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?

I would gently advise my son to extricate himself from her and her toxic family.

The relationship is doomed. Even if your DS did apologise now and actually mean it, there is no salvaging the relationship with the Dad after all this time. The whole family aren't suddenly going to treat your DS like family are they?

Three separate things

1. Her dad sounds like he's on a power trip
2. She should have your son's back about her dad being unreasonable
3. Your son shouldn't be looking to 'punish' her

The whole thing sounds like a damaging dynamic. I don't think they should be in the relationship.

Not enough information on this one. It really does depend what the father is expecting an apology for and why.

I agree it sounds like (on the surface) she is stuck between 2 male egos.

It’s going nowhere. They were kids when they started dating and it sounds like it has been a bit shit. He’s 21 - he should be having the time of his life, not having to deal with a load of bollocks. Relationships at this age shouldn’t be mired in all this toxic complexity and family interference. Tbh, if my dad was taking me on holiday at 21 I wouldn’t expect my bf to be invited too, but the whole not speaking/ostracising/apology is situation is just ridiculous. He should just end it, go on holiday with his mates, and move on. She’s not “the one” - she’s just some girl he dated (and likely cheated on) at 18. If they were in their 40s with a mortgage and a few kids it would be different but they aren’t so no point flogging a dead horse. She’s not that into him and it sounds mutual.

Well done to your son for not perpetuating this horrible, pathetic patriarchal behaviour by apologising to the dad. His girlfriend isn’t her dad’s property. He has apologised to who matters and it’s up to her to manage her family.

Agree with this.
At the time they were both 19, only just adults legally , and maybe not at all adults emotionally. She may have cried to her Dad, the whole thing might have caused her parents a lot of worry and upset. I have daughters this age and I am very protective of them so I understand how he might have felt.
The “boundaries” thing you mention, well, that has been a pyrrhic victory. Sometimes it is better to do the more adult thing and accept nuance and differences of opinion. I think he should have apologised for his part in it. That doesn’t mean that his girlfriend wasn’t also partly responsible, but clearly her father feels your son was behaving badly, and perhaps he was ? His girlfriend wants him to apologise, and if he behaved badly then he should say sorry for his behaviour, whether his girlfriend also behaved badly isn’t relevant to that.
Having a partner who will never look at the bigger picture and do something to smooth relations over with family is not great. One apology at the time would have helped her Dad feel respected as a father looking out for his child, and reassured about the future. Even if her Dad is totally unreasonable, sometimes it’s better to do the most helpful thing than be right.
I have daughters around 19, in this situation I would find an apology of sorts reassuring, even though I wouldn’t ask for one.

People are asking what happened between my son and his gf to split them up. V briefly: he found out she’d been cheating on him for a few weeks, and liking horrible posts on Insta from her cheaty man saying ‘Hey, I’m getting with your girl!’ So, in other words, liking posts in which cheaty man mocked my son. Also, and separately, while away with friends, my son got drunk and snogged a girl for about 2 mins before saying ‘Look I can’t do this, I’ve got a girlfriend.’ GF told her fam whole story - ‘we both behaved badly, we were both immature idiots. We’re all good now and have forgiven each other.’ Her dad decided it wasn’t sufficient for my son to have apologised to gf - she has, for some reason in his view, to apologise to him too.

Son has always been very friendly and polite and considerate to all of her fam. He’s also, on many occasions, witnessed her (alcoholic) dad scream abusivley at gf and reduce her and her mum to tears!!

Is nobody considering the possibility that the young man concerned might have been abusive? Violent?

Yeah that relationship is just over. Leave it and go spend his money on amazing trip for himself.

Theres more to this....ask your son what happened, all of it. What did he do. You need to have an open and honest conversation and he needs to own his part in that. I understand the Dads insistence that he apologies, it means that he wants your son to acknowledge his abuse in whatever form it took, that he is sorry for it and that it is not acceptable in his family.

Tell him to RUN from this awful family.

Alcoholic abusive controlling father who appears to be on a Mafia don-style power trip (are they rich?)

Cheating girlfriend who also joined in with the other man's mockery of your poor son

He can do better.

My advice would be "run a mile son"

Dad sounds like a self-important prat, and she will always be daddy's girl.

Your son should just bin her off and consider this a close shave tbh!!

Why would he have to apologise to her father if he was violent towards his girlfriend?

He's 21. He's too young for this. So is she.

She clearly harbours resentment towards him and won't rest without an apology to her dad.

It does sound as if they both cheated.

Just start again at this age both of them

Where do you get that from

Definitely more to it than what you've been told.

Of course, my first thought, but it doesn't sound like it from the uodate

Ok, you ask what we would advise your son. I’m afraid my advice would be that he breaks up with her. This is the kind of drama you do not want in your life. It’s one thing to deal with drama if it arises when you’re married with 3 children and a mortgage. It’s another thing entirely do choose a girlfriend with a family like that. (Alcoholic father making you apologise? No thank you! Trust me this will only get worse!) Now if the girlfriend had stood up to her father and had said ‘dad, boyfriend and I are good, you need to drop asking for an apology and I really want him to come on our holiday’, that would change things. But she hasn’t! On the contrary, she seems to agree with her dad that your son should apologise. I’d run, not walk, away from this relationship and find myself a lovely new girlfriend with a drama free family. They are out there, at his age he does not need to settle for the girlfriend with the drama family! Best of luck, it’s not easy, I get that, but this is what I would advise my own son if it were to happen to him.

That update changes my opinion - nothing at all to apologise for and Dad needs to butt out completely.
Though he also doesn’t sound like the type of man your son would want his girlfriend to come up against so tread carefully on encouraging her to stand up to him.

She is toxic and he should find a better girlfriend.

Given her father's reaction, the apple does not fall far from the tree (does he have one of those "dad's rules for dating my daughter" t-shirts?)

I would be gently pointing out to son that the correct way to treat your child's partner is politely and with kindness. But you are not involved in their relationship (unless you are having to fix things, collect them, give statements to police etc) and you don't have to actually like them.

TBH, knowing what you know about her? I wouldn't have been at all welcoming beyond normal politeness.

I doubt the girlfriend's father would be requesting a mere apology if that were the case.

The update makes it clear that the girlfriend has a dick of a father.

Did your son ask you for advice or was he just telling you his thoughts/feelings? He seems to know what he's doing. He seems to understand the situation well.

I wouldn’t advise your son to break up with her as others have suggested. He needs to come to that decision on his own and it sounds like he will. He seems to know his own mind very well and it sounds like you don’t have that kind of relationship with him where you would try and dictate his decision about keeping this relationship going.

It’s great he has come to you for advice, and that’s exactly why IMO you shouldn’t tell him to end things. He wants to know what you think he should do about the holiday - I would tell him exactly what you would do in his position (whatever that is) but support what he decides to do regardless.

It sounds to me like he could do better though. His GF and her father are totally in the wrong here

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I would never date someone with a toxic family. I want my partner to be emotionally stable, I want to give my future kids a stable home life, I want my kids to have good relationships with their grandparents.

You can be a lovely person from a horrible family, but unfortunately you've probably got a lot of trauma to work through. I would steer clear of a romantic relationship.