Son (16) and his flaky girlfriend

[Worriedmumble]

My son is 16 and he’s had a girlfriend (16) for the past 9 months. During lockdown he obviously couldn’t see her, but now he’s trying to make up for lost time.

Meet up 1 arrangements - she cancelled because she didn’t feel well.

Meet up 2 - she cancelled because “her parents were being mean”.

Meet up 3 - she ghosted DS when making plans and said she fell asleep

Meet 4 - she agreed to meet, confirmed the morning of and then ghosted DS

Throughout the Easter holiday she didn’t see him once, but was out a lot with friends.

Meet 5 - DS turns up at her house (invited) and she cried (wouldn’t say why), hugged him and fell asleep, but he was thrilled to see her regardless

Meet 6 - Arranged but she ghosted him and didn’t answer her texts the day of.

DS was upset so explained to her that - at her request he was going to forgo his family holiday (long holiday long haul) this year so she wouldn’t miss him and so they could meet up, but if this was how it was going to be, then he’d have to rethink. She promised the earth, “no don’t go on your holiday, my parents are looking forward to taking us on day trips”. So my son said, if you can’t make a meet, then that’s no problem, just say that...but the ghosting has to stop. She agreed.

Meet 7 - arranged and day of she ghosted him and said she fell asleep again

Meet 8 - Parents were mean abs so she went to sleep hence the ghosting.

Meet 9 - arranged in advance and this time I was due to pick her up and bring her to ours. The day of, she ghosted DS and I wasn’t sure what was happening. Finally she messaged ‘I can still come over, but the traffic is bad and I’m going to be home really late from school’.
I said ‘DS, sounds like she wants you to cancel’...he says ‘no no, can we pick her up but later?’ I say ok, so he texts back that we’ll pick her up whatever time she likes. No reply. Nothing. An hour passes and I say, look, she’s not coming. I have to go out.
DS is upset, but resigns himself. We go out. He sends her a message saying ‘forget it then’. He gets an IMMEDIATE response “I was just about to text you that I can still come and I’m ready”. DS says ‘that’s great! I’ll call my mum!”.

He phones me and although DH and I have just got to where we were going, we leave and come straight back to get him. DS has hopped in the shower and is getting ready. Girlfriend texts and says ‘I’ve had a shit day at school and now this. All my parents wanted to do was spend some time with me. I’m so pissed off. I’m not coming over’.

DS is devastated. He breaks down and is inconsolable. It’s disappointment after disappointment. She told him not to text back, so he hasn’t. He did however blame me saying ‘if only you’d waited...’.

I was furious after being dragged home to pick her up. I personally think she’s wasting his time and his studies and MH are suffering. She’s young and immature and clearly isn’t ready for all this. Not her fault, but I want him to move on and focus on other things.

I’ve told him that this isn’t how it’s meant to be. That it’s meant to be fun and lighthearted at his age...but he just gets upset with me.

He hasn’t got out of bed all weekend now and is utterly depressed. She was also be meant to be coming over tomorrow, but I suspect she won’t be.

How can I make him see that he’s wasting his time and affecting his school and other social life?

I’m not sure from your OP...have they ever actually met in person? How long ago?

@Worriedmumble what's has he seen of you and his dad's relationship at home? Lack of boundaries is normally a copied behaviour, especially at the young age he's at. It's likely you have similar dynamics in your own home that he's subconsciously modelled. Changing these dynamics would help him a lot.

UPDATE:

I had a phone call from DH yesterday that DS was upset at school and I thought that the gf may have finished with him. That was not what happened.

On picking him up, DS confided in me that a month ago, the girlfriend started hanging out with a group of kids who smoke weed and the gf had now started smoking weed.

DS asked me to read the texts between them, as he was too upset to explain. Basically he is plead with her not to do drugs as he is very much against them and she is insisting they make her happy and it’s not his decision. I was so proud of how DS explained the dangers of the drug being a gateway drug and how disappointed he was. She is telling him she loves him but he’s letting a minute thing come between them.

DS was devastated with her choice and yet again, they are not seeing each other this weekend...but I’m very happy about this. It’s clear that when the gf has the choice of see my son or do weed, she opts for the latter.

DS does not want to leave her. I have said that I cannot facilitate a relationship with a girl who takes drugs. He understands but is crushed. I told him that no one will facilitate that over the holidays. That he can come with us, or stay home with Nan, but nan will not be dropping him off at the gf and taking responsibility for this.

DS this evening has told the gf that he’s told his parents and she is angry with him, especially as he told her that we do not condone the relationship. I think he was hoping she’d stop to save their relationship...but I think he’s going to be hurt when she doesn’t respond in this way.

I am so proud that he’s trusted us with this. I am also getting him counselling to try to improve his self worth.

I told him
‘I cannot make you finish with this girl, but i want you to think about what you would and wouldn’t do, if you had a son in this position. I am very proud of you and trust you. But people who take drugs have bad judgement and are unfortunately often involved with other less nice and sometimes dangerous people. And that puts you at risk too. You are old enough to know and understand the problem and you need to now make sensible decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. I can’t help you and I can’t change her.’

I just hope he makes the right decision. He’s been so sad these past few weeks and now I understand why.

[quote DateXY]@Worriedmumble what's has he seen of you and his dad's relationship at home? Lack of boundaries is normally a copied behaviour, especially at the young age he's at. It's likely you have similar dynamics in your own home that he's subconsciously modelled. Changing these dynamics would help him a lot.[/quote]
Dad and I both work. We are both school teachers. We earn equal and both share chores around the home.

Dad is very affectionate and devoted. He had a deprived upbringing and wants to ensure his son has everything he didn’t have. He takes our son to sports and to acting classes. He is very involved.

