We’re both in our 30s.

There is a competitive online game I play and have played on and off for a few years. For a long time, nobody else I knew played this game so I would just play by myself or with people I met in lobbies. I would occasionally talk about the game with my friends, but not super frequently as I knew nobody else was interested.

A couple weeks ago my friend Marco mentioned he’d be playing this same game with his friends Garret and Anthony. When I asked like how long he’d been playing and about his play style, he said he’d been playing for a couple weeks just casually with his other friends. I was stoked to play together sometime and said as much. We planned a day and played together last week.

The other day I’m online and I see Marco is online, and I mention that I had installed the game on PC so we could play ranked together (I had been on console, and when we tried we were unable to do cross-platform). He says we’ll have to play anther time because he has gaming planned with a Garret and Anthony. I thought maybe they had planned to play a different game and he was about to log off, but then I see he’s still there all night just playing unranked matches.

This hurt my feelings! Why wouldn’t he invite me to play with the group? I’m not friends with Marco and Anthony, but we’ve met before a few times and got along fine. I was really disappointed because I was looking forward to having another friend who plays this game.

I don’t know whether or not to bring it up. If he doesn’t want me as part of this gaming group, I don’t want to push the issue, but Marco and I have been friends for over ten years. He has always had a thing about not introducing his friends to his other friends due to anxiety, and usually I don’t really care but this is such an easy situation to just ask sometime to join the group. It’s not like there are major skill differences, when we played together things were going fine. And as far as I know there is no beef or tension between me and his other friends.

We’ve been friends for years, were roommates before for short periods of time, have gone on trips together. It just feels really bad, but bringing it up would feel like pathetic almost. Isn’t it normal to invite friends to join in when you know people have mutual interests? Especially something that takes no real effort like online gaming?

I’ve seen him playing a few other times since then too. I feel weird asking him to play because it seems like he doesn’t really want to, and that maybe it’s something I accidentally pressured him into. He didn’t bring up the game on his own, I had asked him about his plans and he brought it up. But it feels bad to think that he wouldn’t want to, as well.

Edit: for clarity, I am NOT good at this game. I play for a few months each year and then put it down. When we played together, he was slightly better than me.

  • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Your energy level seems to be super high compared to his.

    I don’t have much to base what I’m saying, but your mention of his avoiding anxiety vs your very large and intense description of what’s going on is not a match. I’m going to guess you do most of the talking when hanging with him. That’s ok as long as he is comfortable. Because if he’s not, you need to go out of your way to let him go out of his way to tell you so.

    • whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      I wouldn’t say that’s true. He’s very eloquent and speaks at length on a lot of topics, and brings up lots of talking points, questions etc. He would be able to write a similarly wordy description of a social situation if prompted to do so, he often leaves long introspective messages in group chats.

      • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        That’s totally ok if he’s engaged in chat with someone similar. But not ok if he’s engaged with someone who has anxiety expressing their thoughts even with people they trust.

        Not everyone feels welcome speaking or hearing at length. Extroverts are in general energized by these interactions, while introverts can feel drained. And I think this is at the heart of the issue.