How to help DD navigate her relationship?

[Ilfurfante]

My DD is 17 ( nearly 18) and in her first long term relationship. They have been together nearly a year. She met her bf when they were both at school, he left this summer. He is a lovely boy but is not the most dynamic of souls. He is not academic and is now working full-time in a job which he seems to enjoy but which, ultimately, has no longer term prospects. He is one of only 2 people working there and he spends long periods of his day working by himself.

The bf had a very tight group of friends at school but they have all gone off to university or to a gap year working abroad so he doesn't really see them anymore. At school he played a lot of sport but he didn't really play anything out of school so that element of his life has stopped now too. His parents are wealthy and very much out of the parenting phase of life so although he still lives at home with them, they are barely ever there. He's just a bit lost, sad and lonely and actually, I think he's a bit depressed.

On to my DD who is the opposite of him in many ways. She's very academic and plays in sport outside of school to a high level. She has a wide social circle and is very sociable. I know that she feels very responsible for her bf and she doesn't really know how to help him. We were talking about how to help him navigate this phase of his life but I'm also worried that he is subconsciously stopping her from doing things because she knows how lonely he is.

I don't know how to help her. He is her first love and he is very sweet. I also feel very sad for him as he is so lost right now and hasn't really got anyone around to help guide him. Conversely I also don't want my Dd to have that responsibility and to feel obligated to make choices for him or make plans which reflect this.

How do I help her navigate this?

I am surprised you are encouraging her to see it as her job to help him. He should be helping himself.

She needs to learn how to navigate situations like this. We are not here to rescue men.
It might be that what he needs is a year or two of full time job to realise he can do better. Not your DD’s job to fix this.

Having known girls in this situation when I was younger, it generally goes one of two ways. Either the girl sees it as her responsibility to help him, thinks it’s loyalty to stay with him and gets stuck in the local area being that bright spark who somehow never realised her potential, or the girl wakes up, realises that he is never going to change and that she’s looking at the rest of her life being more of the same, decides that’s not for her, and breaks up with him. Those latter girls generally seem to achieve their potential.

At one point many years ago, me and a friend had to talk to a friend in this situation and lay it out for her like this, and we asked her to think on what she wanted the rest of her life to be like. We just cared about her too much to watch her throw away her hopes and dreams for a boy who didn’t care about her enough to get his shit together. Ten years later, at 30, she has just got married last year and is in a great science career having done brilliantly in her MChem from a top uni. She’s not the only one I’ve seen in this situation though, it seems to have happened a lot in my wider social circle and unfortunately, too many girls undersell themselves and stay. At the end of the day though, you can’t fix someone else and you have to do what’s right for you and your future.

I will add that my other friend and I liked the boy in that situation a lot too, so it was difficult but he was really dragging her down. We’re still friends with both and he knows it was me who said something to her. After they broke up it was like he snapped out of this fog, he got a better job and got himself together with a flat etc, although he never found another girlfriend for years. 😬

I'm not "encouraging" her - I have told her that he needs to find his own path but there's no point telling her to cut him off as she won't do that. I have also told her that's it's not her job to do that for him but I actually think she is very worried about his mental health and feels that she can't just leave him to it.