A SEPARATE PIECE
Why is it so hard to introduce your friends to someone you're dating?
I’m a 30-year-old queer guy who falls in love easily and I love connecting with people. I have noticed that I introduce new romances into my friend groups too quickly, which then makes things awkward afterwards. I’m seeing a new person I met on an app and feeling this intuition to keep him to myself, away from the circles I move about in, at least for a bit. But I’m also doubting that intuition, and wonder if you have advice for this?
I’m someone who separates all of the food on their plate because mixing them makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. It also took me until my twenty-eighth birthday to introduce friends that I’ve had for years to one another. The experience felt like bringing different breeds of dogs to a dog park and hoping that they would all get along with no nipping or humping.
All this to say, I understand your desire to compartmentalize.
Bringing someone to your apartment where they may brush paths with your roommates is a lot different than inviting them to the birthday party of a close friend. A good friend of mine actually went to a birthday party on a second date. I thought, How could that go well? And yet, my friend discovered that she really liked this person, partially because of how easily, even early on, she melded with the friends of her date. They’ve been together for almost two years and have gone to many more birthday parties since. My editor in his forties seconds this open approach. “We think of our friend groups in our 20s and 30s as being settled with all their little hierarchies, but they end up really fluid.”
But let’s examine your intuition.
What is your hesitancy of introducing this new person to your friend group? Are you worried that you’ll introduce them prematurely and then feel embarrassed if the relationship doesn’t work out? Will this person join the graveyard of generically nicknamed acquaintances such as “Tech Guy,” or “Unicorn Tattoo Guy,” or “Bent Penis Guy”? Is it the potential future social embarrassment that’s stopping you, or are you just not sure what this relationship is yet?
Making these steps can be a good thing, but sometimes early feelings of excitement can blindside you. I once dated someone whose friends I felt super awkward around. As a person who must sometimes take themselves on a walk around the block before attending social events, I initially chalked up these feelings to anxiety and to the fact that the relationship was moving at dyke speed. (Which is somewhere above light speed.) And then, I reasoned that my nervousness had to do with the fact that I was a very different person from her. People are amalgamations of those closest to them and I eventually realized my unease around her friends meant I was uneasy with many parts of her.
Still, I don’t regret unsuccessfully and aggressively trying to merge our lives. It’s always better to be an over-eager romantic than a tentative cynic in a dating landscape hardened by appification. In some ways, timing doesn’t actually matter as to when we make those big decisions, like moving in together or merging those friend groups. Whether early or later, we can be blindsided by the reality of the relationship.
Relationships don’t exist in a vacuum, they exist in relation to others. If someone is right for you, meeting their people, even early on, will feel good. But if they aren’t right for you, you’ll always feel alone with them.
Until then, death is inevitable, so why not just stop over thinking it and get coffee with your date and your most chill friend?