The implication of OP's post is that they are unable to make new friends. Somethingsomethingcommondenominator....

If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is “smothering” and “risk pushing” you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.

Where does OP say that this is what they are doing? The assumption I would get from the meme is that they are trying to have long form conversations over text, which can be exhausting for other people - especially if you just met.

The whole phrasing of the meme puts off huge neediness vibes, which is kind of the joke. *Of course" OP has a hard time making friends, because they are so lonely. Catch 22, remember, was a comedy.

On the contrary, as a dude with many friends, none of us put in "tons of effort". Each of my friendships are casual and relaxed, we "see each other when we see each other", and that works well for all of us. We have lots of mutual respect, and an intent to have a friendship, but friendship just means different things to different people.

Some people, like it seems maybe yourself and OP, have the energy of a drowning person who will take any person who tries to help them down with them. And also a sense of... justice?... that's highly attuned to amplify small slights. I've seen it before in some second hand reports of like "I sent him a photo that I really liked and he didn't respond within 24 hours, and when he did it was just with a 😛. Can you imagine the gall!", when actually there's no indignity, he just doesn't look at his phone much... or he was busy. But it's a problem when the sender isn't busy, and is in fact just sitting there fuming for 24h because they have way more energy invested into this.

I want to check in real quick here, none of my tone here is intended to be angry or even mocking. I've got a lot of privilege for sure, and it helps combat this. A person suffering with food scarcity is going to react differently to a backyard BBQ than a person without food scarcity, and I'm willing to bet a person suffering from social scarcity would do the same.

My only purpose for writing this is because I've met people who feel "desperate", and people who have a sense of "principles of friendship" that are iron clad, but also not mutual and are inflexible and cause them to push everyone away for not respecting them, meanwhile all the people they pushed away seem to get by just fine. And often it's easiest to just let these people go because they're, perhaps through no fault of their own, toxic to non-manic casual friends and friend groups. And I figured I'd give a more "average" perspective of what the other side of this might actually look or feel like.

And I already feel like I'm going to regret it 😛

Also, since we talked about expressing intent upfront, let me say that I'm going to post this and then get out of bed, and I probably won't look at Lemmy again the rest of the day. I have some errands to run and I'm going to a BBQ with some friends later, and I have notifications turned off because I don't want Lemmy stuff being a force of push in my life, only pull, so I probably won't see any replies until maybe tonight when I go to bed, maybe tomorrow morning if I do something else tonight? So I can't guarantee I'll want to respond to any replies, but if I haven't replied in 24h, that isn't actually emotionally meaningful. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just doing other stuff and literally not thinking about you. 😉

If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is "smothering" and "risk pushing" you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.

???

What?

Where in OP's post was this mentioned?

Are you okay?

It's not a tightrope walk, a friendship is built on mutual respect. Feeling left out and lonely because there is no reciprocation whatsoever is normal. Calling this OP's fault is extremely toxic, holy shit. If it's a tightrope walk, you didn't wanna be friends from the very beginning and are bad at communicating your intent.

You still have to maintain a middle ground, and blaming the other for a lack of interest like OP's meme seems to imply, is not the correct way of doing things either. That is also extremely toxic, and it's the kind of behavior I mainly see people who tend to smother or cling to others engage in. Being smothering or clingy is not even remotely healthy and will absolutely drive people away.

Actually, the only way I've been able to make sense of what happened is thinking that he might have been interested in me, correctly sensed I'd never be, and didn't want to be hurt.

No amount of money, friends and other things that can be observed will make you a winner or loser. Being a content, happy and confident person makes you not a loser.

You'll get there. Just take it slow and focus on helping yourself <3

You meet these friends in real life?

What are your interests?

Go to any gaming store, and they'll have 5 weekly DnD sessions. Join one.

I'm having my daughter read that now. I hate "self-help" books, but that one is essential.