EDIT: I may just be overreacting due to stress, I have to put my cat down next week and have a bunch of cramming to do for college. Bear with me. ;.;

Have you ever had a boyfriend/girlfriend, or a significant other who had family and/or friends who just didn't seem to like you for no real reason at all?

I've been dating my current boyfriend for about two and a half months now, we'll call him 'T'. T and I have a lot in common, we never fight, we back each other up, we pay for each other's meals and gifts, we are open about everything, and we just generally get along very well. He thinks about me a lot (he sewed me a scarf for my birthday from my favorite show) and he's very considerate of my feelings. He's one of the best guys I've ever dated. I like to go out of my way to give him extra attention and show him a lot of appreciation if he does something for me.

Now T lives with his friends, Josh and Mike. All of them are hardcore PC gamers and they share an apartment together (they're kinda overweight too). Their main living room is a gaming bunker. Mike is a 30-some year old who works with T at the same job as a supervisor. Josh is unemployed. There has been tension between the three of them recently because Josh is not making enough on his unemployment to meet the bills, and T has had to pay them and Josh owes him over $300. T wants to move back in with his parents because he doesn't want to support Josh, live in the filthy place (I would relate their apartment to an episode of "Hoarders: Buried Alive" if there were food, dirty dishes, hair, and garbage everywhere), and he frankly wants that money to spend on himself and me. I tried ONCE to clean their entire kitchen: Rotten potatoes with maggots, hair and dried soda on the floor, three weeks worth of dirtied dishes, molded rice in a cooker, chicken juice puddle in fridge, eight bags of garbage, caked on crust on the stovetop, etc. It was spotless for about two days and then they trashed it up just as bad as before. It's futile. So T plans to move out in another week or so--things have been tense and this will relate to what happens later. But basically if T moves out then Mike will either have to get another roommate or move out because Josh cannot pay his share.

Meanwhile, T likes to take me to a nearby city to go to LAN parties and movie nights with his accquiantances and friends. LAN parties (basically gaming bunkers where you sit around and play games for three days straight) isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought it would make T happy if I accepted his invites and tagged along. The first LAN party was pretty boring since I didn't have a game I really liked to play, but I did meet some of his friends that were nice to me. However, most of the people at the party made no real attempts to socialize and they struck me as socially awkward (the fact that they let their guests sleep on a concrete floor didn't strike well with me either). Whatever, it was an interesting experience and I wasn't about to make it a bad one.

So the last thing he took me to was a movie night out in the same city (about an hour and 20 minute drive). We get there and the friends I talked to at the LAN party were not there--much to both of our surprises. The people who didn't talk to me from the LAN party were present though. The whole time I felt kinda ignored since only one person bothered to say anything to me, and I hadn't met him before so it seemed appropriate. I was kinda put off by the whole thing. I went up to go get something from the kitchen and when I walked back into the room everyone got silent and stared at me as if they were waiting for me to say something. I didn't understand, but T seemed to be having a good time so I didn't want to spoil it. However, the guy who hosted it was very rude. He never made an inclination that the party was on a time schedule, but the minute it was midnight he booted all of his guests out the door claiming he was tired (people like me and T had drove for an hour to come and it just seemed so casual an insult). I was being pushed out the door where there were no lights turned on. I had my hands full with T's drinks and bags of snacks while he handled the cooler. I thanked the host (who didn't seem to respond to me), and I accidently tripped off of concrete stairs that I couldn't see and landed smack onto the pavement. The host SLAMMED the door behind me (didn't even ask if I was okay), and I scraped my knee and broke a fingernail. At this point it was late, I was tired, and I felt that I had been treated rudely--basically pissed.

Out of anger, inside T's car I turned to him and said "I never wanted to go to these things again!" I realized later that I must've made him feel pretty terrible, and that maybe this wasn't the most tactful thing to say to T. Needless to say, this triggered a heart to heart in his car for the whole hour on our way back. He admitted that what happened at the party was weird though, and wasn't against my feelings at all. However, he also said that Mike and Josh apparently had been having problems with me as well. Mike is blaming me for T wanting to move out because of the cleanliness and money issues. And Josh is saying that me and T are moving 'too fast' (which I just account to his jealousy because he admitted he liked me before I dated T), we're not that clingy and we acknowledge personal space anyway. T questioned whether or not he should be friends with these people anymore because of how they're acting. He also said that if I wasn't going to these things anymore, then he didn't want to go anymore either. And while I think he -could- use better friends, I don't want to be the reason he's alienating people from his life. It doesn't seem right to me . . .

