So, I will preface this by saying English is not my mother tongue, so I apologize for any weird sentences and stuff.
I have been dating my SO from around Christmas. At first, we were very discreet, as we both weren’t sure if it was going to work out and we didn’t want to make the situation weird (we are both in the same friend group, it’s a small town and we’re all students).
After a couple of months, we started telling our closest friends, and while most of them were okay with it, there is one friend (who is my SO’s closest friend here) who is totally against it. She says that it’s not healthy for us to be together; the only reason she gives for this is that my SO’s ex will be deeply hurt if we go public, and since she is very close friends with her she doesn’t want that to happen.
The ex already knows we are together, but since we’re keeping it very discreet she doesn’t really see us together or hear much about us. However, she told her 2 closest friends, and they now refuse to speak to me (which is fine, I wasn’t really close to them) and the issue is one of these two is my SO’s housemate.
This leads to us not really being able to be together at his place, and if we are we just hide in the living room and whisper to each other so as to not anger her. I would be fine with just not going over to his place at all, since he can come to mine, but he mentioned that that’s not how he wants to live, and he would like to have me over.
The ‘issue’ here is that for my SO, it’s very important to be liked, and he is very worried about what others think about him. Therefore, this situation with his closest friend not approving, the ex talking behind his back and the housemate hiding in her room whenever I am over is really stressing him out.
Yesterday we went on a walk, and he said it would be better to break up, because he’s just too worried about other people hating him and his social circle being destroyed if he starts openly dating me. During the walk, we stumbled into 2 of our friends while together (and they didn’t care in the slightest), but that kind of made him anxious. After that, he told me that 2 other people in our friend group were walking behind us, so we should walk faster because ‘what if they see us’ (mind you, we were just walking side by side, no physical contact). And then he spotted another acquaintance, so he fully panicked and started walking super fast, leaving me behind.
Now, I do understand that his fear is real (since I saw it first hand), but I also know people would not care. The only problem I see is his closest friend and his housemate being unhappy about us dating, and I understand that it would be a big issue for him, but we haven’t tried approaching the topic yet. I think first, I would like to help him work through his anxiety about others knowing. Rationally, he knows they won’t care, but we don’t always work like that.. I would like to know if there’s any advice on how I could help him, or if I should just leave things be and break up.
[TL;DR] (ex?)SO is afraid of what people will think of him if we openly date, and is worried about his friends cutting him out, even though rationally he knows they wouldn’t care
Submitted March 02, 2021 at 11:13PM by Social_anxiety_help https://ift.tt/3e6yJJX
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