My boyfriend (25M), who I’ll call A, and I (26M) have been dating for about 10 months. He’s supposed to meet my parents for the first time when I go home for Christmas, and I’m already incredibly nervous because my family, particularly my mom, is very religious.
However, some recurring issues in our relationship have me questioning whether we’re even at a point where I should be introducing him to my family.
For context, early in our relationship, I told A that if he couldn’t establish appropriate boundaries with his friends, I didn’t see our relationship working out. This wasn’t something I said out of nowhere. There had been two major incidents, along with several smaller ones, that made me realize A has a difficult time standing up to his friends.
He’s admitted that he struggles with rejection and abandonment, which has made him an extreme people pleaser. I understand where that comes from, but I also feel like his fear of losing friends has led him to tolerate behavior that I find disrespectful to our relationship.
Incident #1: His friend’s dad openly says he wants to sleep with my boyfriend.
Early in our relationship, we attended a birthday party for one of A’s friends’ fathers. When we arrived, A started introducing me to his friends, their parents, and everyone else.
When I was introduced to the birthday man, who I’ll call K, he looked directly at me and said:
“I hope you guys stay open because I’m still trynna crack A.”
Mind you, this is another grown man’s father saying this to someone he’s literally just met.
I laughed it off because he was clearly drunk, but it made me incredibly uncomfortable.
A eventually wandered off with his friends, so I did my best to mingle and make a good impression. As the night went on, I started noticing that this friend group was what I can only describe as incestuous.
Everyone seemed to be heavily flirting with one another, and I later learned that many of them had dated, hooked up, or continued sleeping with each other over the years. It was a complicated web of past and ongoing sexual relationships.
The flirting even started extending toward me, which I found strange considering I’d arrived with my boyfriend and, to my knowledge, we were in a monogamous relationship.
At one point, a married couple even started showing their sex tape to me and other people at the party.
Eventually, I found A and told him I was uncomfortable, specifically mentioning K’s comment about wanting to sleep with him.
A brushed it off, saying it was probably just a joke.
I told him that might be true, but it still made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to make a scene, so I left it alone until we got back to my place.
Later that night, I explained that the entire environment felt strange to me. Everyone seemed to want to sleep with everyone else, and I joked that it felt like an orgy could break out at any moment.
His response?
“Well, if I stopped hanging out with people who wanted to fuck me, I wouldn’t have any friends.”
He laughed, apparently expecting me to find that funny.
I did not.
I told him that I wasn’t comfortable being around him and his friends if that was the dynamic I was expected to accept.
That seemed to snap him out of it.
I explained that I wasn’t expecting him to control what other people said or did. However, I did expect him to acknowledge when something was inappropriate and understand why I might feel uncomfortable in those situations.
I didn’t think that was an unreasonable expectation.
Incident #2: Defending a white friend who uses the N-word.
A few months later, we traveled to Wisconsin for a music festival with several of A’s “festival friends.” I only knew one of them personally.
For context, I’m Black, A is Indian, and all of the friends attending with us were white.
When we arrived, one of the women in the group mentioned that she’d invited another friend, B, and had specifically warned him not to use the N-word.
Already a strange thing to have to tell a grown adult, but okay.
B didn’t arrive until much later, when the festival was getting started.
While everyone was getting water, I made a comment along the lines of, “There really shouldn’t be any reason for anyone to use racial slurs.”
Everyone seemed to agree, except my boyfriend, who responded:
“Well, everyone makes mistakes.”
I found that response incredibly strange.
I’m a Black man at a music festival in rural Wisconsin, surrounded by white people I barely know, and somehow my own boyfriend is the person pushing back against the idea that people shouldn’t use racial slurs?
We ended up arguing, and A started crying.
He admitted that he felt judged because he was friends with B and because he himself had used the N-word when he was younger.
He also told me that he didn’t want anyone to leave him.
There were several things about this that bothered me.
First, I hadn’t even realized A and B were particularly close. Nothing about their relationship had suggested that A needed to jump to his defense.
Second, while I don’t excuse using racial slurs, I understand that plenty of kids say ignorant things in middle school because they think it makes them edgy or cool. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but I wasn’t trying to condemn A forever for something he did as a child.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never personally used the N-word, despite growing up around plenty of Black and brown people who were comfortable with it.
But the bigger issue was that A seemed more concerned about feeling judged or potentially losing a friend than understanding why I was uncomfortable.
I decided to drop the conversation until we returned to Denver. I didn’t want things to escalate while I was in another state without an independent way home.
Once we got back, I brought it up again and asked for a break because I genuinely needed to consider whether A was someone I wanted to continue dating.
Obviously, we eventually reconciled.
But I made it clear that his inability to set boundaries and his tendency to prioritize keeping everyone happy were serious issues for me.
Incident #3: My boyfriend straddling another man in front of me and his friends.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago.
K’s daughter was celebrating her 21st birthday, so after work, I met up with A and his friends at a bar.
As we were leaving the first bar, I turned around and saw my boyfriend literally wrapped around and straddling another man, who I’ll call C.
https://focusedcollection.com/308742122/stock-photo-side-view-affectionate-couple-cuddling.html
I’ve attached a stock photo featuring demonstrating almost exactly how they were positioned because I genuinely don’t know how else to describe it but also imagine my boyfriend kicking his feet up with whimsy multiple times like a child on a swing.
One of A’s friends turned to me and joked, “Looks like A is going to be leaving you soon.”
Even C’s girlfriend joined in, joking that maybe she and I should just run away together.
I played along for a moment because I didn’t want to cause a scene, but once C put A down, I walked over to my boyfriend.
