Friends, family and keeping in touch

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Throughout my life, with many people, I've often gotten the feeling that I'm the one doing all the work to maintain contact in the relationship (girls, friends, family, etc)
Eg it's me calling, me emailing, me suggesting we go out, and so on. Not them so much.

People seem to enjoy my company (as far as I can tell?) are in no hurry to leave, maintain the conversation, say they like me, and so on.
When I'm with people, it all feels great, equal, etc. A number of people have said they admire me and look up to me. I feel like I'm popular enough, I'm comfortable and entertaining (as far as I know) - I've no complaints at all when I'm with people, and I can't detect any attempts to avoid me. I feel I'm treated with respect, my company enjoyed and so on. I accept I may be totally off base with this stuff, but that's how it feels.

So yeah... If I suggest we go out / do something / etc ... they'll usually be up for it, and it's all good. However... in terms of keeeping in touch... it always seems to be me doing it. My family profess to love me to bits, but make almost no effort to keep in touch.

I can never figure out whether I am being taken for granted, whether people just don't like me enough to make the effort, or whether people are just too terrified to contact another human being and make some small amount of effort. I always assume it's the taken-for-granted thing, but I have no idea how to stop this, and it's really bugging me at the moment.

It takes me a long time to notice this is happening... and when I notice that most people in my life are doing this, I assume I'm being paranoid and that really they'd love to keep in touch, but they don't have space to, because I'm doing such an awesome job of keeping in touch with them. So I give them space to do so, and generally I don't hear from them again, which rather proves my point that I was right, I am doing all the work, and they are indeed doing nothing.

What really hacks me off is when I meet up with so-called friends who have gone out and not bothered to invite me.

Anyone else have this? Anyone have any tips on how to fix this? Anyone know what's going on?

The same thing always happens to me. I think part of it is that many people are used to me being the person putting the effort in and I suspect that many just have more/more interesting people than my self to talk to. However, I know for sure that sometimes that is not the case, the worst such moment was when a friend, who doesn't have a whole lot of friends (still more than me though), was coming up with a list of people to invite to an event while talking to me (actually talking with me about who to invite) and yet didn't even think to include me. When that type of thing happens, I'm just completely lost to whats going on.

I'm really interested to see what people say here. I've been in this spot, too. And found it was all too easy to fall into a world where no one hangs out with you. If I didn't force myself to make contact and suggest things to do...I lost my friends. So...now I don't really have any, I guess. I have some acquaintances, but no one that I'd just spontaneously expect to call and suggest a party or a movie or even a cup of coffee.

The reason I'm asking about this, is that I thought until recently I had quite a lot of friends and good relationships with people. But it turns out that my social life revolves almost exclusively around me inviting people out, and them sometimes responding and sometimes not. I get invited to events and such like occasionally, but almost never when people are just going out.

I don't understand why people are so willing to go out if I initiate, but can't initiate it themselves. It makes no sense to me.

Is it something about me that's causing this? Do I just end up with the people who are passive because I'm prepared to be active for a time at least? Is there some leet social skill that conveys "you'll be doing all the work from now on", that I have so far failed to figure out?