How can I get my SO to want to be more involved in my social life?

The only way to avoid an argument is to stop arguing. If what you want is not what he wants – deal with it. Learn to do your own thing, without him and do not try to force him to go, if he does not want to go. You are not joined at the hip, nor should you be.

You are you, and have a set of interests that is not the same as his. I have never been able to understand why anyone would insist that their partner be a carbon copy of themself. You go out, and leave him in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with separate interests from time to time.

I could never interest my ex to go out with my friends but I had to like his friends and his SIL! Now his brother is nice but she just grandstands-everything is worse for her, boo hoo hoo. Tit for Tat I say now!!

@YARNLADY I understand what you mean and believe me we don’t do everything together. Most of the time I do end up going out by myself. I just feel bad because sometimes I get the feeling that my friends think he doesn’t like them. He can’t ALWAYS stay home while I go out alone! We’re a couple and we should do some things together.

From what I have read, many people find out after the fact that they have gone into a relationship with expectations that are not met. Not every partnership can survive that revelation. When your expectations do not live up to the reality of the partner, you are left with the possibility that you have made the wrong choice, or that you have to adjust your expectations.

I have been married 35 years, and have had to adjust my expectations more than once, as has my partner.

My sister just divorced her husband because he was more interested in playing video games in the garage than watching his kids. I used to come over to babysit while she went grocery shopping so his gaming wasn’t interrupted with keeping a eye on his own children.

Gaming can be an addiction.

It’s a hard call, but if you want to go out and he doesn’t and he doesn’t tell you not to go, then I think you should just go alone. Have fun your way and let him do the same. If that is not enough togetherness for you, then you have a decision to make. Trying to make someone else change to suit you usually breeds resentment. I know from experience it did for me.

Maybe he doesn’t really enjoy going out- he could simply be an introvert. Therefore, it could be quite a chore and an exhausting thing to be in large groups and frequent social events. I would consider seeing your friends to be pretty stressful. Maybe you have been arguing about this because he wants you to understand that, and maybe he doesn’t even know how to explain it?

I don’t think you should totally disregard your own feelings if he is more comfortable at home- you are in a partnership, and he should make some effort to do what you want, while you have been mostly letting him do what he wants.

He might be an introvert.

I skirt the edge between introverted and extroverted on those Myers-Briggs tests every time. What that means for me is that I can be social and friendly to strangers and charming, etc., etc., but then I need a lot of time to recharge my batteries. Most of my friends don’t know this and think I’m extroverted, but it takes a lot out me to be that way even for a few hours. Ergo, I don’t do more than one “party” type thing a week.

Try ”sudo want_to_be_more_involved_in_my_social-life”.

Am I the only one who is a bit disturbed by people asking Fluther how they can get their lovers to do what they want them to do?
You’re not talking about Windows here. This is a human being with a will of his own. I suggest you let him make his own decisions, instead of trying to manipulate him into letting you have your way.

This is a serious issue that is not going away. I think it could be the rock on which your relationship founders.

You don’t want to bug him all the time, but he is unwilling to compromise and say “I will go out with you and your friends twice a month.”

Are you sure there are not other areas of the relationship in which you are the only one doing the compromising?

Think about it being five years from now. You still are wanting to see and do things with your friends. He is still tied to the video game console. Is this what you really want long-term?

I say, do not rock the boat. You are way ahead of the curve.
Or find another SO.

So many guys seem to prefer gaming to real life interaction. I wonder why that is?

I have the opposite problem. My wife doesn’t like to go out with our friends very much. She doesn’t like parties. She only like situations like dinner parties where there are maybe as many as six other people.

I don’t like going out without her—I don’t enjoy answering the inevitable questions about where she is or how she is, and the underlying suspicion that something is wrong between us. I mean, there is or has been something wrong, but I don’t like it being so obvious.

She prefers to have people over at our house, but even so, she is always counting and recounting and trying to figure out how many we have room for. She spends hours worrying about making the house look perfect, as if we were going to be inspected by some five star general. I DON’T FUCKING CARE!!! Whoever comes over is fine. We’ll figure out a way to fit them. It doesn’t matter how many place settings there are or whether the house is in clean enough shape to make memory chips. People aren’t there for a chair; they’re coming for the company.

Anyway, I gave up after a while. Stopped going out. Stopped having people over. We had kids, anyway, so it was even too much for me doing the cooking and all.

Well, I guess my point is that you deal with it any way you can. You can’t make him go out. You could go into counseling and express how important this is to you and see if you could negotiate some deal—maybe he goes out a couple of times a month. But you want him there to have fun, not to be sullen, right? Although you do say he enjoys himself when he is free of the computer.

As always with couples, the issue is communication. You’ve got to be able to communicate about this, and reach an agreement that works for both of you. If you can’t talk about it, then you’ve got deeper problems.