Son asked for advice - what would you advise him?

[SallyMcCarthy]

My 21-year-old son and his gf have been together 3 years. In Feb 23, they split up for a few months after both treating each other badly. Then in summer 2023 they got back together, committed to making it work, and have been happy together ever since. My husband and I welcomed the gf back into our life instantly and unconditionally. From our point of view, whatever had gone wrong between them and then been sorted out was entirely their business. All we needed to know was that our son had now decided he wanted to be with her again. It was up to him! Since he now wants her in his life, she’s of course going to be part of ours.

Her dad took a different approach, however: he told her that it wasn’t good enough that she and my son had apologised to each other, sorted it out and got back together. He said he wouldn’t allow my son back at his dinner table until my son had apologised to him for the way he had treated his daughter.

My son, thinking this man was unreasonable, and being unwilling to pander to such interference and boundary violation, didn’t apologise to his girlfriend’s dad, and as a result has been ostracised by her family ever since. So, my son and his girlfriend have been hanging out with our family a lot. She’s been treated like a member of our family - allowed to stay and eat with us all the time, taken out for meals, taken on holidays… we’ve all just accepted that this is how it’s going to be - our family being nice to her while hers is horrible to my son.

However… a problem has now arisen. My son was planning to treat her to an amazing holiday abroad, which he was going to pay for and was happy to pay for. Then, just as he was about to book it, he found out that she was going on holiday with her family for a week later in the summer - and that her brother and sister’s respective girlfriends and boyfriends were invited on this holiday. His girlfriend also blamed him for the fact that he wasn’t invited and said to him, ‘It’s your fault you’re not invited - why can’t you just apologise to my dad like he’s wanted you to since Feb 2023?’

My son told me last night that he’s now feeling much less keen to treat his girlfriend to this holiday, for two reasons:

1. she seems to think he is entirely responsible for the continuing problem between him and her family, rather than realising her dad is the unreasonable one - and he’s hurt that she hasn’t in any way stuck up for him to her dad or advocated for him - instead she’s blaming this long-standing issue totally on my son.

2. he no longer feels comfortable that he, and our family, are treating her so nicely and treating her to all this stuff, and she’s happily accepting all of it while also allowing her family to exclude my son and being willing to go on holiday with them while they exclude him, and blaming it all on him.

I think it is totally reasonable of him to have qualms about treating her to a holiday given that she’s not, as he sees it, sticking up for him to her dad? But am I being unreasonable?

Can't see that lasting now.

I mean of course he isn't invited on their family holiday but his girlfriend shouldn't be blaming him or expecting him to pander to her dad.

Can you imaging how bloody awful the holiday would be anyway?

Honestly from the get go she should have told her dad not to be so daft.

Of course if she heavily involved them in what was going on I suppose he feels he gets to interfere & that might most likely be a pattern.

That's the problem with splitting, dishing the dirt & getting back together.

It must make it hard to accept when you know what has gone on.

I wonder if the dad was hoping it would force them to split?

Most people would advise someone to stay split after being treated badly wouldn't they?

I expect there is a different story from the other side to the one you're hearing from your son.

that isn't to say your son is not telling you everything - but each story has two sides

Yes, that hadn't occurred to me. And anything like that would have required an apology.

I think the facts around that need to be established before you advise your son.

If the Dad won't budge on this and neither will your son, then eventually their relationship will end. As the daughter, bt the sounds of it, is already showing more loyalty to her father.
My advice is for your son to bite the bullet and apologise. Or the GF will certainly tire of him.
And if he wants the relationship to work then he needs to be involved with the family.

Yes, I don't think staying in the relationship is in the son's best interests at all.

My last point was a more general point about how sometimes when two people have a standoff about who is going to apologise, it makes it a virtual certainty that the situation is never going to be resolved. My SIL and I will most likely never speak to each other again due to something like this. So it's best to avoid being too rigid about that sort of thing IMO.

But I think it's too late to apply that logic to this situation and in any case, the girlfriend's dad sounds like an absolute knob.

That is so not true. You’re saying that if, for example (not saying this it what happened, of course) , this man had to drive and collect his dd from ,say, a violent situation, he has a right to be involved, but if his dd just put up with it and told him about it later he has to pretend it never happened?

I think like a few other posters have said, if the dad just wants an apology for how his daughter was treated, then really, this is ridiculous and enmeshed and frankly, your son should get out.

However, if the dad is looking for an apology for behaviours that directly impacted him.... then I see the point. It's now many years down the line and we would be very unlikely to ever accept such an apology should it ever materialise, but exBIL is very much in this camp. His behaviour towards SIL was appalling - but that's between them. What neither of them seem to underatnd is that his behaviour towards US was also appalling - rude, aggressive, threatening - AND his behaviour regularly required me and DH to step in to take on childcare for their children. None of that has ever been acknowledged and neither me nor DH will ever have anything to do with him.

Hi, OP -

I assume there is no question of abuse in the relationship - if there is then I think the YP should break up for that reason alone.

Otherwise, I can only see this leading to long term stress for your DS. Even if (and I am just reaching for the extreme example) the break up was caused by one sided cheating on his part, if the GF has accepted his apology that should be good enough for her father. She isn’t chattel.

If the breakup was over mutual mistakes then this demand for an apology is even worse. Based on everything you’ve written, I too wonder exactly what the girl’s family have heard and how well she has your son’s back. It doesn’t sound like she will be good at giving her partner the priority he deserves and her father will not be happy with the idea.

