To want to tell friend how her son has treated my daughter…

[Watermelon212]

Currently fighting the urge to tell friend the above. I won’t because friend is lovely and her son is an adult (18). Instead when I meet up with her I plaster a smile on while listening to how happy her son is and how well he’s doing, while knowing my daughter is struggling and isolated, caused in part by her son.

Her son has treated my daughter very badly, he has trampled over her feelings, left her in a very vulnerable situation on a night out and betrayed her trust by secretly pursuing her best friend.

They have just started uni, it’s already an emotional time, when you want to make new connections but rely on home friends for support. My daughter is about to have that support pulled out from under her when she finds out that her “boyfriend “ who she thought was into her is now actually with her best friend and she has no idea yet. They have both kept it from her.

I found out through my other child and have no idea if I tell her or not. She is already struggling to settle into uni.

thanks

@Watermelon212 all you can talk about is wanting to tell his mum and being unable to move past it when you speak to her.

Ive no idea if they have kissed. I have seen them cuddle/hug/look pretty cosy

Oh OP come on… sounds like she’s had this fantasy idea in her head of him? They’re 18 and they’ve hugged? When you said they were very close I presumed they were spending nearly every night together at uni.

You’re working yourself up and need to take a step back. The bigger a deal you make out of this, the harder your DD is going to take it. You need to instil in her that leaving her to walk home alone on a night out is simply unattractive, that him and her friend secretly dating is simply unattractive, but that she was never in a relationship with this man. There are lots of people to meet at uni (clubs etc.) or she can defer a year or move. Unfortunately this is likely only the beginning of her heartbreaks so pick your battles!

Well, I’m guessing you and I would probably differ in our answer to this

Is feeling like doing something and actually doing it the same thing though?

like if I feel like eating a piece of cake, will that still give me the calories?

And actually, I did move past it when I spoke to her. I moved past it for an entire evening and no one would’ve known.

What's his mum going to do though? take his phone off him, ground him for the weekend? Maybe he swerved OP daughter as he feels suffocated by her needing him as emotional support and is trying to create distance but as he's 18 he is being cack-handed in his handling of this.

The reality is they are a couple of teenagers, first time away from home and trying to find their way. Were they really close, or was a forced closeness created by their mothers being friends and them being lumped together at events? As for the "always escort someone home" I was the one walking people home and the mother hen of my uni friend group, it's not fun rounding up drunk people at the end of the night and getting them home safe, and it gets old very quick. Many a night I spent chasing someone around at 3 or 4 in the morning trying to keep them safe from themselves, in the end I just stopped going out.

This sounds like an everyday thing, thinking back to decades ago when I was at university! Your DD needs to grow up and this episode will certainly help with that; the boy needs to learn there are consequences to shitty behaviour (which hopefully a father or mother will help him learn, what he did by leading her on and not walking her home was shitty); but mostly I think you need to let go.

If your DD is old enough to be living in a flat somewhere you worry about her safety (wtf?), she has to be old enough to sort her life out. I'm afraid that imo YOU have been negligent in sending her out into the world with an undeveloped radar. Radar for shitty men, radar for things that can go wrong on a night out, radar for when someone is lying to you, radar for when parents/siblings are gently suggesting things you need to ask why etc. My parents had done all of that stuff for me and my siblings before sending us away. Two of us went to campus colleges which were fairly well protected/bubbles; I moved abroard straight away, in the days waaaaay before mobile phones and when long-distance calls were crazy expensive. It's really shocking to me that a factor in choice of tertiary education is where her crush might end up!

I don't think your DD is ready for university yet. If she were mine and asked to come home/defer by a year, I think I'd say yes.

This. Steer clear OP, she will.hopefully have lots of friendships and liasons at uni.

so if she had met someone and hit it off and wanted to go home with them would she have been expected to not do that and make sure she walked him home? Or does this only work one way?

The reality is most of us got ourselves home plenty of times at uni, Get a taxi and call a friend so you feel safe. Its not that hard.

Firstly, hopefully your DD now knows for sure that he doesn't fancy her. If he did he would be jumping at the chance of 'walking her home'.

Secondly - if two teenagers both fancy each other, and are in each other's company enough, it doesn't take a year to 'work up to' a relationship.

Thirdly - you are giving your DD some very problematic messages - that walking outside at night time is so dangerous that she shouldn't do it. That is completely over the top. When I was younger I always found it very patronising and annoying if someone took it upon themselves to walk me home. Not everyone has the same view on this, and the fact that he didn't take his agreement to her request as some kind of oath does not mean he is a massive shit head.

Agree...

OP I'd be concentrating more on telling my DD that the boy she thought was going to be her boyfriend isn't infact going to be her boyfriend.

