I (31f) am dating a famous guy (38m). It's getting serious. My friends are huge fans - how do I introduce them without making it weird?

Kind of a weird/spicy one, reddit. Forgive me if any details seem inconsistent, I am fudging some things for identity concealment reasons - my celebrity boyfriend (lol, what a ridiculous thing to type) isn't household name famous in most places, but he has a very unique name, so I'm doing everything I can to avoid anyone accidentally guessing in the comments lest it end up on google forever.

A few years ago, I entered an artistic field as a relative beginner. Like many artists, I followed a bunch of my inspirations and people who made work I loved on social media. As I grew in my field, got jobs with a higher profile, and started to get some recognition for my work, I became social media acquaintances with some fairly prominent people in my field. But I live in a different country to most of them, so I thought nothing of it.

When I finally travelled to the US in late 2019, I attended an industry event and posted "hey anybody going to x, I know nobody in this country" and to my surprise, probably the most famous guy follower I had, Jamie, offers to let me tag along with his group. We'd never really talked but he has a reputation for being very helpful to newbies in the field, so I hopped on it.

This has already been long enough (though the online backstory is important) so I'll skip the details but - Jamie met me at the airport, showed me around Los Angeles, and we hit it off instantly. Like straight up love at first sight level chemistry. We ended up ignoring most of the events on my itinerary that weren't doing work in favour of just sitting around talking and getting to know each other.

In the field I work in, Jamie is famous famous. His work has won every major award there is and he's well enough known that he's even a prominent figure in the major city where he lives, beyond our industry. Trying to be sparse with details but think - it's not like I'm dating LeBron, but the star guy from a smaller market team. Everyone in town AND everyone who knows basketball knows him.

Despite the huge power and income disparity, he's never been anything but lovely to me. Living in other countries has made it hard, but after that two weeks we couldn't deny it - we started a relationship, have flown to see one another when we could prior to the pandemic, and have talked constantly since then. Being separated and locked down in separate countries has been hard, but we're making it work.

Last week he dropped a bomb on me - a good bomb. He is making plans to buy an apartment in my city, so that when things are more settled he can spend as much time here with me as he can.

I'll finally be able to introduce my long-distance partner to my friends! My parents already know him and have said hi on Zoom etc, but... I have been really sparse with details among my friend circle. They only know his first name and that he works in my field.

I haven't told my friends I'm dating Jamie X because a few of them are big into his field and they are huge enough fangirls/fanboys that they like, own merch and had posters back in uni. When I've had a couple famous-ish industry friends over before, my local friends reacted kiiiind of awkwardly, being a bit too fanboyish and making things awkward. I smoothed things over as best I could, but those experiences made me wary of sharing too much about Jamie.

I love my friends and I'm not just going to ditch them for my new squad from overseas, but how do I... ehm it feels really funny to say - how do I break this extremely good news to them gently? I have never had to reveal something like this before, but I worry that they'll be offended if I say "I kept this from you because you made <other friend> feel really awkward" even if that's the truth.

This feels like such a weird thing to be asking advice about - I'm in my thirties for fucksake. But it really is an odd situation. It's all just sort of hitting me that I'm going to be navigating this weird minefield of Dating A Famous Guy, although at least he's far less famous in my country than his. But among my friend circle, he's basically an idol for a lot of them - and the fact that we met and spoke mostly online has meant that the opportunity for him to visit me in my hometown for longer than a weekend drive-by genuinely hasn't come up until now. We've always met in cities where we were working at the time, or I've gone to his city because I could tack it onto the end of a work trip.

This has gotten very rambly because I've sort of come to some realisations while writing it out - that there's probably going to be more weirdness to account for than just my friends. And I'm wanting to be conscious of Jamie's feelings as well - I don't want him to feel like he has to put on his public persona and perform around me and my friends, because to me he's not Jamie X, he's just Jamie the very sweet guy who showed me around America and swept me off my feet.

TL;DR:

Anyone here have experience dating a celebrity and navigating that?

How do I balance Jamie's privacy with wanting to introduce my lifelong friends to my partner?

What's the best way to break the news to my mates that I've been dating their idol?

Re the last bit, I should note that I did have a very gentle talk with the fanboy friends about their fanboy behaviour the first time I had a famous friend over (they asked for autographs - fine! she was fine with that, but then they KEPT asking about her work over and over and over to the exclusion of all other conversation), so it's not like I hid my feelings about that. I told them they hurt my feelings but making my friend feel awkward. They apologised, I accepted, but unfortunately it happened again. Hence why I'm wary now. I can't blame them really - it's exciting getting to talk to people whose work you love! I can't hold it against them too hard. I just... don't want my partner to feel like he has to perform for them the whole time he's here. :/ He's had a really rough year with the pandemic (who hasn't) and I want his first longer-than-a-weekend visit here to be a wonderful one.

Thanks in advance!

Submitted October 24, 2021 at 04:43PM by Past_Persimmon https://ift.tt/3nnQGH0