I asked, “So, are we going to talk about what just happened over there?”
A immediately started explaining the conversation they’d been having. Apparently, C had been looking for his girlfriend, and somehow the conversation shifted to A’s weight.
I interrupted him because I genuinely didn’t care what they’d been discussing.
I was talking about the fact that my boyfriend had just been wrapped around another man in front of me and all his friends.
A insisted they were just friends and were extremely close.
I asked whether he’d genuinely be comfortable if the roles were reversed and I behaved that way with one of my friends.
He said yes.
I told him that, to me, the situation looked completely inappropriate and that his insistence that it was normal was almost as concerning as the behavior itself.
Here’s another important detail: Before we started dating, A and C had apparently come very close to having a threesome with another person in their friend group.
So this wasn’t necessarily two friends with an entirely platonic history. There had already been sexual tension between them.
We moved on to the next bar, and I waited until we got home to discuss it further.
During that conversation, A admitted that two of his other friends had also told him that what he did was strange, especially considering he had a boyfriend.
So apparently other people noticed the same thing I did.
Yet he still didn’t apologize.
Initially, I wasn’t even that upset. But the following day, while I was at work, I started replaying everything in my head, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt disrespected.
When I got home, I told him that the situation was bothering me more than I’d initially let on.
And honestly, it wasn’t even just the physical interaction.
It was the fact that he genuinely seemed to think it was normal.
Because now I’m thinking:
If you think straddling someone you’ve previously had sexual tension with is normal, and you think your friend’s father openly telling your boyfriend he wants to sleep with you is normal, then what else do you consider normal?
If you’re comfortable behaving this way directly in front of me, what happens when I’m not around?
To be clear, I did not accuse A of cheating. I have no evidence that he’s been unfaithful.
But these situations have made me question whether we even share the same understanding of monogamy and relationship boundaries.
And here’s what makes this especially frustrating:
I’m not opposed to open relationships. I’ve actually enjoyed being in them before.
But A was the one who described himself as “painfully monogamous,” and we mutually agreed that our relationship would be exclusive.
So I’m struggling to reconcile that with his behavior.
The conversation about his “gray area.”
When I brought this up, A told me that, before the incident at the bar, he thought this kind of behavior existed in a “gray area.”
That response honestly concerned me more than I think he realized.
I asked him what exactly falls into this supposed gray area. What behaviors does he consider acceptable? Where does he draw the line between being friendly, flirting, and being inappropriate with someone outside our relationship?
He couldn’t really give me an answer.
And that was the part that bothered me the most. Because if you can’t even define what your gray area is, then theoretically, couldn’t anything fall into it whenever it’s convenient?
I pointed out that if all three of the major incidents we’d experienced somehow fell into his gray area, then he had a lot of things he needed to figure out about himself, his friendships, and what being in a monogamous relationship actually means to him.
I’m not expecting us to have identical boundaries or agree on every single social interaction. But I do expect us to have a shared understanding of what is and isn’t appropriate in our relationship.
I don’t approach my own friendships with that kind of ambiguity. I establish boundaries because I don’t want there to be confusion about where friendship ends and romantic or sexual behavior begins.
And honestly, this was exactly why I’d warned him earlier in our relationship that I couldn’t continue dating him if he refused to establish boundaries with his friends.
The part that really got to me: He hasn’t actually talked to his friends.
Eventually, A apologized.
But then he admitted something that honestly made everything worse.
Despite all our previous conversations, he had never actually spoken to his friends about boundaries.
Not once.
He told me he was scared because he’d never had to do that before, and he asked me to help him.
I told him I couldn’t be the person to have those conversations for him.
My concern is that if I’m the one telling him what to say or how to change the dynamics of his friendships, I’ll become the villain in his friends’ eyes. It’ll look like I’m the controlling boyfriend forcing him to change relationships that existed long before I came into the picture.
I don’t want that.
I want him to recognize for himself why boundaries matter and take responsibility for establishing them. I suggested he seek guidance from someone else if he genuinely didn’t know how to approach those conversations.
I also told him that if he doesn’t want to establish those boundaries, he needs to be honest with me so I can leave the relationship.
Where I’m at now:
I’m exhausted.
I love my boyfriend, and I understand that his fear of rejection and abandonment plays a significant role in how he navigates his friendships.
But I also don’t think that means I should repeatedly have to explain why certain behaviors make me uncomfortable or feel disrespectful.
I don’t want to police his friendships. I don’t want to dictate who he can spend time with. And I certainly don’t want to become the person who has to teach him how to stand up for himself.
What I want is to feel like my partner understands and respects the relationship we’ve agreed to have.
We’re now approaching the point where he’s supposed to meet my family for Christmas, which is already a huge step for me given my family’s religious beliefs.
And instead of feeling excited about introducing him, I’m questioning whether we’re even compatible.
Part of me wonders whether I’m being too rigid about what I consider appropriate boundaries between friends, especially because his friend group clearly operates very differently from mine.
But another part of me feels like I’ve communicated my expectations repeatedly, and nothing has meaningfully changed.
So I guess my questions are:
1. Am I being unreasonable about what I consider inappropriate behavior between friends, particularly in a monogamous relationship?
Is it fair to expect my boyfriend to establish boundaries with his friends without me having to guide him through the process?
At what point does being understanding of someone’s people-pleasing tendencies become tolerating behavior that makes you feel disrespected?
How do you rebuild trust with someone when you’re not even sure you share the same definition of what’s appropriate in a monogamous relationship?
Would you postpone introducing your partner to your family until these issues are resolved?
I’m genuinely looking for outside perspectives because at this point, I don’t know what else to say or do.