Gf [27F] alienates friends with her often holier-than-thou attitudes. I [30M] don’t want to lose more friends. How to approach gently?

So this is something that has gone one for about one year and a half. We’ve been dating almost two years.

I love my girlfriend. She’s the kindest most conscientious person I know. She’s politically engaged, cares about the world, and is passionate about helping those in need. I think the world would be at peace if more people were like her.

That said, she has a huge tendency to turn people off with her attitude esp on subjects she’s passionate about. Like volunteering, adoption, animal welfare, and sustainable diets are her main areas of expertise and she’ll talk you down if she feels like you’re uninformed or confused for whatever reason. I love that she feels passionate about subjects but our friends really do not. When we started dating we had a good circle of 15-20 friends that we saw regularly. Now no one invites us around or comes to our things. I still get invited singularly (tho I turn them down) but it’s clear they want nothing to do with my gf.

I feel like it’s past time I talk to my gf about what’s happening but I’ve hinted in the past which always made her beyond upset and mad at me. She’s had a tough childhood where she was constantly bullied and made fun of by other girls, so she admits she has an issue with trying to appear smarter to people she actually feels intimidated by, doubly so if they’re women as well. I’ve asked her to go to therapy to deal with these feelings in adulthood but she doesn’t think it’s a big enough deal to spend money on.

Some examples I can remember off the top of my head where she’s pissed off friends:

• we used to have a lot of double dates with mutual friends. Sometimes the convo would steer to politics, in which my gf gets vocally upset if she finds out someone isn’t political or apathetic. This has happened 2-3 times where it’s usually the female friend who says she’s not super political and doesn’t want to be and my gf hugely gets on their case and talks them down at the table. Needless to say we lost these friends immediately. Gf thought good riddance.

• smaller things are the way she talks about subjects she’s really an expert in. We’ll be at a party with a group discussing something, and she’ll butt in and do her classic “that’s not it at all. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about” and basically insinuate everyone’s uneducated. I mean, it’s technically true because she IS very educated and she does point out common lies/misconceptions, but the way she says it annoys people visibly.

• last thing she does is she always says what she thinks but that can actually be very hurtful. Example: we were hanging out with another couple and the girl was talking about how her parents haven’t met her bf yet because they were strict Catholics and her bf is Muslim. She says her dad would disown her so she’s still working up the courage. My gf then said something like “but you guys have been dating a year! Why the fuck do you give a crap about what your shitty parents think? You need to stand up for your bf and cut them out if they say anything disgusting. Anything else and you’re just being a coward.” Soooo yeah. Again technically true but terrible to say in that moment, when that couple was just being vulnerable with us. They ended up cutting US off.

So yeah I hope I gave a good picture. I love her but she can say the worst things at the worst times but she doesn’t admit any fault because she thinks she was right and they were wrong. Except now no one invites us around anymore. My gf complains that we have such little social life and every time I tried to bring up these past incidents she gets mad at me for placing the blame on her. I mean I don’t know what to say. I still get invited around but I always decline, but still...I’m not the issue. What do I do? How can I approach this situation gently without placing any blame or making her feel bad? I feel like I’m forced to accept this part of her even though it makes me lonely too.

TLDR- Gf has been losing friends because of things she says to people that cause them to hate her/cut us out of their lives. She always means well and never intends to be hurtful. I don’t know how to approach this issue without hurting her feelings like in the past. What should I say or do?

Submitted November 17, 2018 at 09:05PM by Throw36274738 https://ift.tt/2qQGc6b