Studies on the outcomes of the Arab uprisings have largely focused on protest-exogenous causes of revolutionary failure. By contrast, endogenous drivers of demobilization remain understudied, despite growing evidence on the role of microlevel dynamics in making and breaking revolutionary momentum. This article addresses this gap by exploring the triangular relation between shifts in the structural environment of revolutionary movements, the lifeworld of those affected by these shifts and organizational dynamics on the meso level. Based on a combination of event data and narrative interviews with protagonists of the Lebanese Thawra uprising of 2019, it recentres the debate on revolutionary trajectories on the agents of change themselves. Drawing on relational and emotion-sensitive approaches in social movement studies, I argue that complex subjective meaning making processes to navigate multiple social and political crises are crucial in understanding demobilization in post-revolutionary Lebanon. Formerly committed activists responded to increasing uncertainty through a combination of adaptation, disengagement and abeyance. These vectors of demobilization translated their subjective accounts of lived events into the organizational arena of the Thawra. By fuelling fragmentation, channelling activism into divergent avenues and supporting individual exit from politics they catalysed a decline of protest that is described here as a ‘revolutionary burnout’.