I’ve Never Met Any Of My Boyfriend’s Friends & It’s Making Me Suspicious

Wanting to share my new-found happiness with my new boyfriend with those closest to me, it wasn’t long before I introduced him to my friends. However, we’ve been dating for six months now and I still haven’t met any of his. What gives?

1. He’s met mine, so what’s the holdup? When we’d been dating for a couple of months, I thought it was the right time. They’d heard a lot about him from me and I wanted them to be able to form their own opinions. I value what my friends think, so getting them to meet a guy I’m dating is part of my process of vetting the guy to know if there are any red flags I should be aware of before taking things further.
2. He says he likes to keep his life compartmentalized. After my friends met him and approved, I was happy. I then asked him if I could meet his friends so that I can get to know him better through the context of his friendships. At first, he brushed it off and would say he’d arrange something soon. After some persistence, he eventually said he would rather not introduce me to them because he likes to keep his romantic life and friendships separate to keep things simple.
3. He says I’m not missing much. He’s hung out with my friends on multiple occasions at this point and we’ve had a great time, so I don’t get his point in keeping me from his friends. We could even have a joint hangout with both our friendship groups, but he says he’s not up for it. He doesn’t think there’s any point to it because his friends “aren’t that fun anyway.”
4. He says it keeps drama out of our relationship. Another reason he gave for not introducing me to his friends was that he believes when friends are involved, things can get messy. If his friends and my friends meet and things don’t work out in our relationship, then it can be too damaging to ask people to pick sides. This made wonder if he’s already thinking about the end of our relationship.
5. He doesn’t talk about people in his life. When I ask him about people in his life, he gives me general statements and doesn’t get into too much detail. This makes me wonder if he has healthy relationships or if he’s hiding something about his personality that I don’t know about but his family or friends would divulge.
6. He says he doesn’t have many friends. This isn’t a bad thing—the older you get, it’s expected that your friendship circle would be smaller but the connections you make will be more meaningful. I think that’s even more reason to want to introduce me to his close circle of friends because their opinions of me would matter to him the most.
7. We’re not friends on social media. I told him it was OK if he didn’t want to introduce me to his friends, but it didn’t make sense why we couldn’t be friends on social media. He said that his girlfriends in the past who have been friends with him on social media would get upset over little things they saw and read too much into comments or likes. This made me suspicious. If he isn’t doing anything questionable, it shouldn’t be an issue for us to be social media friends.
8. He says we wouldn’t get along. He says that his friends can be a bit tough on girls he dates, questioning everything they do to see if his girlfriends are genuinely interested in him or even ignoring a girl he’s dating if they don’t approve. I’ve wondered why he’s let this behavior go on in the past in his presence and why he hasn’t stood up for his girlfriends. It makes me worry that maybe if push came to shove and I needed him to be there for me, I might not be able to count on him. All because he probably values his friends’ opinions more than being there for his girlfriend.
9. Is he embarrassed by me? This thought has crossed my mind a lot. I understand that maybe if he’s not lying, things are better kept separate, especially if there’s been drama in the past. But if he was really into me, wouldn’t he want to show me off to the world and let the people who matter to him most know about me? It even makes me worry that maybe I could be his side chick and he’s telling me this BS story about keeping parts of his life separate so that he can be with multiple girls. It’s completely messing with my mind. I don’t want to be that girl wasting her time being led on with a guy who does not intend on taking the relationship far or feeling like I am a secret.