I think your DS can do better.

This could be the other side of the story - who knows

and if your son has now matured he needs to seek that out and then take responsibility for his previous actions and assure the father there will not be a repeat

Your son needs to find out so he then can sort this out

@Thingsthatgo is spot on here.

Unless it was for a very valid reason as above, I would advise him to end the relationship.

This contempt for him and her not acknowledging her father’s cruelty, will have a huge negative impact on your DS and in-turn will always affect their relationship. This sort of issue never goes away with people this.

@Bellyblueboy I suppose I’m saying the dad is being the most unreasonable. I guess I’m saying the son has an opportunity to be the grown up here, as the dad clearly won’t. Not by apologising, but by taking the mature approach and saying basically, back off, girlfriend and I are adults, this was our issue, not yours, we have resolved it.

Though @Thingsthatgo makes a good point.

This comes down to maturity I think. She’s not quite ‘adulting’ yet and allowing her family to treat her as a child.
the Dads move is a power play and your son is right to not pander to it, if they stayed together it would be a very sticky precedent.

All in all I think it’s been handled fine for the most part, she shouldn’t ’stick up’ for your son really, her Dad is unreasonable but shes still living there and can’t control his behaviour. The only thing that needs to be addressed is her ‘blaming’ your son. That needs to be worked through in a calm and rational way, so they can better understand each others perspectives.

Also, the holiday is irrelevant, if your son wants to treat her to the holiday then it shouldn’t be contingent on anything except their continued relationship. If your son and his gf want to continue the relationship then anything he does to ‘punish’ her will only make the situation more toxic, if that’s how he feels then he should simply walk away.

But you’ve said you don’t know the actual reason? Maybe he actually needs to apologise?

Similar happened with myself and DH when we were mid twenties. His parents thought it was some tiff that we’d split up over then reconciled. He continued this narrative as obviously the alternative wouldn’t paint him in such a good light.
My parents wanted nothing to do with him initially and couldn’t understand my forgiveness etc. We’re now twenty ish years later and everyone’s fine.

The ‘tiff’ in question…he spent our entire savings for house deposit. We lost our current home etc.

His parents are no longer blissfully unaware as I told them. Their response was ridiculous, perfect angel son, I must have driven him to it.

More likely than not she told Dad how terribly she had been treated and Dad is unhappy about it. Dad will not forget and you will never know what was said to him.
Honestly it's time for them both to move on.

If my dd turns up with a black eye it sure as hell impacts me, whether I’ve had to go and collect her at midnight or not.

he no longer feels comfortable that he, and our family, are treating her so nicely and treating her to all this stuff, and she’s happily accepting all of it while also allowing her family to exclude my son and being willing to go on holiday with them while they exclude him, and blaming it all on him.
It sounds like the scales are falling from his eyes and he is getting fed up of the dad's treatment of him / GF not advocating for him. He just wants you to tell him that he is doing the right thing to dump her.
He probably is right but there's no coming back from it - you can't be on / off / on again / off again / on yet again. If it's the end then it's really the end.

I’d say one of two things. Either an apology is deserved depending on what your son did. In which case the fact he hasn’t apologised speaks volumes about him and even if he did apologise now her family will always hate him.

or the apology isn’t deserved, her dad has no boundaries but more importantly she can’t stick up for your son against her dad. Her family will always think your son isn’t good enough.

either way it sounds like the current situation will be permanent if your son stays with this girl. Is that what he wants? Years down the line who’s coming to the wedding, what happens if they have kids? I’d be tempted if I was your son to cut my losses and move on.

Where did you get that from? Fucking weird.

If he wants to treat her to a holiday he should. The fact she is going away with her family is irrelevant (unless she can't get time off work for 2 holidays).

He doesn't get on with her family nothing has changed he needs to accept this will be their life together with him on the outskirts of her family. He can apologise if he wants to resolve it, or he can end the relationship if it is not worth the hassle. Continuing as they are with her family excluding him does not seem like a long term solution.

Girlfriend not done anything wrong, but if the dynamic doesn't work for either of them then that is understandable.__

Exactly!

It must be hard for her being in the middle but this will never get better

Yeah he sounds like a controlling male chauvinist. Centring himself and his pride over his own daughter. Like if he has concerns about the boy, what good is a meaningless apology to th dad going to do?! He should actually be having him in the home and observing him if anything.

I would advise my son to get out of this relationship.

the gfs father sounds a bit like a controlling bully. And yes, we need details because, did he really suffer much from the fallout himself? Or is he just trying to be the big man and show your son who is In charge?
if the latter then he should escape now because your partners family is just as important as your part
er ( if they won’t support you or help draw boundaries)

Adults are entitled to ask for advise from family 🙄

My advice to him - end the relationship. It's all going nowhere.
this relationship is not a good one because of her dads interference. I'm with your DS, they're adults now not children and her father was unreasonable to expect an apology from him and then for the subsequent sanctions. I get he doesn't know the full story either. If this girlfriend thinks your DS is the unreasonable one (as she does) then there's little point in carrying on. I expect she doesn't even realise she's being manipulated by her father as it's happened all her life.

I think I'd be taking the line of encouraging him to think about whether breaking up might be the best option here, but very much through an objective analysis of the facts rather than expressing an opinion. Sadly some families are just all about the drama...

OP - without knowing what happened between them I don't think it's possible to say? He could be being a patriarchal git who sees his daughter as property or he could want to look your son in the eye & know he's safe to allow him back into the house.