My [20F] boyfriend [19M] and I finally became official a week ago, but he doesn’t want to tell his friends because he’s afraid they’ll shun us. I fear this will pull our relationship under.

We’ve known each other for a little over a year, and romantically interested in each other for half of that. He asked me to be his girlfriend last week, but then told me not to mention it to our friend group because they’ll “judge us” or even shun us. The friend group consists of most of his high school friends who have been critical of us talking since we met. This is a group of solely single guys, so they make their envy/jealousy quite obvious when I come around. Often times just making snarky remarks about how I only like my boyfriend because he’s smart, good looking, etc, and overall just try to discourage me from talking to him. They’re some of his best friends, and as toxic as they are, he doesn’t want to lose them.

However, having our relationship be kept a secret means that they’ll pull him to outings to look for girls, or in general, ask questions that a person in a relationship shouldn’t be answering. Questions like “Hey do you think (person from school) is hot” or “Would you smash (person from work)”, while I’m there having to keep my mouth shut.

I hate it, and I’ve made it aware, but my boyfriend says its to “protect us”. He doesn’t want to subject me to even worse harassment or lose his friends.

In private, he is nothing but sweet and loving, but around his friends he has to keep his distance. I’m willing to tell them when he’s ready, but I don’t know exactly how to get him ready. He seems fine the way it is, but I just don’t see how our relationship can progress healthily if we’re hiding from his own friends.

He’s a rational person and I’m comfortable talking to him about this, but before confronting him I want time to think, and want another person’s input. Please and thanks.

TLDR; my boyfriend wants to keep our relationship a secret from his toxic friends because he doesn’t want us to be shunned, but i’m worried how we’ll progress as a couple if we stay this way.

Submitted May 04, 2019 at 05:50PM by 17svtcrt http://bit.ly/2J0WFj5