Hello,
My partner and I (M/M) have been together for just about 2 years now. We’re both in our mid 20s, come from culturally Jewish backgrounds, and share many values. We met while both living in LA and were fortunate enough to both move to NYC for grad schools. We don’t currently live together as our schools are in different boroughs, but see each other most weekends as a compromise. Recently, my partner has been trying to make more friends as our social network seems to more heavily skew toward people that come from my experiences (school, past work, etc). He definitely wants more “guy friends” but also just more friends he feels he can bring to “our” circle. I have the benefit of living on a grad school campus with in person classes and a large cohort (which means all my peers live in the same place, take the same classes in person) while my partner’s school is much less centralized and students are spread around manhattan and take classes in a variable order (mixed cohorts). I’m trying to understand how I can support him making friends organically while also not feel like I’m ignoring him or “missing out” on time with him. We have open communication and I’ve directly asked about how I can help him, or if I should give him more space (ie not come some weekends to give him more “free time” to make plans with other people) but he gets upset at the idea that I wouldn’t be around as much when I could be seeing as our time is already limited. I’m not sure how to support his social growth - I’ve tried suggesting he join student groups, try to take in person classes rather than hybrid/online, join local events and groups, etc. but he seems resistant to my ideas. What should I do?
