Have nc'd for this for privacy. Sorry if it turns out a bit long to avoid drip feeding. I've put this in mental health rather than relationships, as that's what I want to focus on, I'm not looking for people to tell me to LTB because of this, at least not at this point!
I am in a new relationship, we've been together for just over 4 months. It's been fantastic so far. I'm in my early 30s, been single a while, and towards the end of last year decided I was ready to look for a new long-term relationship. When I met my boyfriend, the attraction and chemistry between us was pretty instant, we started going on dates, the more I got to know him the more I liked him. He is a few years older than me, was similarly looking for a long-term relationship, both want marriage and kids etc. Everything feels right – I love his company, he seems to enjoy mine, we have a great time together, sex is fab, he is caring and affectionate, and we want the same things in life.
The more I get to know him, the more I am becoming concerned that he has a fairly significant issue with social anxiety. I am a fairly social person – I have friends that I make an effort to see regularly, am happy to chat to strangers, confident by myself in public etc. BF is not at all. He has 2 people that he considers friends, 1 of them he has seen once in the last 4 months, the other twice. There is also 1 housemate that he talks to, and one person at work. Other than that he pretty much avoids talking to anyone, and finds situations that are completely normal and acceptable to me, intolerably embarrassing or gets so anxious that he can end up acting pretty rudely at times (not to me, I must point out). He is happy spending most of his time by himself, or now, just with me. He has a pretty low opinion of himself, gets very anxious eating in public, and frequently worries that other people are judging him. When I looked up the symptoms of social anxiety, he ticks almost all of them.
It's absolutely fine to me that he prefers his own company or just the two of us – I like time to myself too, and time to spend with my friends. I don't need a partner to be as social as I am, and I wouldn't want to try to 'change' who he is. But I worry about how anxious it makes him, and one occasion recently it really did affect our relationship – he couldn't find me in a pub, I wasn't at the usual table and he was too embarrassed to look properly, he sent 1 text message that I didn't see for half an hour, he waited outside the pub, and then went home, believing that I was ignoring him and had left the pub without telling him, fearing that I'd be angry at him for not showing up, so he switched his phone off for 12 hours. This obviously upset me massively – I had no idea where he was, I was on the verge of phoning around hospitals when he finally got in touch the next morning, and then he was so cagey and defensive I thought he wanted to break up with me. We had a big chat about what happened and the feelings that had led to him acting in that way, and I feel I understand a little better now, and he realises what he put me through. However, I really am unsure where to go from here in terms of supporting him with this. When I've spoken to him about how can this be solved, he is full of practical suggestions of avoiding situations where he would have a problem – rather than looking to deal with the social anxiety itself. At the moment I'm backing off on the issue, after the last conversation I tried to raise about it didn't go so well and he got quite defensive, although it ended ok, I did explain that I wasn't being critical, and that it was because cared about him.
So, basically, any advice about how I can support someone with social anxiety is welcome. It's not nice to see someone you care about tie themselves up in knots and be unhappy because of situations that to most people are completely normal and a non-issue.