhelming(My solo theme park ventures these past months have not been sapped of their enjoyment, I'll be happy to say).

red13n posted...

I have plenty of 3, having stuff to do to kill time isn't a problem. But 1 has dwindled and 2 has become almost nonexistent.

yeah, so you're mostly looking for solid individual friendships and are feeling antsy going through your old routines because of it. it's your body's natural way of reminding you to change how you socialize

that's pretty normal- i think we've all been there. i know married couples who feel that way and blame each other for it. in my opinion it's just part of the human condition- just like getting tired, hungry or thirsty

i recommend re-evaluating how you perceive your coworkers and various real-life acquaintances. they might be better friend material than you initially thought. see if you can waste some time with them without real objectives or neediness. do whatever they seem to like, assuming there's any venn diagram overlap whatsoever. i started fostering more friendships when i slowed down and listened more

our brains get tickled by new experiences. i do recommend trying to just waste some time with people and doing some new things outside the house, even if they seem like a waste of time or money

observe what puts you into your patterns. do you find yourself getting bored or anxious hanging out with people, like you want to go home and do something else? what is that thing, and is it actually important? armed with that thought, it makes "wasting" time with people not feel so wasteful

online is all right. i buoyed my psyche in 2021 with a discord group (friends of a friend) and that was only ok. i didn't think i was missing anything, but i didn't start feeling better until i reached out to a real life acquaintance. they liked attending dj performances, and even though i normally preferred listening to music by myself at home i decided to start going with them. it opened up my social life and i mysteriously started feeling better, realizing what other actions could make me feel better, and so on

i've heard our personalities are molded a combination of the top 10 people we spend time with- try and find some that are both kind and interesting

Had a better day today, was good.

Then some stuff happened I cant talk about here and I was momentarily broken.

Pulled myself back up and think I am okay. But I also don't know if I am as okay as I think I am.

Yeah nope broken.

Can always talk to me if you need someone, bud. Hope all is well.

just keep doin stuff. u talk to some coworkers?

and i disagree that "real adulthood" means not having the kind of friendships that you want. that seems like a cope for people who are justifying letting themselves go. i party (and when i say party that includes just hanging out and doing normal things) with people in their 20s and i party with people in their 60s :)

it's just that people are individuals, and their preferences change- it's irrational to demand everything you need in your life from the same set

Had brief talk with friends. Repaired a bit of my brain that got broken yesterday.

They helped. Conversation reminded me that in some ways they know me better than I know myself. Very reassuring.

Dont want to say everything is better, depression sucks and I'm not anywhere out of the hole I've dug. But it is nice to enjoy a day.

The self-loathing and worry has returned again. I enjoyed the temporary reprieve.

DoomTheGyarados posted...

I think about this sometimes. Then I go 'If they wanted to hang with me they would ask I guess' and go back to whatever it is I am doing that particular day. I know I have thought about you specifically a lot when I think this tbh. We should do some dumb shit sometime like arena in WoW or something.

Okay, apologies because I need to vent and get this out.

We were literally best friends since forever, then the WoW guild broke. I dont know if you remember that day, but it was kind of seared into my brain.

None of you gave me a heads up. I knew some of you were frustrated, but it was a frustrating point of the tier. It sucked, but it was normal as far as I knew. Then you all spring it on me that your done. It was a bad time, right on the edge of baseball season. I was good friends with at least a few of you. No one gave me a heads up. Not a one. Then everyone heard me break down and beg and plead and groan and then finally breakdown in tears worrying about how everything blew up around me.

I wasn't good that day. I dont think its anything but common knowledge i spent the rest of the night curled up in bed in tears hiding from everything.

Everyone knew it was a bad time for me. I was worried sick for days about the potential giant void that had been created at the time of year I'm the busiest and least able to fix anything. And no one checked in on me after. Not a peep. You were the person i thought of as my best friend and you didn't even give a whisper over to when I'd left crying my eyes out.

It kind of hurt. Granted it wasn't as bad as i thought. I made good use of my time. But for s few days at least I was pretty much sitting in constant terror.

And I've told you this before, often the public face you give towards me makes me feel like shit here on b8(going to stress this is 100% never in mafia). You often make me out to be this shitty human being and not someone i thought of as my best friend since I was 13.

So yeah, sorry. I dont like bringing it up, and the blame is not on you i just suck. But you are definitely part of the reason I've grown particularly paranoid about what people actually think of me.

That one was just a sting I haven't been able to get rid of .

Dont take it too bad, I've talked to you since obviously, you have a huge chunk of my WoW gold that maybe I'll never need. There isn't anything dire here.

I love you red, sorry I made you feel that way publicly. I am sometimes very clumsy emotionally. The rest I'll save for DM.

