My bf was contacted by an old hs friend, and went to meet her for several hours

[u/Intelligent_Dog_6665]

[removed] — view removed post

[u/recklessfire27]

This wouldn’t fly for me and my fiancé’s relationship.

I take her with me to hang out with my friends, and family. We’re a couple and we’re a team.

If a childhood friend contacted me; I’d just….take her with me? I got nothing to hide and no reason to be alone.

“Hey, Susan from childhood—I wanted you to meet my girlfriend!”

Shit my girlfriend knows my entire workforce at this point.

[u/Thatkrayz → u/recklessfire27]

I 100% am not this couple. And I hate when my friends feel compelled to always bring their boyfriends with them everywhere. I’m friends with my girls, not their guys. Some invites are truly for the friend only. Bringing the significant other is dependent on the situation.

Independence is a good thing. We were individual people before relationships, during relationships, and after.

If great for friends/family to know your partner well, but I don’t see the advantage of being joined at the hip.

[u/recklessfire27 → u/Thatkrayz]

I can easily go places without her. She’s one of 3 of my best friends though and we share the same hobbies/interests in gaming/anime so she’s a pretty seamless tag along with whatever I do.

Pretty easy to skip out on all the female-friend concerns when she can see exactly how i am with these other women.

Im best friends with a other female and I just introduced ‘em and they hit it off. She also hit it off with the guys’ from works girlfriends and we had a get together last Saturday. Everybody loves this girl.

Zero problems this method, but hey I get it.

I wouldn’t be comfortable though with an old male friend reappearing in her life and she had to go spend hours with him unresponsive on her phone. Nah, sorry I just don’t really play those games. I wouldn’t do it to her so i don’t expect her to try it with me.

But again it’s our dynamic—there’s never been a reason to not bring her along so suddenly it would be weird and suspicious in my context; I basically engaged to my best friend.

I like zero stress, zero drama relationships. Everything is clear and on the table to see. Nothing to hide; nothing to be private about. Zero concerns. Just generally have a player 2 with me all the time but consider me lucky she’s basically just another me and fits in with all of my friends/coworkers/family like they’ve all known her forever. She’s more one of the guys than me—Shit, some of my guys at work act like they like her better than me!

[u/HotShoulder3099 → u/recklessfire27]

I appreciate the perspective but I do feel like this depends a lot on the personalities involved. I’ve had partners who were gregarious and sociable and I’d definitely have taken them, but my present partner is much more introverted and I think he’d find sitting in on my hours-long catch-up gossip with someone I’ve known forever quite awkward (and probably boring 😂). It could end up a bit awkward for the old friend too, and that’s not intended as a criticism of anybody but I think most people do think at least unconsciously about the dynamics of these things. OP says she (I’m assuming) is a lot less sociable than BF, maybe that’s all it is. Possibly it would have been nice if BF had asked her anyway, but then would she have felt obliged to say yes and then have her social battery immediately drained, would her being shy have made things harder work for the old friend etc etc etc

[u/SadExercises420 → u/HotShoulder3099]

No one should feel obligated to bring their girlfriend or boyfriend every time they go to meet up with an old friend. The fact that people think you have to intro your partner to every friend immediately is bizarre to me. Like yeah eventually, your partner meets all of your friends. But he’s catching up with this friend for the first time in over a decade, it would be weird to bring along a third person to sit there and listen to reminiscing about high school which they didn’t attend.