Hey everyone,
I'll cut right to the point - my boyfriend behaves VERY differently around my friends to how he behaves around me alone, as he is usually quite a calm, pensive, patient person around me, but when he is with my friends, he gets VERY overexcited, and just behaves so weirdly.... He'll make just very strange remarks, but on bizarre voices, and generally behave very, very strangely.
The trouble is, my friends judge him for who he seems to be there; quite an odd person, really, when in reality he is NOTHING like that. I wouldn't really mind if he behaved like the person I'm genuinely with, but I feel like he just goes into a different persona when he's around them and that that doesn't really do him any justice as a person. :/
I have spoken about it to him before, and have remarked that be behaves very weirdly around my girl friends as opposed to his own friends or me, and he tells me that with me he never feels like he needs to wear a "mask" or be someone different. This tells me that it's probably something to do with his social anxiety (he's had this for a long long time, dating from childhood). But I don't want him to feel like he needs to be a different person to be more confident.... I know my friends would like him BETTER if he behaved as he really was.
My friends also don't really help things. They're pleasant to him but they laugh at him while we're all hanging out and they think that they know him really well and that being weird is one of his character traits so they make reference to it a lot. I think them laughing at him doesn't help his self esteem so I'd love for anyone to suggest any ideas as to how I can explain to them his anxiety/ get them to stop laughing at him at all?
I love him immensely, but I just wanted to know if anyone had any tips for calming someone down who has social anxiety in this way which makes them extroverted but not themselves, particularly a significant other? Otherwise, does anyone have any ideas about how I could let my girl friends be aware that he does this because of his anxiety in a succinct, non-drama kind of way?
All your replies are seriously appreciated!
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