Social Life Issues

My social life is sort of a vicious cycle: At its simplest, it's a battle between wanting attention and being afraid of it.

When I'm lonely, I often strive to find people with which I can surround myself to form a sort of 'safety net' when I feel like communicating or sharing things, be them things I find or things I create. I push myself into social situations where good times are had, but after which I feel terrible for having done so.

I start interacting with these friends I've found regularly and we build up a shared history, as well as knowledge about each other. We start to care about each other more, and try to help each other through the bad times. However as I see them being pained by any bad moments I have, I start feeling worse because I don't want to see them sad. It becomes a positive feedback loop which can spiral out of control.

Eventually, things start getting out of hand and I feel like everything I've built up is just going to make me worse. I no longer can withhold information which I don't want them to know since they know me so well. At this point, I start creating a subconscious defensive strategy where I try to push them away, usually by trying to use logic to try to somehow 'convince' them that I am only detrimental to their happiness. This often fails, since we're pretty close at this point, and when it keeps failing, I escape from the entire social scene.

A while after escaping, I start to feel lonely again, which starts the cycle anew.

I think that's part of why I don't want to date: After my last relationship ended based on this pattern, I didn't want to curse anyone else with having to deal with it.