Navigating my daughters sexuality

[Confusedformer]

Just looking for a bit of advice and support. My 15 year old daughter had a really awful social life at high school. She’s a really sociable girl and her friends are not, so she was really lonely for a long time.

inevitably she started looking online for connections ‘met’ another girl, then came out and told us she is bisexual, and now she says she has been dating this girl for six months. In this time they have met four times because they live hundreds of miles apart.

I’ve also met her, she’s a nice girl and very much presents as male, though is apparently not trans (but is a lesbian).

Im having some issues talking to my daughter about how I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to limit herself to ‘dating’ somebody who lives hundreds of miles away. Her local social life has just started to pick up a bit and she’s now moving in wider circles with both boys and girls, going to parties etc. She’s vivacious and pretty and it’s quite obvious that some of the local social circle quite like her. Her close friends are starting to come out of their shells a bit and starting to date other people locally, meaning she’s slowly being surrounded by ‘couples’ when her ‘other half’ is hundreds of miles away or on the end of a screen.

so that’s the main thing I’m having difficulty with.

Added to the fact that the other girl apparently can’t tell her parents she’s gay, so they don’t know about this relationship. She recently came to stay at our house and I was uncomfortable at playing along with this when I’m aware the other mum doesn’t know the nature of their relationship. I feel this puts me in a bad position. I have the feeling the other girl is slightly emotionally neglected - certainly her parents thought nothing of allowing her to travel to us when they’d never had any contact with us, which I found a bit worrying.

the other issue is that when I try to talk to my daughter about this, she keeps having a go at me for the language I use. She’s dated two male-presenting girls and I’ve never known her show interest in boys or male celebrities (but she’s had crushes on famous women). I’ve said I think it would be far healthier at her age to have a relationship with a girl who lives closer to home and she’s absolutely blown up at me accusing me of calling her a lesbian. She said she’s absolutely not a lesbian but her preference is ‘male presenting girls’ who happen to be lesbians themselves. I’ve never said she’s a lesbian, I’ve referred to ‘girls.’

im honestly just lost what to say/do. I think the intensity of her online relationship with a girl she’s met four times is really limiting to her socially at this age, and I’ve no idea why she’s so upset that I think she wants to go out with girls when there’s no evidence to the contrary. She says I should know she’s also interested in boys because she went out with X boy or Y box when she was 11 or 12 (I didn’t know about either of these, they were short lived and never made it home).

I think I’ve gone out if my way to be supportive as far as possible - despite my reservations - and I’m getting lots of backlash whereas the other girls mum has no idea they are ‘dating.’

im just overwhelmingly sad and worried about the whole situation she finds herself in. The other girl sort of love bombs her (flowers, gifts in the post) which she I think finds intoxicating and keeps her in the relationship saying how she’s happy and I should be happy for her.

How do I navigate this? Thanks for reading

I think the best thing to do is support and encourage her to continue socialising. I wouldn’t push the break up of the relationship as it was only push her away. Let her make decisions on that and try keep communication open. Explain to her that you want her to be happy so if this person makes her happy right now then great.

over time the relationship will most likely fade out, especially if your DD’s friendship circle widens but let this happen naturally. If she suggests going out to meet with friends then seem happy about it and tell her to have a good time.

I wouldn’t be happy with lying to the mum though. Of course it’s not your place to tell the person to admit the truth to their parents but you would be upset knowing someone lied to you and your dd was actually going to stay with their partner. Be strong and honest with your dd and say you’re not willing to lie to another parent.

You sound lovely op. I'm sorry you're worried about your daughter's relationship. I think I'd let her work things out for herself. I don't have direct experience but I do know my daughter's female friend had a long distance relationship with a girl who identified as a boy around that age. There was a bit of sneaking around because my daughter's friend's mother didn't know about the relationship and I know I felt conflicted about whether I should tell her what was going on. (They'd meet at comic con events I seem to remember) but it eventually fizzled out and I'm quite glad I didn't say anything. I did tell my daughter to let me know if she thought her friend was doing anything reckless. It doesn't really help you but maybe just support your daughter to have a social life locally and hope she finds more enjoyment in that.

Thank you for your responses, these are really helpful replies.

She’s going up to sixth form college in September and hopefully widening her circle, plus she’s just been interviewed for a part time job, so hopefully she will be out of the house and busy a bit more - and therefore less inclined to sit in her room on a screen.

With regards to the girl coming up to visit, I think they are making tentative arrangements to meet halfway and I’m much happier with this as there’s nothing to explain to the other parent. I was very unhappy having her recently come to stay overnight and I won’t allow that again unless I know the other parent is aware - it was a particular occasion and I didn’t feel I could say no. I feel as though my boundaries are being pushed to a level I’m unhappy with and it’s hard to navigate that without her ‘stomping off’ like teenagers do.

She’s making noises about this girl being invited up to parties that DD has been invited to, and I just want to say no, this is your local social circle, you don’t need all of these things to collide. For example there’s a party planned at the end of summer for all the young people going up to this particular college, organised by a parent. She wants to bring her to that and I’m having to explain it’s not really the right context - she lives hundreds of miles away and isn’t going to that college.

oh it’s so hard. Just doing my best, I want her to be happy of course, but I know I need to guide this as best I can without sticking my nose in too much.

So she wants you to refer to her as bi instead of lesbian? That's fair. Being bi is quite tricky as you're always 'accused' of batting for the other team (I say this as a bi woman who is married to a man). In all fairness, you also don't need to navigate anything. Just be open and listen to her.
Re the girlfriend, don't push. All you have to do is be supportive and encouraging. Encourage her to go out with her friends, the relationship likely won't last, very few long distance teen romances do.
I get it's hard when you're only trying to help, but I vividly remember by mam pushing me to break up with my arsehole of a boyfriend when I was a teen and it just pushed me more towards him. I see it now I'm hindsight but there was a time that my relationship with my parents was incredibly fractured.

Thanks catamaran. I think she wants to be seen as bisexual but there’s no evidence she likes boys apart from this ‘you know I went out with Oscar when I was 11.’

No, I didn’t know because you were 11 and you didn’t tell me (and neither did you ever see him out of school).

she told me that she likes ‘male-presenting girls.’ So….girls, which is what I said immediately prior to her blowing up at me.

Ahhh it’s so tiring being a parent. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ‘haver of opinions’ will be attacked for them, the ‘starter of conversations’ will be found lacking and the ‘haver of ideas for holidays’ will find their ideas don’t come up to scratch. Even the ‘cooker of food’ will have complaints levelled at them. Best not to have opinions, best not to think of a holiday idea, start a conversation or indeed cook any food. I’d be quite happy with this arrangement at the current time and would happily leave tbh, I’m kinda done.