Burnt out from always being the initiator.

[meta_male]

I’m realising I’m burnt out from always being the one who has to initiate connection.

For years I was the one trying to build a circle, reach out to friends, meet women, plan things. If I stop initiating my life goes quiet. I tried pulling back to see who would step up and sat with that. Mostly, nothing changed, I was just alone. I used weed to cope, which helped me tolerate the isolation, and even seek it. Meantime I've stepped away from it and without the numbing feel like I'm back at square one, only with far less energy than before.

I’m not looking for dating advice or put-yourself-out-there type of answers, I’ve done that and still do, but I have less and less capacity to carry all the social effort myself. If anyone here has navigated something similar, especially after long periods of isolation, I’d really appreciate your perspective.

[something_else]

I've been in this place before as well, where being sociable feels like work. If you find the right setup you can make it feel natural and fun instead.

The two key elements to building a vibrant social life that isn't draining are:

• Living in close proximity to your social group
• Meeting 1/2 very sociable people who naturally initiate group activity and bring the group together

The two times I've felt most naturally sociable without it feeling like work were when I was:

• solo backpacking
• staying in a built-to-rent apartment that organises social events and has a lot of common areas and public space.

When backpacking solo you tend to meet a lot of people and end up travelling together, you're often staying in hostels and spending a lot of time together without needing to actively initiate. This is really good for forming deeper connections.

Staying in a built-to-rent apartment you end up essentially living in the same building as your friends and this makes social stuff very easy and natural. They also organise a lot of social events which make it easy to meet people and result in you spending a lot of time with the same people.

In both cases there were one or two people in the group who would often be the ones initiating stuff because it comes naturally to them and for whatever reason it doesn't drain them.