My boyfriend [33/m] is the “guy who plays guitar at parties”, and I’m starting to think it might be a dealbreaker. Any advice?

Hi, and thanks in advance for any help with this! My boyfriend and I have been dating for 4 years and living together for most of that time. When we first met, he told me he liked to play guitar, sing, and write his own music. I didn’t really feel one way or the other about it.

We went on a weekend trip with some mutual friends after we’d been dating for a month and he brought his guitar and took many opportunities to play it and sing. I was still infatuated at this point and found it kind of charming, if also a bit attention-seeking. We went to his friend’s place a few months later, and were all hanging out chatting, and my boyfriend would randomly take out his guitar and start playing and singing while we were all trying to talk. I found this very awkward and uncomfortable, but chalked it up to just one of his personality quirks.

Well, it’s been a few years now and we live together, and I can now hardly even stand it when this kind of thing happens. He practices guitar a fair amount, which is fine, but he’s not very good. He sometimes sings along, and starts singing REALLY loudly, basically yelling, at some points, and I find this so cringey that I sometimes physically have to leave the room (mercifully he’s usually not singing along). We had a friend over a few weeks ago and they were talking about music, and my boyfriend pulls out his guitar (I felt dread upon seeing this) and just… aborts the conversation by playing guitar and singing a couple songs loudly. His friend looked so…. Baffled, but was stuck there and had to listen. I felt SO physically uncomfortable that I literally had to make an excuse to leave the room and flee, only returning when my boyfriend had finished and called out “hey, where’d you go? Did you not like my singing?” I came back and said that of course I liked it (he’s very easily offended if I make any comment about the guitar or singing).

We went out camping recently and he took the opportunity to sit by the fire and play his guitar and sing and I again felt so uncomfortable and annoyed that I could hardly stand it and wished we had never gone camping at all, so this pops up quite a bit. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I find it so damn cringey and self-serving to assume everyone around you just wants to sit and listen to you.

He’s very sensitive about this type of thing and has gotten upset when I’ve made very small comments about not wanting to hear the guitar for a bit or even just saying I prefer hearing the guitar without singing. There are other things about him that I find a bit cringey as well, but this is by far the worst. How can I talk to him about in a way that won’t deeply offend him? Or are we just completely incompatible? Has anyone else been through this? Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: boyfriend is obnoxious with singing and playing guitar and I can barely stand it.

Submitted June 21, 2021 at 11:09PM by imtiredofguitar https://ift.tt/3zViSGP