I feel like I can relate some to what you're talking about. I feel a lot of people who have friend circles that exist outside of the internet don't really understand quite as well what a group of online friends can mean to someone. I grew up in a very, very small town in a geographic area that would largely contain people I'm not going to connect with very well. Obviously there were some, but the majority of my friends for most of my life have always been online. Needless to say, the past year and some months of my life have been pretty lonely. I've tried putting my time and efforts into other activities, and I've made a handful of friends by doing that along the way, but reminiscing of old times with people I met on this board years ago always makes me long for those days.

Granted, your situation was just watching groups dwindle whereas with me I took an active role in stepping away on purpose. While we did share one such group that shrank, I know you and I personally had only passing interactions. That being said I always considered you a reassuring constant in those days I remember most fondly, specifically days where gauntlets were still played and we had only just started the list projects. That was probably my favorite overall time on the internet; those days where a group of people played some games and also ranked some films together. Even if our interests may not have aligned know I valued your participation and presence during all those things.

It's a sad situation. I can relate to the WoW stuff since the guild I was once in is all gone but one person that I still play with on a casual level now. I don't really have any words of wisdom or advice; I wish I did, but if I did I wouldn't be in the spot I am in now in terms of my friendships. I guess mostly I just wanted to share and say I empathize.

v_charon posted...

I grew up in a very, very small town in a geographic area that would largely contain people I'm not going to connect with very well

I wish this were always an answer. In person most people know me as a dude that really likes baseball and sports. Which isn't wrong.

But i think you know enough about my tastes to know they dont exactly mesh with that crowd.

Also thanks for mentioning that I actually mattered. I'm in a constant worry that even though I was somewhere that i could as well have been invisible.

Side note somewhat completely unrelated to this topic I'm a fucking moron carry on.

(I mean this in a lighthearted way)

Anyway, turns out board 8 isn't quite the private ranting ground I take it for sometimes(This isn't necessarily a bad thing).

The reassurances have been, reassuring.

Spiraling down for so long still makes attempting to feel good complicated. Namely shoving all the bad feelings and memories that you start digging up when dragging yourself down back into the background instead of at the forefront of my mind.

Progress though.

I have pushed back the depression a bit but the self confidence has really had its teeth kicked in.

UltimaterializerX posted...

This will sound lame, but all the usual health advice (gym, eating right, etc) helps a ton with that in my experience. Is that a "you" thing or no?

I'm usually pretty good at these things. Mainly cause my dog very much demands daily exercise.

Been feeling mostly better.

But dealing with lingering resentment of people and I don't know how to feel/deal with it. Not out of the cycle of feeling like I'm just a shitty person and stuck with a whole bunch of long lasting regrets/resentment to blame it on.

idk if this is reassuring but this topic really struck a chord for me and seeing someone else going through a similar thing with being spread too thin as an introvert who just gets asked to do things has made me feel a little better, so thanks red

Chaeix posted...

idk if this is reassuring but this topic really struck a chord for me and seeing someone else going through a similar thing with being spread too thin as an introvert who just gets asked to do things has made me feel a little better, so thanks red

I don't know if its reassuring, but it not being unique is at least comforting in an odd way.

Anyway it just sucks a bit. I'm not sure anyone wants to be an introvert. Not that you don't enjoy it sometimes, there are plenty of times I'm perfectly comfortable on my own, the quiet is comforting, no desire to ever be a loudmouth or anything. But then theres times you have something to say or want to ask people things and instead you just resort to moping in silence because that is what feels like comfort. But that same comfort also just bites you in the ass and makes you feel shitty.

There's a couple major shifts I've noticed as we get older. It's not a 30s thing necessarily, but that's the tipping point on average. Covid definitely accelerated it.

Friends become way harder to hang out with because they are both more content being alone/routine AND it's harder to plan a hangout or be spontaneous.

There's a fallacy that it's one sided if you are always putting in a ton of effort and initiating the hang out. That a two-sided relationship is super easy to hang out. That's just totally wrong. Both sides need to do a lot to successfully hang out nowadays, and many just can't initiate because they know how much effort it is. Those friends are still really valuable to maintain because they do appreciate when you initiate and will pay it back somehow.

(The problem is when some friends clearly initiate and hang with others, but reject you. Then they just are choosing not to hang out with you. But that's honestly rare.)

HOWEVER sometimes you do find a friend who is great at initiating and it's easy to hang out with them spontaneously. They invite you to stuff all the time, maybe even more than you invite them. These friends are pure gold and need to be treasured as long as possible. They often attract similar people, so you'll have a group you can hang with. No one is guaranteed to have a group like this - it's random. I used to have several groups like this, but now there's only 1.

I remember hanging out with people in their 30s when I was in my 20s, and wondering why they were doing that, and why they were so active in our group. It's because we were their 1 remaining spontaneous group. Eventually they also fell into the contented loner-dom.