Struggling with son's girlfriends personality

[Bluebrownies]

Hi all, so my son is 23, in August he set off to go travelling, he met a girl on the trip and they are now dating. He came home last Monday, just for 3 weeks, then they are going to her parents for 3 weeks before setting off around Europe. We live in London so they are staying with us which is great as we missed him a lot, plus they are keeping themselves busy with museums/theatre etc.
She lives abroad and a lot more rural so that will be a nice change of pace for them when they stop with her family.
The issue is I'm really struggling with his girlfriend's personality, she is respectful but I find her quite "a lot". She is very confident, I thought it might be a front as she was nervous but I'm now thinking she is just naturally very self-assured. Obviously there is nothing wrong with confidence but I've also found her to be very judgemental, she has said multiple times that brits are all so fat (as someone with a higher BMI I feel like this is targeted) and she has said several times British girls are ugly, in front of my impressionable teen girls (13 and 16). She usually follows with "not you guys but generally". I also feel like she is just overly opinionated in general, be it the food I cook, what I'm drinking etc. she has something to say about everything.
We also seem to be having a massive PDA issue, I know this is my son too but he has never been like this before, I feel like they are always touching in some way, she constantly plays with his hair or his hands, they kiss all the time, be it pecks or longer kisses it seems to be every 5 minutes, we went out to the pub for rugby on Saturday and despite their being plenty of seats she insisted on sitting on his lap, even feeding him food off her plate like he was a toddler. It all just makes me little uncomfortable, nothing against hand holding, odd kiss here and there but it's relentless, even when I'm trying to talk to them.
There are other things I dislike but I know aren't really any of my business (her dress sense is very revealing for one).

I'm finding it quite draining as obviously she is always with my son and I don't enjoy her presence so I almost avoid them both. I was so looking forward to having him home but now I'm looking forward to them going). My husband thinks it's just cultural and I will learn to love her but AIBU to feel like this because of these things?

I would stop engaging in conversation with her about any of this and just ignore the comments (hard as it is). Grey rock or whatever it’s called, immediately change the subject.

If she does it again in front of your DDs, I would take her aside to say in our house we don’t make such comments. We are raising our girls to be healthy and value themselves beyond looks and how they are perceived by men, which I find a depressing attitude in young women and constituting to the rise in eating disorders of both kinds - over and under eating.

You’ve already let it get too far and stop engaging DH. This is not a debate.

Conversely, why is the wife so quick to criticise her?

Ask him if he would tolerate this behaviour form an ugly middle aged women.

Italians are insanely precious about pasta and making it properly. I have to say I get a twitchy eye when I wear people snap spaghetti in half 😂 But most people can still reign in the rudeness and not comment.

As for the other food comments tell her she’s welcome to make it for herself any way she likes

Next time she mentions fat Brits ask her if she knows that every other person in Italy is overweight. And being so opinionated I wonder what she thinks of the fact that her country spent decades letting rapists walk free of their victim was wearing jeans until relatively recently.

She’s wrong. 47% of Italians are overweight. And I’ll tell you something else - you see it everywhere in Italy.

I hope you wouldn’t mention it as it would be extremely rude as a guest to slag off what food and drink your host’s have in their kitchen. Dont eat or drink it if you don’t want to

She is actually quite intelligent, we had a great conversation about her issues with the Italian government (genuinely eye opening as I had no idea about Italian politics). She gave us the stats on obesity rates in both countries so I don't think she is blind to it being an issue in Italy too. I just don't see the need for her to be so critical, this is both about brits and more generally critical, she has soooo many opinions!

He’s thinking with his dick as is your son. If you invited an overweight middle aged mate over no way would he be defending her.

It’s also very rude and childish to accuse you of jealousy.

Personal displays of affection 🤣

Her stats add up to 47% so I'm not sure she is wrong?

@JandamiHash I'm a spaghetti snapper 🤣🤣🤣🤣.

Perhaps because she’s rude and making misogynistic comments in front of impressionable teenaged daughters? Like she says

If she was offering to make us all fresh pasta I'd be happy to join her and get some tips. Rather she just picked up the jar and listed every issue she had with it. She wasn't even eating it!

ABOMINATION

"his exes weren't nice people (one cheated, one was emotionally manipulative and controlling). "

So, they are all incredibly beautiful.

But not nice. This is now a pattern. Like a trophy wife. But not nice underneath. How does ds explain this, his shallowness, his incapacity to be able to see beneath and choose someone nice rather than only superficially beautiful?

I usually would too! But she was standing in the kitchen and I felt like I had all the eyes in Italy on me, so decided better not this time!

Buy her a microwave lasagne meal. That’ll learn her.

Another Italian friend I had was accidentally pregnant out of marriage as a 15 yr old.. She went into those awful young mother's homes to have her baby in secret- and was forced to hand him over to be adopted.

I just hope that she is now reunited with him. {He will be over 18 now}
She didn't want to give him up, but there was no choice.

I don't know who the father of her baby was - I was young at the time and didn't ask.
She wasn't allowed a termination.

A man I know was a similar ''baby'' from one for these homes.... He happily IS reunited as an adult with his young teenaged birth mother and they look like brother and sister.

Problem isn't her opinions being right or wrong, she's vocal about them beyond socially accepted boundaries.

Tbh, I'd tell her that. At 23 she might just not realise.

Plus, tbh, while Brits are fat I've got to say we have some beautiful women.

FFS people do not snap your spaghetti! Put it in sticking out and push it down when the bits in the water go all soft and wiggly. Trust the process!

Or just bang in some tortellini

My brother once dumped a girl because she snapped spaghetti 🤣which I thought was rather melodramatic

Honestly , I'm not sure. His ex's were attractive, but I wouldn't say they were so attractive that it would ever counter their awful behaviour.
I actually like his current girlfriend more than either of them, and that is saying a lot as I don't like her very much!
They were extremely rude girls though (no concept of please and thank you, daddy's money, princess vibes), this girl seems highly critical and judgemental but she says please/thank you, she brought us a gift for letting her stay, and she does seem intelligent. I just can't be bothered with the PDA and constant opinions on food/looks/drinks.

That’s horrifically sad. I keep meaning to do my family tree on Ancestry because I know that there are some adopted out babies from family members over the years that We Don’t Talk About. I’d like to know they’re ok.

And don’t get me started on those vile homes. I have a real love hate relationship with my culture (and have renounced my Catholicism entirely) there’s so much cultural misogyny, and I feel much safer as a woman in the U.K.

Sounds like husband fancies her for himself.

She sounds really unpleasant. I've definitely met similar people who critique British people in this way. However, I avoided them shortly after, which I appreciate isn't a realistic option for you.

I actually feel a huge amount of pride that British women do not feel (as much) pressure to be beautiful, thin, perform femininity etc, as many women do in other countries. I had an ex from Romania who was constantly comparing British women to Romanian, and it often made me feel sad for Romanian women that the beauty standards were so high and so engrained. I think the fact your son's girlfriend is even noticing these things, means that she's likely been trained from a young age to value beauty disproportionately.

I would explain to her, once, that culturally, we are not happy with comments on people's appearances, nor comments on what people eat. If she proceeds to break that cultural norm, then she at least knows.

My husband is Portuguese so I visit there every 18ontjs or so. Most of the young women (under 30) are conventionally slim but the majority of older married women are grey and fat. Remind her of what she’ll look like thanks to her genetics 🤣

Hopefully she’ll be one in a long line before he finds a nice girl. Me are stupid when it comes to attractive women. And also you have a DH problem. It is not ok that he’s allowing you and your DDs to be so disrespected in your own home