Why is my BF comfortable sharing his location with friends but not with me?

My boyfriend and I have been together for several years. One night he had been drinking and sent me his location. I assumed we were going to keep sharing locations after that, so I shared mine with him too.

Honestly, I didn’t think anything deeper of it. I shared my location simply because I don’t really care if he knows where I am. I assumed he probably felt the same way.

But since then, he’s brought it up twice and said something along the lines of, “We’re not Gen Z, we don’t need to share our locations with each other.”

The funny thing is, it seems like us sharing locations bothers him more than it ever mattered to me. I don’t sit around checking where he is. Most days I’m busy doing my own thing, working, running errands, dealing with life, etc. I might occasionally look, but I’m definitely not constantly checking his location or questioning him about where he’s going.

Normally I’d just assume he doesn’t like location sharing, which is completely fair. What confuses me is that he shares his location with some of his friends and doesn’t seem to have an issue with them seeing it. So I can’t help wondering why it feels different when it’s me, his long-term boyfriend.

There’s also some context that might matter. I’ve been going through a very stressful period with my business and finances recently, and he actually lent me a significant amount of money to help me through it. He’s been supportive, but he’s also told me that lately a lot of our conversations revolve around problems, money, business, and whatever stressful situation I’m dealing with.

He recently told me that when we’re together, he wants us to focus more on us and enjoy our relationship like we did when we first started dating instead of constantly talking about everything going wrong in life. And honestly, I understand where he’s coming from with that.

That’s why I’m not automatically assuming the location thing means he’s hiding something. Part of me wonders whether he feels like our relationship has become too focused on stress, problems, or accountability and he just wants more independence and for our relationship to feel lighter again.

But I still find it a little strange that he’s comfortable sharing his location with friends while specifically bringing up that he doesn’t want to share it with me.

Would this bother you? Is there a reasonable reason someone might be completely comfortable sharing their location with friends but feel differently about sharing it with their long-term partner?

Am I overthinking something that really isn’t a big deal?