Although I've only been dating my current boyfriend for about a year so it's too early to call him a HVM, he's treated me well and is what I would want in a romantic partner. He doesn't watch porn or follow/like girls/women with social media thirst trap influencer accounts (of his own accord, not because I "forced" him to); he drives us to all of our dates and pays for the gas, food, and events; he covers our hotel accommodations if we stay overnight in other cities; and he frequently surprises me with cute little gifts even when there's no special occasion (and of course, on actual special occasions such as my birthday, Valentine's/Christmas, or our anniversary, he'll go all out). Besides this, he has a fairly well-paying job for someone of his age, respects both of his parents and regularly keeps in touch with his family, and is hard-working, ambitious, and has a kind heart.

All this being said, I'm honestly sick of his LVM/pickme friends. For context, my boyfriend went to university in a different city, but moved to the city where I currently live when he graduated college and got a job here. Because of this, he doesn't have many close friends in this city aside from one LVM/pickme boyfriend/girlfriend who both happened to get a job here, too. This past year, my boyfriend has made a lot of other friends, but compared to 5 years of knowing this LVM/pickme couple, 1 year of getting to know his new friends hasn't been enough time for him to have as much of a genuine human connection with them as with his old buddies.

The LVM/pickme aren't necessarily "bad" people, and I know that they're both good friends to my boyfriend, but I don't enjoy hanging out with them, nor do I feel particularly comfortable that these are the "type" of people that my boyfriend would choose to keep in his close friends circle (after all, we wouldn't want to be friends with people who don't bring value to our lives, and over time, we become more similar to the people who we choose to surround ourselves with, so it concerns me that these are the type of people he enjoys being around).

The LVM/pickme pair are both social media influencers on tiktok (the LVM has over a million followers while the pickme has several tens of thousands), and their content honestly makes me cringe. The pickme has videos that are supposed to be "cute" but which honestly just make me sad... For example: a video where she's trying to get affection from the boyfriend but he's busy on his phone or playing video games, a different video where she shows various ways of "getting the boyfriend's attention" such as by slipping under his arm when he's typing on his laptop, and one of the most recent videos where she said that she and her boyfriend haven't gone on a date in two years (even though they've only been together for three years...) so she decided to surprise him by making a custom game for them to decide their date night ideas.

It's not just on social media that their relationship feels off to me. I've met both of them in person, and the boyfriend joked that the girlfriend "used to be ugly back then" and he wouldn't have dated her if she didn't have a "glow up." Besides that, both of them actively check out people of the opposite sex and tell their partner about it, and then they both talk about it, which makes me nauseous because they're okay with the idea of sexualizing random strangers.

My boyfriend has other LVM/pickme acquaintances (for example, pickmes that post provocative photos on social media as a sign of "fEmAlE eMpOwErMeNt" when it's really just catering to the heterosexual male gaze), but these are people who he's known since his childhood or teenage years, and who he's not close to anymore (and he never likes any of these types of photos/videos of theirs). For example, to be fair, I also have LVM/pickme "friends" who aren't actually my "real" friends anymore but who are more just like people that I knew from back then, and who I just haven't explicitly cut out of my life, but who I never talk to anymore. I think everyone has a lot of friends from when we used to be kids or teenagers, and statistically, a lot of them are bound to grow up into LVM/pickmes during adulthood, and as long as we're not close to these types of people anymore, then it's okay.

These old acquaintances aren't a problem, but this LVM/pickme couple who live in our city give me a bad vibe, even if both of them have only ever been good friends to my boyfriend and decent people to me when I met them. I just don't know if it's possible to reconcile these types of low value people with a high value romantic relationship of my own.