Hi. I’ve been with my DP for three years (both 26).
He recently got a new job in a career he has been trying really hard to get into for the last few years but has had a few set backs due to COVID. He is over the moon. The job is a widely male dominated role with a few female scattered in. Because of this there seems to be a widely ‘lads, lads, lads’ and ‘the boys’ kind of attitude going on. A lot of them talking about going on tinder and which girl they slept with that night, trying to show other girls pictures to each other.
They all go on nights out, to the pub, organise huge piss ups and bar crawls with the staff to different cities etc. He has only been there for a few months so I haven’t met any of them properly but I saw one who drove past me and my DP once and he was hanging out of the window yelling crude stuff at my partner. Very teenage boy but this man is 28!
Anyway my problem is my DP is the complete opposite to this. He is quiet, likes gaming, doesn’t casually drink apart from the odd occasion, goes out with his friends for food, to the cinema, to arcades. I am very similar. I am not teetotal but I very rarely ever drink due to health reasons, I like going to the gym, I like cooking, I am vegan. It has always been very important to me to date someone who’s views align with my own. I wouldn’t have entertained dating anyone who was going to the pub or getting drunk all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t do that and I’d find it hard to deal with someone coming in drunk all of the time when I don’t drink. I don’t expect people not to drink when they’re around me or anything. I regularly go to events with friends where they’re all drinking but I’d find it hard to try to make a life with someone of social drinking and going out was a big part of their lives, when mine is the complete opposite. We do have a very active social life, but our life has never included these things.
My DP obviously wants to fit in and has planned to go on the big bar crawl they’re planning next month. He has even said “I don’t know how I’m going to hide drinking Coke from them”, and personally I don’t think this is going to happen. From what I’ve heard they’re the types to laugh about him not drinking and pressure him into it (they laugh that he’s vegetarian), and I think he will as it’s his first night. But obviously I haven’t voiced this.
I’m starting to feel like he’s turning down invitations for my sake. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone where they feel like they have to not do something because of me, but equally the man I met and am currently planning my future with wasn’t someone who did this stuff. I’m finding it hard to express how I feel without sounding controlling, I have no issue with him going out. We both regularly go out and spend time alone with our friends. However we had both always been on the same page about things like this and now it seems like he’s not.
AIBU I’m thinking maybe he’s evolved and we’re slowly growing to no longer be compatible?