I feel like I (26f) have to hide parts of my personality and life, around my boyfriend's (31m) friends

Just to tell you a little about myself, and how I suppose I don't always "fit in" ...

I'm a nature lover, I'm happiest going off for a long weekend or a week backpacking solo through the woods. I've been doing this for so long I feel comfortable there, not scared to be alone there. I also enjoy road tripping, and I'm comfortable setting off without much of a plan. Just finding a spot to camp or sleep in my car each night, and exploring during the days. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie too, I've been diving with sharks and bungie jumping. I've got loads of good stories from my travels, and my friends tell me I'm a great storyteller.

I'm pretty anticonsumerist, I prefer to thrift shop or buy things used off Craigslist, or even dumpster dive. Probably the only clothes I've got from a mall are jeans I've had since high school.

I'm a software engineer, doing robotics prototyping work as my day job, and I'm fascinated by cyber security and the security (or lack thereof) of a lot of automated systems. I enjoy reading about this stuff on my spare time and trying stuff out (on my own things, not hacking other stuff of course!) But I can talk anyone's ear off about the vulnerabilities in the sorts of tech we trust everyday.

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So to the point of this post... At the start of our relationship, my boyfriend Gary thought all this stuff was really cool to talk about. He found it attractive how adventurous I am, he thought my interests were fascinating to hear about. He'd even ask me "how could this be hacked" about a lot of his gadgets. Often times I didn't know off the top of my head but it got me researching out of curiosity.

But more recently, I'm beginning to feel like he's embarrassed of me. Especially when we're out with a group of his friends or new acquaintances.

It's come up in so many little ways that it would be a pain to write out an exhaustive list. So I'll just give you a couple recent things that happened.

• I was hanging out with some of my boyfriend's friends, and one guy Jared asked what I've been up to recently. I said I was getting into car hacking, just messing around with my own car's software. He wanted to know more, and I got talking... Did you know just how much of a modern car's operation involves computers? And did you know that all the many processors throughout a modern car communicate over an unencrypted bus? And that messages sent in that interface don't even have any way to validate the sender; they just have an ID of the destination process. So, with physical access to the right wires, you can spoof messages to all sorts of things in your car. I was trying to spoof a message to the power seat controller so that the seat could be quickly put in one of several preset positions. For my height, my boyfriend's height, etc. Jared thought that was super interesting and we were talking for a while about it. Jared made a joke about FBI watchlists, and Gary jumped into the conversation to change the topic, seeming embarrassed I'd said what I did about my hobby. He told me afterwards that I came off as sketchy as fuck. And that isn't something to be bragging about.

• I had some of my boyfriend's friends over my place, and one guy complemented my furniture and asked where my table and shelves were from. (They look like a matching set, both being modern black glass pieces) I said that I dumpster dived the table from a home decor store that often throws out display models with small bits of damage. And the shelves were a lucky Craigslist find. Rick thought that was cool that I got them all for next to nothing, and I mentioned that none of my furniture was bought new (except my mattress). It just takes some patience and some handiwork to fix up used things with a little damage. I noticed near the end of that conversation that my boyfriend was cringing a bit, I feel like he was embarrassed again. I asked him why he was making that face later in private, and he said "you don't just tell people that the sofa they're sitting on was trash" (that was an exaggeration, I bought it used from a neighbor who was moving)

There have been so many other little things where my boyfriend awkwardly tries to change the topic if I bring up cyber security, anticonsumerist stuff, some of my wilder camping or travel misadventures. And it's bothering me. Like it feels like he is embarrassed by my lifestyle and interests.

I told him that recently. And he said that he's got a lot more social anxiety than I do, and he wishes I could be more thoughtful of that, before talking about doing illegal stuff, like hobbyist hacking it dumpster diving... Because that's something that gives him anxiety to openly talk about.

So I feel like we're at an impasse. Me taking about my life to people makes him anxious sometimes, and that makes me feel sort of stifled and silenced. Do you have any advice, Reddit?

tldr - I feel like my boyfriend is embarrassed of me

Submitted May 31, 2019 at 01:29PM by karaador http://bit.ly/2Wzt72E