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?

If this is true op - tell him to run in other direction.

A GF who cheats and over involved parents - it's not going to get better so he need to leave.

Well she’s created the toxicity by not dealing with her father and telling him his behaviour is totally inappropriate.

OP I don't think son needs to 'apologise' unless he's done something to directly affect the dad. If it's just 'you upset my little princess' then he's he's right to stand his ground and tell dad to mind his own business.

Having said this there's a couple like this in our family. They're married with kids now but they started off very like this and they have now had a very volatile relationship on and off for 15 years. Everyone has to gush and treat them as a happy couple when they are and then the woman is falling out with the whole family/removing them from facebook and all other childish shit when they're not. Everyone paid to attend a wedding abroad and took kids out of school to go and then they split just before the wedding. From a bystander's POV it's very difficult to just be a bystander because couples in such a toxic and emotionally immature relationship usually try to suck everyone else into their drama. They can't just create the drama and then expect everyone else to float along with them. Eventually people will just get sick of it all.

I think regardless of what the dynamic is with gf's family you need to be very firmly advising your ds to grow the fuck up and either leave this woman, spend some time being single and reflect on how he can make his next relationship more emotionally healthy or he needs to be trying his best to have honest and sensible conversations with this girl if they seriously want to make things work. I'd be leaning towards calling it a day if I was ds tbh but it's his life.

She should just go on the family holiday without him is she wants but if he was going to pay for a holiday before all this then why not continue with the plan?

LIfe does not have to be tit for tat

It sounds like they both cheated on each other and have broken up a couple times

Honestly I probably wouldn't be ecstatic about my daughter being in a relationship with someone who cheated and was on and off. Regardless of if she too behaved poorly

There's 2 options

1. break up for good. Their relationship sounds tumultuous and also it sounds like they actually both want to go out and sleep around a bit anyway.

2. if he's really serious about her, he needs to suck up his pride talk to the dad and say that essentially he was immature a couple years ago, but he loves her and is serious about her and wants to reassure the dad that he's grown up and will not cheat on her again.

He doesn't have to say sorry as such, but something acknowledging to the parents that he hurt her, he's matured and that they can trust him not to hurt her again. He cannot continue in a relationship with her if the dynamic with her family is so poor

The best thing is for your son to work out that this relationship isn't worth anything anymore.

If he sits and thinks about any possible future they have and how a disagreement could be controlled by overbearing in-laws then he knows it's doomed.

is his paying for a holiday his guilt coming out? I don't care what went wrong in their relationship other than unless they've had personality transplants then the issue could occur again.

My mum always said 'don't get back with someone once you've split up.' she's right.

There's far too much involvement of parents in their adult children's relationships these days.

I prefer MY day - when we told them bog all and sorted things out on our own.

As always we are just strangers on the internet with only the information you’ve provided. On that basis, I think the million dollar question here is why is it that father is holding onto this. You may well be right - he’s an egotistical man who is making it all about him and his daughter is getting too comfortable enjoying her nice times with your DS and family without sticking up for DS to her toxic Dad.

Or it’s possible that the Dad knows a bit more/saw another side to things than you. You love your DS, but have you really given enough thought to whether he might have done something that gave the Dad a reason to feel he was owed an apology? Are you sure he’s not minimising something that happened to you (or himself)?

Regardless of her Dad, your DS should not be making it about himself either. The important relationship is the one between her and her family. If her family is toxic, it is for your DS to support her and back her up not to force the pace.

You are right, it’s not the right moment for him to be paying for a holiday for her. There’s too much unresolved here.

Yes, this sums it up for me.
They are both adults and it's up to them how to resolve it - it is none of her father's business.
The fact that she is agreeing with her father is concerning and that would give me pause to think, if I were OP's son, about the future of the relationship.

I do appreciate that the DD is not his dad's possession, and he doesn't necessarily owe him an apology. But if he wants the relationship with her family to improve he needs to demonstrate that he is an adult, and part of that is just sucking up situations like this. Providing some reassurance and working on regaining their goodwill, not being stuck in a deadlock with the father

Not enough information here.
What did your son do to his girlfriend to piss her father off?
What did the girlfriend do to your son?

It's all very well people piling on and having a go at the father but we don't know what went on. Perhaps he had to deal with her heartbreak because of something your son did. Perhaps he had to collect her from somewhere after an argument with your son. Perhaps your son was rude to her father.

It's up to you to decide how to behave towards the girlfriend knowing the circumstances and you've decided to welcome her back with open arms. It's up to her dad to decide how to respond to your son knowing the circumstances and he's decided he wants an apology. That's up to him because you don't really know what went on from the dad's perspective.

