How long did it take for you to consider your DP's friends as your friends?

[johnsdietcoke]

DH and I have been together 5 years but I've really only known his friends for 3 due to the pandemic. They're generally a really sociable group and socialise in couples... Eurovision parties, Euro parties, birthdays and they've now all started having babies so that's all coming up.

They are lovely people and very welcoming but I still don't feel part of the group (they've all been friends since preschool- small town). I am nervous by nature and dread going every single time.

In the last few weeks we've been to two Euros parties, a 30th, a wedding, a christening and now we've been invited to a housewarming. I feel ungrateful complaining because they are lovely but I've had a crap day at work and I just can't be bothered with it. DH saw my face fall when he mentioned the housewarming and he's hurt.

We’ve been together 30 years, and while we definitely have some joint friends (people we met together, old friends from our student days — we’ve just been on holiday with old student friends from postgrad days), I wouldn’t say I’d ever contemplated his friends automatically becoming mine just because we were a couple. Friendship is pretty personal. I don’t want to befriend every ‘nice’ person I meet.

Maybe the difference is partly that we both have lots of different friendship groups, not just one that does everything together. That sounds a bit claustrophobic to me. If you don’t want to go, stop? Does he go out with your friends, or don’t you want him to?

Been with DP 16 years and his friends aren't my friends. They're perfectly nice people but I have my own friends, I don't need or want his.

My friendship group is totally different, all scattered and we go out without spouses when we can manage it.

I am perfectly happy for him to go by himself but I can tell he's disappointed and that's making me feel crap.