I am also an affectionate person. Dad and I have a very good relationship. We don’t row and on the rare occasions we bicker, it’s never in front of our son.

Dad does not go out, he doesn’t drink or smoke and he is a good man. He is helpful and considerate. We don’t have money worries. We are very loving and cuddly with each other. We are loving and cuddly with our son. I can’t say that either of us ‘wears the trousers’ as we pretty much work together. I like to think we are good relationship role models for our son, but perhaps that in itself is pressure.

Up until now, our home has felt calm and happy. Somewhere we all looked forward to coming home to. Currently though, it feels stressful and worrisome and I am finding parenthood very very challenging.

OP credit to you for having such a good relationship with your son, that he opened up to you in this difficult time.

Cannot fault you, wishing you and your son the best to get through this. 🌺

He’s going to miss out on a family holiday so he can spend time with her.

That feels like emotional blackmail to me.

She’s avoiding Him. This whole post makes me feel really uncomfortable. Is this a reverse?

@Hotankles

He’s going to miss out on a family holiday so he can spend time with her.

That feels like emotional blackmail to me.

She’s avoiding Him. This whole post makes me feel really uncomfortable. Is this a reverse?

No and I’m not sure what you mean to be honest?

I think if this is real you need to stop treating treating your son like an adult and start treating him like the 16 year old boy he is.

You can’t demonise the girl - she is 16. Still classed as a child.

Tell your son he is going on holiday and to leave her alone as she doesn’t want to be with him.

She sounds awful (the expecting 2am replies, particularly).

But you also sound overinvolved, probably because you live so rurally. Given he has no way to travel to see her on his own, I think it is quite controlling to say the following.

"I have said that I cannot facilitate a relationship with a girl who takes drugs. He understands but is crushed. I told him that no one will facilitate that over the holidays. That he can come with us, or stay home with Nan, but nan will not be dropping him off at the gf and taking responsibility for this."

Whatever your views are on weed (which is pretty common among teenagers) it's unfair to forceably impose those on a 16 year old, who is in effect imprisoned and prevented from making his own choices by where you live.

@Hotankles

I think if this is real you need to stop treating treating your son like an adult and start treating him like the 16 year old boy he is.

You can’t demonise the girl - she is 16. Still classed as a child.

Tell your son he is going on holiday and to leave her alone as she doesn’t want to be with him.

That’s easier said than done. He is inundated with messages of love and ‘I can’t be without you’ and ‘please accept me for who I am’ and ‘you are making something so small (the drug taking) come between us’.

The ugly fact is, that when the weekend rolls around, she has to choose between time spent with DS or time smoking weed. She can’t combine the two and is clearly choosing the weed, but hoping DS will come around and ‘support her’. I’m sure that if she thought he would join in, she would indeed spend her weekends with him as well.

I am not going to force him on holiday as at 16 he may be a child, but deserves choice. If it’s a bad choice, then he will have to deal with it. But I have made it clear that his Nan will not facilitate his trips to see his gf, knowing she takes drugs. That’s too much responsibility whilst we are away. So either he comes on holiday...or spends his time with Nan and gramps. That is the choice.

I have not demonised the girl. She is a child as well and very immature. She also clearly has some MH issues. She is not a terrible person, but she is flakey and that is evidently down to the drug taking.

@MMMarmite

She sounds awful (the expecting 2am replies, particularly).

But you also sound overinvolved, probably because you live so rurally. Given he has no way to travel to see her on his own, I think it is quite controlling to say the following.

"I have said that I cannot facilitate a relationship with a girl who takes drugs. He understands but is crushed. I told him that no one will facilitate that over the holidays. That he can come with us, or stay home with Nan, but nan will not be dropping him off at the gf and taking responsibility for this."

Whatever your views are on weed (which is pretty common among teenagers) it's unfair to forceably impose those on a 16 year old, who is in effect imprisoned and prevented from making his own choices by where you live.

To an extent I see your point. But I am not going to send my son off to hang out with a bunch of druggies. The worry would be too much. It’s not even the weed that causes me the most concern, it’s the type of kid it attracts.

All you hear on the news is teenagers getting stabbed and I am always sure that drugs and gangs have a lot to do with that. What sort of parent would I be, if I dropped him off to smoke weed in one of the local cities parks? With a gang of kids, largely of who we don’t know as DS’s GF is from a different school altogether. If something happened to him and I knowingly took him there, I couldn’t live with myself. Luckily DS does understand the dilemma and knows that under normal circumstances we always do what we can to facilitate his social life. We don’t keep him locked up in the house and it’s never been an issue to run him into the city to a friends around midday and pick him up around around 9pm. It’s often an inconvenience for DH or I, but it’s part and parcel of living where we do and we’ve always accepted that. As I say, we cannot just move, so it is what it is.

It sounds like you're handling this turn of events really well OP... he only told you because he was actually looking for a way out (even if that's subconscious).

@YukoandHiro

It sounds like you're handling this turn of events really well OP... he only told you because he was actually looking for a way out (even if that's subconscious).

Thank you, I do hope so.

I’m hoping that now the gf knows DS has told us, she will be too uncomfortable to have much to do with DS in person. I’m also hoping DS is able to see that this is not sustainable and that he’s flogging a dead horse.

We took him to a reasonably local mall last night and let him just shop and spend some of his saved money. He bought himself some Adidas NMD’s or something and today we took him to IKEA and he bought a display case thing for all his fancy trainers. We then let him get on and build it himself, as something to do and to take his mind off the whole matter and we ordered Pizza Hut (yuck) and watched Shazam with him this evening. So, he’s had a nice day, even despite the relationship woes.