This is very true and I see it even in myself. I used to have several friends where I live and they subsequently all moved away. Now I have no real friends here and the work required to get more seems to require a huge activation energy to get over. Sure I could go out and have random conversations with people or join clubs, but very few of those are going to result in anything interesting; of those, a few may result in an acquaintance; of those, a few may progress to a friendship; of those, a few may progress to a meaningful friendship. So I could bang my head against the wall generating unhappiness and frustration for years with no guarantee of success at any point, or I could just chill in my room, smoke some weed, and read hacker news / watch Netflix / play games and be guaranteed some base level of immediate happiness. That's a very hard feedback loop to exit once you get started.
I'm willing to put in a lot of work and have had great success at things where there is a clear goal and highly probable success if I put in the work: weight loss, fitness, studying, career changes, financial management, running a business etc. Relationships are so irritating to me because acquisition is a probabilistic, even random process which seems to have a very low success rate. I'm not fundamentally sold on the idea that it's worth the effort.
Are you in a rural area? I've noticed that myself here. Granted, I left for university, which destroyed a lot of the connections I did have, but even with the ones still here, the different life experience has made it where it's odd to hang out with them.
Thankfully some of my friends did move back after going to school, so there are a few people here that I can hang out with, though I do feel like I hound them to do stuff/hang out at times. But, I also moved a half-hour away to a town where there's stuff to do, and I just have to actually take up a new hobby to meet interesting people.
Though that still doesn't change the fact that it's difficult to make long-term, deep friendships from things like that.
Really, I just say that I understand completely where you're coming from, and completely agree.
Also, I just kinda realized that this is also similar to the plot of the movie I Love You, Man, where Rudd's character realizes he doesn't have any deep male friends.
Have/had a similar issue. Many of the good friends I made in this city over the past years have moved, specifically to the more popular ones in Canada. Trying to rebuild that circle hasn’t worked out. I either run into acquisition problems like you or the relationships that do turn into something more end up ending due to them leaving the city as well.
At this point I’ve resigned to believing that the types of people I attract don’t want to stay here, and maybe I should just follow the herd.
I'm willing to put in a lot of work and have had great success at things where there is a clear goal and highly probable success if I put in the work: weight loss, fitness, studying, career changes, financial management, running a business etc. Relationships are so irritating to me because acquisition is a probabilistic, even random process which seems to have a very low success rate. I'm not fundamentally sold on the idea that it's worth the effort.