How do you think she'd feel if she still has that thought and not only saw them together, who knows kissing/cuddling but also found out you knew it was going on way before you let on.

I only hope if it does come out while at uni she's not in a group of people...it would be awful for her, more so if she was the only one that didn't know.

You talk about the boy as though he's an emotional support dog. Politely, you need to keep out if it.

Have you got two threads running at the same time?
It’s quite confusing

This. OP if your dd needs this much support maybe this uni isn't for her. No shame in coming home and going to one nearby. Meanwhile please get her in some therapy so she can have a more independent life. Reading the thread one would think she is much younger then 18.

@Watermelon212 two entirely different things.

It's so clear you've not moved on. As someone who was recently a teenager in uni, please just move on and forget about this entirely.

OP - I mean this really kindly but I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill and that will not help your daughter. Do you have a tendency to over rely on others? It sounds to me as if you are too invested in this relationship and that you may well be encouraging your daughter to be too.

I would focus on independence. Making new friends, settling into university, joining sports clubs or classes, joining societies of things she’s interested in. Making the flat a little more sociable - maybe one evening where they take it in turns to book or go for pizza together? A part-time or evening job. Some volunteering?

Bring 18 and starting uni can be tough. But doubly so if your self worth / social life / interests are dependent on some bloke. Time for her to spread her own wings and find
out what makes her tick.

This. Apart from leaving your DD in the lurch to walk home, I can't see what he's done that's so wrong.

Also, what would you gain from telling his mum? Do you want her to tell him to go out with your DD or something?

I really feel for you. Of course you want to tell your lovely friend about her son's behaviour. That's what we have done for years for these people who are only recently adults. But you know you can't. He's his own person now and so is your daughter. He's not good at interpersonal relationships yet, because he hasn't had much practice. Your daughter is also probably still learning. Some people are quicker learners and some people grow up to be mean, it doesn't matter how lovely their mum was.

I'm going through a similar 17/18 year old and I struggle with the same things.

She needs to be capable of getting herself independently and safely home at night. That's a basic life skill. Teenage boys are flakey. I have no idea why you would be so involved in her life.

It sounds like that's exactly what your daughter was doing last year though when he was interested in her and "doing all the chasing".

He's lost interest now so has moved on, that happens when someone gets strung along for a while.

The leaving her to get home alone after saying he'd go with her isn't great, but he's hardly "stranded" her, its a uni town so I presume somewhere that taxis will be available

I was going to write something similar to @TheCoolOliveBalonz but possibly a little more direct. This is her life not yours; yes, unrequited love is tough, but this probably will not be the last time it happens, nor will having to walk home alone...

You should be encouraging her independence, meeting new friends, enjoying her course and stepping away from her old home life. It is for her to live, to make mistakes and to learn from them, so that she become a fully functioning grown up. Yes, her heart may be broken on a number of occasions, your job will be to patch it up and make sure she is resilient enough to go back our there and live her life to the full. All of this is part of the University experience and leaving home.

First term at uni is often hard, teenage relationships are particularly hard. At 18 it takes you very little time to get together if you are interested - it sounds very much like he really wasn't, in spite of what you say he said. Perhaps he was just trying to be kind to her and then met someone he really fancied? Hormones are all over the place at 18 and the freedom of uni fires everything up. It's going to happen I'm afraid.
Talk to her about distancing herself from him and being realistic. It's just one of the knocks of life that she'll have to learn to navigate. We've all been in an unrequited love (or at least unrequited fancying) situation. It's awful but it is what it is.
Nothing to do with your friend so don't hold anything against her.

You are giving your daughter grace in her naivety because she’s 18. You need to extend the same grace to this boy. Leaving her alone is crap, but he probably didn’t fully appreciate the potential consequences.

You need to support your daughter in taking better care of herself - there will always be people who will lead her on etc if she allows it to happen.

You should also tell her he has a new girlfriend - it sounds like she doesn’t really have any friends apart from her family, so I’m sure she would be really disappointed if she found out you all knew and kept it from her.

Starting university can be difficult and it sounds like you’re placing all the blame at the feet of this boy. What about your daughter’s role in this? Why hasn’t she made any other friends? Encourage her to join clubs etc instead of focusing on this boy. Can you book a trip to visit her so she has something to look forward to?

I feel for her I really do - but if he wanted to be with her he would have made it very clear that he wanted that.

I hope she can spread her wings and realise she has many opportunities ahead which are much further reaching and more interesting than him.

I'm in my mid 20s and this happens! It's part of growing up! Do you have the type of mindset where you expect men to be quite traditional? Because modern dating doesn't work like that.

He'll grow up and learn to be better. But this is just dating in your late teens/early 20s tbh

teach and encourage her to find friendship not romance.

the walking home thing was bad maybe do mention that to your friend though but the other stuff it's typical!