Is being socially proactive a vicious circle

[Antimacasser]

Ok. Im in middle age and have a disparate group of friends and acquaintances from different periods of my life. As Im currently living abroad, much of our contact is texting, with frequent exhortation that "we must meet up".
I have often in the past been the one to suggest Zooms or calls or in person meetups. While I did host visitors here where I now live, we mostly in the past few years have met up in the UK where they live and I visit. What is starting to rankle is it now feels like I am doing 100% of the suggestions of dates, times and venues to meet. They do genuinely seem to respond positively to these but when Ive given it a few weeks or months in the hope they would suggest a meetup, radio silence save the birthday and Xmas texts. I dont want to lose these people from my life, but I am honestly beginning to feel like I am the one making all the organising effort. When I go there I always arrange my own accommodation amd transport yet when some (not all) come here I have provided both, and meals etc. I genuinely like these peoples company. Dont know if anyone has experienced this. Id be particularly interested if youre one of the people who only ever responds to. Rather than makes social suggestions.

How far away do you live?

I live a 14 hiur drive or 1 hiur flight away from where most of these people live

You moved 14 hours away. You are not in people's lives any more. They are working, raising families and socialising with people who live in the same postcode. It's nice to see old friends but nobody is going to make a massive proactive drive to call / go on holiday to see someone who chose to move 14 hours away. You need to make friends where you live.

My friend moved to [far away place] 25 years ago. I've been to visit once. She still complains that she is always the one having to make the effort with her UK friends. Yes. You moved. I don't particularly want to spend annual leave and £10,000 to visit a not very interesting part of a country I don't particularly like to sit in your front room.

If the new place is your forever country make new friends there, it'll be a lot easier.

I moved 22 years ago and to this day I am always the one who arranged to meet my best friend when I go back. Never really even occured to me to be offended about that. I've known her for 30 years, we have a great friendship. It literally costs nothing to me to make a bit of an effort couple of times a year. And, sure, I invite her over to stay all the time but I wouldn't dream of expecting her to do the same - she has a family with some complexity and not a lot of room. I have all the space and time in the world to host.

if you are the one who left, fair enough to make the effort

Some people are just crap at organising anything. The real question is: do you enjoy meeting them? Then it's worth it. Otherwise, forget about it.

They probably meet up without you so dont feel the need to arrange anything with you especially unless you suggest it if you know what I mean, out of sight out of mind.

You need to make local friends

Another vote for when you move it's on you to organise. Most of my home friendships have dwindled away for this reason.

To be honest I'd probably have tried harder to maintain them if I'd realised it's a natural thing, but I was the first to move away and it felt like a 'me' thing (and I'm terrible at keeping in touch). But I've seen it consistently with friends that move away, your the one out of the rhythm of birthdays, BBQs and pub nights so you need to create the space.

It’s all very well people saying: “you moved, you should be the one to come back to visit”, but are you all really suggesting that if someone moves far away you’re happy to abdicate all responsibility to call/zoom/suggest times when you could meet up with them?

People move for all sorts of reasons. I would not have a good opinion of friends who essentially told me they couldn’t be bothered to call because I’d moved further away.

Some people are poor communicators in general, but if this behaviour had changed due to distance then perhaps the best thing you could do OP, is to just have a conversation with them individually and ask whether you could put a regular date in for calls, as you’re feeling a bit sensitive that you are the only one organising anything currently. Mention that you value the friendships and don’t want to lose touch.

This probably sounds horrible but for me there's only so much time and effort that I'd invest in a person living that sort of distance away. I wouldn't ghost, would respond to messages and be open to seeing them when they visited but realistically this isn't someone I'd see as a part of my life due to the distance.