I just feel bad because I really wanted T's friends to like me. And not just for my sake, but because I'm T's second girlfriend ever and I just don't want to create these kinds of problems for him because they suck. I want his friend's approval, but I also don't want to kiss ass to people who don't give a shit about me or their own friend.

You are worrying over nothing, I think. To answer truthfully to what I think is the most pressing issue: they can all shove it up their *whistles*. So what if they don't like you? My stance is that you are the one dating your boyfriend and he's the one dating you; no one else needs to like you and you do not have to please them. Everything else I might have to say is fluff, to be honest. What's important is that you two love each other; everyone else can go to hell with their opinions of you.

More than likely you're probably right too. I may just be getting upset over nothing. I just have this urge to want to be liked by his friends for some reason. And I certainly don't want to be the cause of why he would alienate them. He kind of admits that he doesn't have many friends so I get bothered whenever there's a problem with his current ones. But he is supposed to meet my circle of friends this weekend, so hopefully he'll be friends with a few of them. We're generally more sociable. The whole thing with what Josh said hit me pretty hard too because Josh actually was my friend for a few years before I even knew T. He's the one that actually set us up on our first date. It's frustrating.

I may be able to speak somewhat to the party mishap... I hang with a lot of gamers. While this in no way excuses the rudeness and unsympathetic attitude the host had, most gamer geeks are INCREDIBLY socially awkward and he may not have even really realized that the way he was behaving was not socially appropriate. Granted, he still could have used some common sense around turning the friggin outside light on and saying, "Are you OK?"

I'm not trying to piss off gamers here or anything by stereotyping (I did say -most-), but I am speaking from experience, I swear it. Unfortunately, hardcore gamers also tend to have this non-acceptance attitude towards non-gamers. This host may have noticed that you weren't participating in the gaming at the previous gathering and now associates you as being snobby or the "tag-along" to the actual gamer. Not a whole lot you can do about that :-)

I can totally understand where you're coming from... My fiancee was living with his mother when I met him, and for a few years it ended up all three of us living together despite his mother openly disliking me. Their apartment was, cleanliness-wise, identical to what you described, and no amount of cleaning would help it STAY clean. It finally took me leaving him for him to realize I wasn't kidding when I said I wasn't living in a nasty home with someone who hated me, and he finally moved out -- which meant she had to leave too, since we had been pretty much supporting her. If your boyfriend has decided to move out because of money and/or cleanliness issues, it is really none of his roomies' business why he came to that decision! Maybe you *did* have something to do with it -- maybe dating you has made him realize that he needs to grow up and shouldn't be living like that. How is that a bad thing?

As for his friends, I'm going through that part of it right now. Remember above when I said I left? Well, when I leave, I LEAVE. I moved two states away for a year. We saw each other a few times when he came down to visit, but we both had to fend for ourselves socially for the first time in years. I made some great friends where I was and miss them terribly now that I've moved back. The fiancee, on the other hand made gamer friends. Now, I do some gaming myself and hate to generalize, but Warrow is right when she says most of them are incredibly socially awkward. I've been to two events with them and was totally ignored at the first one, and at the second one only two people spoke to me, and that was only to ask when I was due (I'm pretty obviously pregnant right now). I wanted them to like me not just for my fiancee's sake but for mine.... but the conclusion I've come to is that some people who are SO into their hobby only want to socialize with other people who are into that hobby. I honestly believe that unless you and I were to get hardcore into gaming, they have no use for us and there is really no point in trying to force it otherwise. If you really don't want him giving these friends up, tell him so, but also make sure that he knows that you can't be expected to go hang out with people who don't want you there -- that's not fair to you at *all*. It would be nice if our SO's friends liked us, but that isn't always going to happen... you just have to look forward to the time when you've been together long enough that you have some mutual friends that you can go hang out with. :-)

I'd try and get a job (if u don't already have one) tell T to get one to (if he doesn't already have one) and finally move away from those fat gaming shit-heads. Gaming is ok, but the parties sound boring and not worth your time so it's good your not going to them anymore. With T, you should take him to more normal social events, like small parties with your friends who are in couples, maybe to clubs (that doesn't always work) or to school events. That way you won't have to worry about his old friend's approval because you'll have the majority on your side.