her boyfriend is creeping me out

[pinkponymum]

My 19 dd is head over heels with a 19 m. He’s an ok kid, but he’s selfish and doesn’t respect my daughter. They are ‘long distance’ ie spending hours texting and phoning, love letters, heavy emotional investment but whenever she expects this intense (and highly convenient) flattery to become reality, he lets her down. Basically, he’s in love with being in love but doesn’t actually want to do anything about it. Freaked out visiting her uni, expects her to come to his at his convenience which she thinks is the highest form of worship, and he cannot function round her friends. It’s not as harmless as it sounds because she builds her life round his chat, stays in, isolates herself from her friends, won’t get a job - none of which he does. He has no bother carrying on with his life. At first I thought he was a bit immature and it was a reasonably harmless infatuation on both sides but it’s become like an addiction with her. He dumped her once and I was literally staying on the phone with her til she went to sleep and checking in on her each morning. She was staying in friends’ rooms because she was devastated. She came close to dropping out of uni over it because she couldn’t bear to be away from him. I thought it was all over and done with but he’s resurfaced and she’s back to square one. I’m sick with worry. She told him I wasn’t mad with him because I thought it was immaturity that made him
act like he did - which is what I told her to spare her feelings - and he said that was ‘very gracious’ of me. Cheeky get. My grace was for my daughter, not him. To him, I would say ‘you’re enjoying the flattery from my daughter, which you encourage with the promise of a relationship that you clearly has no intention of actually having’. Now I have had to articulate my understanding of the dynamic to my daughter as I don’t want this boy using my carefully chosen words to feel his way back in. He builds her up and she’s dependent on his attention and without it, she’s like a lost dog. Which she most certainly wasn’t before she met him. I know how this ends, I know I can’t stop her making her own mistakes but I can’t watch anymore. It’s causing me genuine anxiety and stress. My daughter has a history of attaching herself to people who don’t treat her well but not when she’s vulnerable and relatively isolated like she is at uni and this is next level.

It’s tough but all you can do is support her and encourage her to enjoy her self with friends. He doesn’t sound committed so hopefully at some point it will fizzle out

Sounds like it could easily tip over into abusive.
Let her get immersed in some red flags of abuse material. Those that show isolation, control etc to be the beginning of a rotten pathway.
It is supposed to be fun flirty and fabulous at that age.

I’m not 100% sure he’s the villain in this setup your daughter sounds boarder line obsessed with him

I can’t imagine how hard it must be to watch your DD in a relationship like this which clearly isn’t healthy for either of them. What’s she doing over the Summer and is she planning on going back to Uni?

That's how I read it too... She's very intense.

I was in a relationship very much like this when I was that age. I finished uni but didn’t do nearly as well as I could have, then I moved closer to him at great expense to myself.
Before I moved closer, I was so infatuated with him. He wrote me beautiful letters and emails and we talked on the phone. He knew exactly what to say to me and words are cheap and easy but didn’t have to follow through with them. I went to visit him many times but he never came to visit me. It was very tumultuous and dominated my uni years.
Then when I permanently moved closer, it lasted about a year but was a really awful time for me. If he was bored or lonely he would spend time with me but drop me as soon as he has a better offer.

The final nail in the coffin was he got married! Not to me. He had another woman he had done the same thing to. She moved closer to him as well, when I was there, and they got married about 2 months later. He was three years older than me.

I went home and was upset for a while but the hardest time was the years I was under his spell.

What would have helped me was lots of distraction from him, fun activities, other things to think about, more support from my family but not endless hours of listening to me ruminate on whether he loved me too. My aunt spent a lot of time listening to my angst and I think it ended up feeding it. Don’t abandon your dd, but give her something else to think about and focus on.

Ultimately, virtually no man is going to live up to what he promises when they’re not physically together. She’ll figure it out but probably not until she has a chance to see him everyday and what he’s really like.

To be clear I do not think your daughter is the problem at all here. It is interesting how a vulnerable girl, becoming more and more isolated and hanging on the every word of a boy who seems to care less or makes zero effort makes her the potential problem in some people’s eyes, not him. We have no way of knowing why she is isolating or why she is so dependent on him but you are correct none of it is good. Please encourage her to see other friends. Ensure she has other interests. Plan visits, trips etc. Do watch parties on Netflix, encourage her friends to call and see her if you must but don’t ignore your gut feeling ever.
I hope she’s okay and rid of him soon.
it may simply be she isn’t ready for a relationship or that he is quite wrong for her but either way focus on what you are feeling and observing and help hatch a plan to pull her through it

Feeling can be so huge at that stage of life, and long distance can amplify that with a sort of narrative if missing eachother and longing, when actually there's no proper foundation so when they meet its less than perfect.

You can't control what the bf does, but hopefully you can show your daughter that she's focusing too much on a fantasy idea of him and that she's herself letting things feel intense when the facts show otherwise. She does need to expand her life in other areas, and see that this relationship isn't helping her, it's hindering her.

Exactly this, even down to me being absolutely sure there’s a future mrs in the wings. If she was happy and having fun at the same time as being led up the garden path, I’d leave it alone

Welcome to gen z. These are the sort of people you end up with when we've bred a load of socially inept recluses who live their lives through their phone screens and social media. Not all of them, but enough to make this worryingly common.

That sounds dangerous for your DD. It is far too intense and unyielding.
You need to talk to her. She cannot spend hours talking to him and neglecting her life. No way. She needs to focus on what she wants out of life. Her career, her circle, a job.

Nah, I’m more than double OP’s DD’s age and plenty of teenage relationships have been like this for decades.

Sorry OP, you sound a lovely mum and hopefully she’ll see sense or he will move on and so can she. Horrible seeing her upset though, I feel for you.

Make sure she doesn't plan her whole life around him, she shouldn't just go to the university he's at because he's there. They might break up for starters and does she even like it, the place, the city, the course - all the things to consider. I'm guessing she doesn't and likes the places she's picked, so please don't let him, force her into going where he is, just because he'll miss her etc. It's a big decision but she be more about her and what she wants for her future than anything. I think try and do things with her and also as she gets busy again hopefully that means she just isn't as able to spend all her time messaging or whatever - she'll have university lectures and seminars, reading to do, work if she's working, meeting friends and flatmates (I'd definitely make sure the week of freshers she goes to the events or the fairs and joins societies etc and hangs out with people because although people make friends across the years, it's one of the first opportunities to meet people) and also even the first week of lectures it's good to just talk to people so you meet people on the same course. So try and make sure she does this and doesn't spend it on the phone with him the same time, as she gets busier, she'll just have to spend less time with him, or in reality her friends etc won't find it fun if she's always messaging him when they're hanging out and her university work may even suffer. She'll know that and I'm guessing she'll start being a bit more balanced with everything in her life.

I'd have a serious talk with her about how to create a healthy happy life by placing equal value on, and giving equal attention to, the key things in life that matter, long term. So give equal time, effort and value to her friends as she does to him; equal value, time, effort to her studies, to seeing family, to earning some money and building work experience for her CV, having fun and developing skills in her hobbies and pastimes, seeing the world while she is young and free and single. Don't imply she needs to wean herself off him, just encourage her to build up the other aspects of her life and prioritise them fairly.