As the title mentions, I’ve noticed a trend of my close friend of 4 years showing signs of irritation every-time I bring up my boyfriend and that I’m spending time with them or that I had done an activity with them. This includes scoffing, rolling her eyes, or statements like “let me guess….him again.” I’m not too sure what the cause is because from what I know she likes him and has no problems with him but I’m getting frustrated at every time I bring up that me and him are doing an activity together she’s visibly annoyed or asks why I didn’t do it with her instead of him.
I wouldn’t say that me and him spend too much time together for me to be annoying either. We’re long distance (2 hours away) so we make a note of preserving our weekends for each other unless one of us has a prior commitment with friends that we’ll communicate it to each other. We’ve been dating for almost a year now come December so she’s known him for a long time and this development is more recent in the last few months and I’m just confused and frustrated.
I’m not sure if maybe it’s jealousy or her feeling left out but she also has had a long term partner that she spent most days with (both weekends and weekdays) to the point where we stopped hanging out as much but I never remembered that infringing on our friendship so to me it feels a bit disingenuous that now that she’s single she seems to have issues with me spending time with my partner.
I don’t want to bring this up to my boyfriend because she’s his favorite friend of mine and it would hurt him a lot to find out that she’s reacting this way about him. I also don’t want to bring it up to her because she’s sensitive and the last time she made a comment about his looks a few months ago and I told her it was inappropriate she lashed out and said it was a joke and I was picking his side over hers which wasn’t the case.
I guess some feedback or advice would be appreciated as to how to navigate this because I don’t want to minimize her feelings but I also don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal life with her if she’s devaluing my partner and she’ll get angry if I don’t tell her details or what I do with him so it’s a catch 22. And I don’t feel good knowing my close friend feels this way about my relationship either because to me it seems like she’s devaluing it.
Am I the problem? I feel like I make time for her weekly and we text and call but I don’t know if I’m not being empathetic enough to her going from being one of the most important people in my life to mow sharing that space with someone. I don’t want her not to feel prioritized but I also feel like there’s a better way to communicate if she feels hurt over the change in dynamics. I also feel it’s unfair though as this is my first relationship and she has had 4 before where this dynamic was flipped and I lost priority and I didn’t act like this so I’m just lost on what’s going on.
TL;DR: My close friend of 4 years is visibly irritated and makes snarky comments every time I bring up that I spent time or will be spending time with my boyfriend of 10 months and I’m not sure what to do because I’m starting to get frustrated and don’t want to hurt any feelings in the process