I [21F] feel fake around everyone except my boyfriend [22M] and this makes me feel very uncomfortable and unsettled.

Hello and thank you for clicking on my post. I’m sorry I made a throwaway for this. I just got back home from hanging out with friends with my boyfriend and I feel extremely weird and anxious because of what happened. Nothing serious happened but looking back on all my encounters with other people I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about myself. It started off when I was hanging out with my boyfriend and we had plans to go out to a bar for an event. Before we left, I had to pick up a friend from class because she had parked her car at my driveway (I live in the neighborhood off campus) Boyfriend knew this but wasn’t expecting the friend to come inside because she was supposed to leave after I dropped her back to her car. However, my friend was feeling tired and wanted to chill for a bit before leaving (her house is a bit of a drive from campus) so of course I let her stay at my place.

Now this friend is someone we both know but haven’t hung out with in a while because of some negative events from the past that just distanced both of us from her. The drifting apart from this friend occurred before my boyfriend and I started dating, and happened to us for separate but similar reasons, but we all knew each other from back then and used to be good friends. This happened about 3 years ago.

Recently I started hanging out with her again because we were pretty good friends before and didn’t see why I don’t hang out with her anymore. Even though we had problems in the past, I decided they don’t matter much now. We started studying together and talking more. My boyfriend thought it was weird and random at first but didn’t think much of it. He just didn’t have any interest in seeing her or actively being friends with her again but was more than okay with me talking to her and hanging out. He might have some lingering negative impressions of her but he’s a really chill guy who doesn’t care much for the things from the past. He doesn’t really hold grudges and gets over things easily. He’ll just choose not hang out with someone if he doesn’t like them.

Back to today, the three of us ended up hanging out all night and going to the bar together. We had a good time in general. We met a lot of mutual friends and hung out with them. All was great until I started feeling very uncomfortable and self-conscious. I thought about every little thing I said and did and just became really weird and felt really weird. I felt distant from my boyfriend and embarrassed in front of him for being this way which I normally wouldn’t be. I felt fake because I felt like I was trying to be someone I’m not to impress or get people and my friend to like me. I was mentally exhausted by the end of the night and felt I missed out on being with my boyfriend tonight because I was busy trying to please everyone else.

Now I’m back home and I keep replaying all of tonight’s events and reliving the fakeness and confusion I felt. For some reason I feel guilty and ashamed and I think my boyfriend has to do with it. He knows the real me and I felt like I acted way differently from when it’s just me and him. I feel bad I didn’t get to talk to him as much as I wanted to or would have if my friend weren’t there with us. I’m afraid he’ll think of me differently and it’s very unsettling to me.

What am I doing wrong? How do I overcome this feeling? Why do I become so different around other people besides my boyfriend? Was I being fake or am I just a different version of fake around my boyfriend? Please help me figure out what’s bothering me so much and what I can I do about it.

TL;DR: hung out with an old friend who had some history with both myself and my boyfriend and he wasn’t expecting it. Ended up being/feeling super fake for some reason and distant from my boyfriend. This made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Now can’t stop thinking about it and feeling weird. I can’t figure out exactly why I’m acting and feeling this way and I want to stop it.

Submitted April 04, 2019 at 11:51PM by dynamicunicorn615 http://bit.ly/2UhhyfT