AIBU to worry my 14-year-old son is talking marriage?

[ThatElatedRubyCat]

My 14 year old son has a 14 year old girlfriend. They're the cutest thing. The lovey dovey stuff they do is mostly adorable but my son is saying he wants to marry her and she's saying she wants to marry him. It's getting too intense.

She became the center point in his life, his top priority. I know, I know, teen boys are gonna be teen boys but this is overboard.

The girl, she's autistic and she has only been in my country since this school year. My son is her closest friend.

I'm a little concerned that the emotions are too intense.

You didn't

I go back and forth from thinking my son's relationship is cute to being worried.

I still have boyfriend from when I was 12😂 we agreed to be bf/gfand never spoke again. Cheating on him with my DH now lol.
It's teenagers. We were all bit crazy at 14. Her being from another country doesn't automatically mean she is vulnerable because of that as some seem to suggest.

Very unlikely they will get married but my brother did come home from school at 13 and say “I’ve met the girl I’m going to marry”. We took the piss out of him relentlessly… they are married now and have been for 15 years. It is extremely unlikely, and it’s probably just teenagers being teenagers. Just make sure he doesn’t get her pregnant and you’ll be fine.

Get him into football then or anything else she isn't involved in!

Yes we had the sex and contraception talk years ago too - but I’d like to update it with some reminders. My DS won’t engage now though! He also gave me the horrified “I’m not thinking about that” line. I’m wondering how to approach it now.

I think I need to get DS to invite her over. So far 95% of their “dates” have been sitting in the park. I suppose I should just be relieved there’s not much opportunity for getting up to anything he shouldn’t be in the park!

Have you met the parents of your son's girlfriend?

Ah I honestly wouldn’t worry too much OP, I think me and all of my friends were convinced we were going to marry our boyfriends at 13!

No! We haven’t even met the girlfriend. Have you?

Nobody said she doesn't speak much English?!

I have.

I'm really surprised you haven't met the girlfriend.

So can you share your concerns that it’s all getting a bit intense with her parents? That seems like it might be very helpful.

Did your son voluntarily introduce the girlfriend to you, then? I suggested DS should bring her over to ours sometime and he actually shuddered! I’m not sure how to engineer this without some kind of formal invitation-to-dinner-style thing, which seems more like I think they’re going to marry!

I thought I was going to marry my first boyfriend (at the time obviously). I was 14, he was 16. It fizzled out, but I remember those intense feelings well, Summer 1989 so a long time ago

I don't want to end up doing something to cause her parents to force her to break up with my son. Her parents don't seem strict but I don't want to test too much how easygoing they are.

My son voluntarily introduced me to her. He really wanted me to meet her.

Since you say your son's girlfriend maybe more streetsmart, is she from a troubled background?

I was going to marry my boyfriend at 15.

I did and we have been together nearly 20 years now 😅

Practically- make sure there are condoms available. We had a lot of dc’s friends round all the time and I always kept a basket on the bathroom windowsill with an assortment of useful things-tampons, tissues, paracetamol, condoms, plasters….so they could all help themselves.

Sounds totally normal for a pair of daft teens, to be honest. It will be over as quickly as it started and he'll be desperately in love with the next one soon. Don't worry about it.

Why are you encouraging this nonsense?? They’re 14 and young children. Absolutely no one I know with teens are in relationships. Why isn’t he busy with normal things like extra curricular and school?

This is within the realm of normal behavior for two fourteen-year-olds having their first relationship. If you try to break them up or “talk him down” from the relationship, you’ll give them a “star-crossed lovers” narrative to lean into, and you’ll be teaching your son that intense romantic feelings are to be avoided. Which might seem just fine in the short term, but won’t set up a healthy pattern for future romantic relationships.

So many people on this site seem to be afraid of their adolescent or younger adult children being emotionally passionate about people or things that weren’t “pre-approved” by their parents, and so many people seem to get anxious that somehow those feelings are going to damage their children.

They’re not “young children,” they’re teenagers, and it’s normal for them to be interested in dating and romance. Since when is it not?

How do you do this when they’re just 14 without making it look like you think they are likely to be/should be contemplating sex? Or did you have older teenagers too?

No I don’t think she has any troubled background. My DS is perhaps just quite young and un-streetwise in some ways (despite being very mature and sensible in others).

I’m surprised by the comments saying no teens should be in relationships! Having a first boyfriend/girlfriend at 14 seems well within normal to me, especially at a mixed-sex school. I guess it’s just the sudden intensity that gives me pause for thought.

My son and his girlfriend were picking out baby names when they were 14. There was no baby and that girlfriend is no longer a girlfriend. No wouldn't get too worried or too involved. Did you not try out your married name with boyfriends in your teen years I know me and my friends did

You cant make it less intense. You cant manage people's feelings so nothing you can do there.

There are some things you can so, you can make him less available with family activities, reduction in social media use etc.

However absence makes the heart grow fonder is an expression for a reason.

The best thing you can do is to be ready with a shoulder if it fizzles out.

Mind you I was 15 when I met my husband and im mid 40s now still together!

If she left in a mad rush and forgot to flush the toilet, he'd probably call her shit "cute" too. He's 14 and in love, she's perfect in his eyes.

You're overthinking all this way too much. He understands about contraception and consent, they can't get married for another 4yrs anyway and they both seem like nice people. There's nothing to worry about IMO. This notion that we should police what seems like a happy relationship is weird. Some people do marry young.

There's so many unhappy adults around, how did waiting work out for them?! If two young people have found happiness, let them have it. It'll probably fizzle out anyway but if it doesn't and they get married at 18, so what? Why do they have to go do what everyone else does? Which often seems to be: chasing money and buying a ton of unnecessary stuff, struggling to afford to live independently as a singleton, drifting into a LTR out of convenience, with someone they don't want to marry or who doesn't want to marry them, have children "by accident" (unprotected sex) with abusive/lazy/unsuitable fuckwits because they're subconsciously broody (and time's running out, if they're female), have a messy resentful break up and slink off into the depths of middle-age to lick their wounds, declaring the opposite sex are all bastards or only wanted their money. What's to aspire to there?

People can still have careers, happy homes, a good education etc if they've married young. I don't see why there's this societal hatred for it personally. If they grow apart, fall out of love and divorce, well woop-di-do they can join the rest of the divorced population then, it's hardly crime of the century 🤷 and at least they'll be co-parenting their kids with someone who's actually nice. That's worst case scenario. Most probably they'll have some falling out or grow apart long before they even marry, like most young people in first relationships do.