My two cents:
If you want the love back, you hve to either tell your ego to chill out or train hard enough to keep up with these guys. Or - Both!

There are almost certianly a bunch of other folks who've done exactly what you did. I know when I joined this club, it was mostly pretty fast folks trying to get faster, and just a couple of people looking for something different. I had come from a club with a significant core group of true "leisure riders" who defiantly socialized while riding and scheduled rides to eateries and would slow down for new folks, without it being an exercise in patience because their goal wasn't speed, anyway.

THere were enough of us my first year to have each other to ride with - but we had to talk it up. Gradually, people started coming out of the woodwork - they'd given up on the club but they came out and were encouraged... and other new people came out and we didn't drop them. (That's the hard part sometimes - because of course we had gottten stronger. ) I got this reputation for being on *all* the club rides (It wasn't quite true but the legend persists )

So... sniff out the other folks who, secretly, would love to hang back a bit. Build your constituency. Lead moderate level rides! You might find out that because of all that riding, you *can* keep up...