I have a weird phenomenon where I can't keep friends long term. That doesn't mean my friendships are all short term weeks and months, but they all feel medium term, where they burn out after a few years and I don't know why. I seem to grow very close to people very quickly (their insistence, not mine), then also burn out quite suddenly too.

This happened with my school friends. Had a really close group, we got to a levels, I had one night I got too drunk and embarrassed myself (who didn't have a folly at that age) and this just ended that friendship group. It's many years later and I attended the wedding of one of the group (very surprised I was invited), everybody keeps in touch, they all stayed over in the same place before the wedding, bar me. We got to a levels and some new, unbearable loudmouth entered the group, and they kind of just cut me off. That loudmouth was there and I did wonder how he was in any way more bearable than I am.

It also happens with work friends, had work friends who I got very close with, then lost touch with over Covid. One asked me if I wanted to live with them, I said I couldn't, asked how they were getting on more generally and they never spoke to me again. Years of socialising, pub, friendship, just gone.

People in general seem to warm to me but something over a few years makes them get a bit fed up of me and I'm not sure why.

The only group I've maintained, for now, over a decade later, are some very close university friends. But when they all go back home, go to different bits of their life, are not hanging out as that group that includes me, they have other friends.

Yes this thread was inspired by me dropping off a card to an old school friend's parents and they asked if I was going to the traditional school friend Xmas eve meal that's happened for years, which I've never been invited to.