However, unless your son apologizes to her dad there is absolutely no future in this relationship. The girlfriend is already saying why can't he just apologize and this will end up leading to more arguments and eventually a split.

If it were my son I would advise him that he has two choices here:
a) he apologizes and everyone moves forward
b) he does not apologize because he does not see why he should/feels he's right etc (and that's fair enough if that's what he believes after reflecting on what happened) but in this case he should end the relationship because it's going nowhere and it's toxic and unfair to everyone.

I thought I’d read about this situation before, thanks to the other posters who confirmed the other thread!

It does sound like an unhealthy relationship - and if they both cheated twice when drunk (and presumably after a fallout) I’m guessing they aren’t a match made in heaven. I would advise my child to take a look at the relationship and ask themselves if they were still in it for the right reasons.

As for the GF’s dad I guess it depends on if he wants an apology for something that affected him (eg did your son say nasty/untrue things about him, did he do something to him, was his cheating with the GF’s mother/sister, etc) or because he’s feeling like he owns his daughter. If the former, I’d want to know why my son is refusing to apologise. If the latter, I’d agree an apology wasn’t owed (although I think at the time I’d have sucked it up and made the apology for the sake of the relationship and not putting the gf in the middle).

I think this is the sign that the relationship isn't going to work. He's quite right not to apologise to the dad. But the girlfriend isn't quite on the same page. There's a cloud that won't lift till he does it, and even then it could easily descend again when he does something else: the dad will know he has that power over him.

The holiday would be horrible for him anyway. And in a way I feel sorry for the girlfriend, who maybe hasn't quite realised that she's going to have to live her life with dad's approval at every step. That's a tough gig.

I dont think we've had the full story here. What did the DS do exactly?

Well done to her dad. I wish my parents had taken that approach, my life would have turned out a hell of a lot better.

I think they should split up.

They need to make a decision about the relationship not a holiday.

I'm inclined to agree with this. If you want an emotionally volatile, childish relationship and you are a consenting adult then go right ahead but as an equally consenting adult I'd be refusing to be sucked into the drama triangle whatever my relationship to those adults

If it were my son I would advise him that he has two choices here:
a) he apologizes and everyone moves forward
b) he does not apologize because he does not see why he should/feels he's right etc (and that's fair enough if that's what he believes after reflecting on what happened) but in this case he should end the relationship because it's going nowhere and it's toxic and unfair to everyone.

This

So, how long would the GFs father plan to keep this up. He sounds like a complete dickhead. Assume they get married, have children, how would he behave? No one wants that kind of crap in their lives, for the foreseeable future.

I would be advising my son to put the relationship in managed decline, starting with not taking GF on an all expenses paid holiday. If she won't stand up to her dad and at least try and broker some sort of truce or agreement, forget her.

Op i don't think your son should apologise to her dad now it's been too long, also would dad except said apology ' no he wouldn't ' it will be ' well takes taken him long anough ' son won't be invited to holiday as dad will make a point of showing him ' who has the power here'

Girlfriend needs to stand by her boyfriend ' your son' by not going on family holiday, she needs to show her dad she's serious about boyfriend and dad can not control this, yes they both split up for a while for what ever reason and got back together, we parents have an opinions but hay that's it an opinion, good for you as parents to have taken Girlfriend in and shown the better way to parent, am sure you had your opinions when this first happened op,

Girlfriend needs to stand tall and support her boyfriend,

"Treating each other very badly" could include behaviours a parent would find unforgivable. Her dad and whole family ostracising the son years later would indicate they won't be forgiving him for whatever they think he did and maybe is still doing. Perhaps they're right? Is the relationship abusive?

Also how badly did he treat her? Was there violence? Did he behave badly in their home?

I think this too

They're 21 and having this much drama... they should cut their losses and split up.

They've been together since ce they were 18, have already split up once and are arguing. I'd be telling my son to cut her loose and play the field like his mum did

First, they're kids. They're too young for this shit. Their relationship has already been rocky. Hopefully they both learned not to treat a partner as they both did and will carry that with them.

Her dad is over-protective of his daughter and also making it all about him. He'd be a nightmare controlling FIL.

What actually happened? If he insulted or punched her dad for example then yes of course he should apologise to him.

Her dad is clearly holding a grudge was his gf completely heartbroken from being cheated on and her dad picked up the pieces? More info is needed I think. However if an apology really isn’t required I think he needs to walk away. His gf seems to agree with her dad. This isn’t going to get better. If he marries into this family it will be continuous expectations I think. Clearly your son and his gf have different morals etc. He is so young does he really need the aggravation.