Dear Captain,

I’m writing because I’m scared to break up with my boyfriend. Not scared of him, he’s a lovely person and would never hurt me, scared of what would happen to the rest of my life if I did. You see, I’m at university, in my second year, and have been going out with him since a month or so after I got here in first year. He’s my first boyfriend – I had never even kissed anyone before him. I’m pretty nerdy and awkward, and he is too, so it was just great that I got to be with him and to meet a whole circle of mutual nerdy/awkward friends. The problem is this: if I ever decide to break up with him, what on earth happens to my friendships with them? They’ve basically never known me as a single person, always with him, and some of them are friends of his that I met through him – we have a D&D group that both he and I take part in, and I really like all of the people there, but they are more his friends than mine and he knew them first. If I broke up with him, would my social life implode too? I don’t want to make people have to choose between being friends with me or with him, and I don’t want to lose friends.

What could I possibly do? I know I’m infected with numerous geek social fallacies about this, but I think our friends are are too and would react accordingly (feel like they had to choose).

When we went through a troubled patch this thought first came to me, and it’s never really gone away even though the problem at the time got better. I don’t want to break up right now, I’m happy as I am, I think. But I’m worried what might happen in the future. It would be hard for him too, and I don’t want it to be. I’m the only person he feels like he can talk about sex with, for instance, and I’ve tried to encourage him to find someone else to confide in but he hasn’t. I’m freaked out that I’m getting more and more entangled in this relationship and it’ll just be worse further along the line if we break things off. I’m also worried that my worrying about this is going to sour what we have now, and I don’t know how to feel better about it. I don’t want to be that person, the no self esteem person who breaks off a good thing because she was sure that it wasn’t going to last. I do want this to last. But I want to have some kind of parachute for if it doesn’t, and to know that the rest of my life isn’t going to run away from me.

Help?

Social Circle is Too Small

Whoa, Social Circle, I feel you on your anxiety about what will happen in your friend group because breakups can in fact be awkward, but the way you keep using the phrase “the rest of my life” makes me want to hug you, feed you a little something, and give you a good talking to.

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