My daughter wants to meet her internet boyfriend

[StumbleBee]

Hello, I am new here and hoping I can get some feedback. I am a single mum with a 17 year old daughter. She has an internet 'boyfriend' she has never met in real life and has been face-timing for about six months. She wants to travel to Yorkshire - we live in Wimbledon - to stay with him and his family for a few days for his 18th birthday. I know he isn't a fifty year old pretending to be a teenager as I have seen him when they chat and have said hello, and I have already thought about the need to face-time chat with his mum, get all the contact details etc. I know I have been very over-protective which we have discussed and I am working on but honestly I just feel sick and terrified about this. Am I being over-protective or is this what every mum would feel? I have borderline personality disorder and an anxiety disorder which makes it really difficult for me to judge situations and people appropriately and I would very much appreciate any advice I can get. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Assuming he is exactly what she expects
it’s still a lot of pressure for the first time they are meeting!
she’s not only meeting him for the first time, she’s also meeting his friends and family and staying over
i know you cannot go… can she take a friend to come along, they stay on a premier inn or similar, they both go to the party, she has her friend for emotional support…
and if there’s time, can they meet halfway for a day out in a very public place?

You honestly don't need to stress in every single post that you have mental health conditions. They're irrelevant for this parenting issue which a lot of parents of teens will experience in some way, shape or form.

My dd recently met her boyfriend in real life, she's a bit older but same concerns however we also need to realise that this is normal for them to meet online. No it's not reasonable to want to talk to his parents, but if you feel more comfortable book a hotel nearby. Personally I would suggest asking for full contact details but otherwise let her go asking her to message once she is there and call the following morning.

This.

Not sure you know where Yorkshire is!

Oh OP I can really feel your anxiety through your messages.

With regards to advice, I don’t have much to add to what others have already said.

However I did just want to say you clearly have a good relationship with your daughter for her to have told you all this. Teenagers can easily hide online activity etc so the fact your DD has been open is great and shows just how much she trusts you and your judgement. You clearly need to trust yourself more

No, because you do NOT invite strangers of the internet to stay at your house before meeting then properly first. He is a stranger, treat him with a healthy level of suspicion just add he should be with her.

Yep I've done some backtracking in my time to!

Not sure you know where Yorkshire is!

I've picked York as a place in Yorkshire and two completely random days.

You can go from York to London in two hours for roughly £20. That's without putting in any effort whatsoever to get it cheaper.

Hi op..I was a pretty wild teenager and got myself in some horrible situations.

I remember going to stay with a guy I knew and had net at parties. (Pre Internet). I was exactly your daughters age. I had such a crush on this guy and we had met a few times at social events plus had friends in common.

It was awful!! It was so cringe inducing staying at his family home and I felt under I tense pressure to kiss him and go to bed with him even though as others have said about your own situs. This was just a first date

I remember being hit with a horrible feeling that I was in a ridiculous situation for a first date with a young man I barely knew.

It wasn't unsafe as I was at his parents house but it was incredibly awkward. It felt horrible to be sleeping in a familu home hundreds of miles from my own home with no route of escape when we didn't know each other well

I massively regretted it and it was a bad start to the relationship . I also felt under pressure to kiss him when it didn't feel natural

Tell your teen from me she needs to see this as a first date and the first time they meet should be lower pressure. So he comes for a day trip where nobody has to stay the night.

It's not that it will necessarily go badly, it's that if it DOES, she is completely.stuck.

Not sure you know where Yorkshire is!

I know exactly where Yorkshire is thank you, I'm from that part of the world

He's supposed to be her bf. He's supposed to really want to see her, in real life, to hug her, hold her hand, kiss her. Chatting to a phone, whatever the words you say, is not alrelationship if you have never met the person.

Given there is a decent rail service and most parts of Yorkshire are no more than two or three hours travel, it's clear he hasn't actually made any effort to see her at all. And that she is the one that is now expected to do the running around. Safety aside - he's treating her pretty shoddily already.

I would be phrasing this as a ‘hmmm, he’s not coming to you, is he?’ with a head tilt.

He is the older one, and should be making more of the effort.

I would be worried that at 17 she is running around and putting herself out for blokes at her own expense who have done nothing for her, except some FaceTime conversations.

Yorkshire to London is super easy on the train. Why hasn’t he done it before? Why is it on her?

I wouldn’t want to normalise her doing the runaround for a man this early, and would try and get her to change her perspective on why she shouldn’t go rather than ‘my mum won’t let me’. She shouldn’t really want to go in this instance.

I know this is stating the worst but still always best to keep in mind, please look up the case of Carly Ryan. The man who lured her used a young man (his son?) to help him make Carly believe there really was a young man who wanted to see her. Please keep your daughter safe and all meetings on neutral ground.

Also keep in mind, parents have their own children's best interest in mind, many times they will not have your child's best interest in mind. Trust your gut and protect your child.

Have you met teenagers? My teen boyfriend drove over an hour to pop in for a quick coffee once!

You can (if you really want) get to edinburgh and back from london in a day, so you can def get to Yorkshire.

I wouldn't be saying any of this, certainly not a patronising bloody head tilt to her own seventeen year old daughter.

If my mum said 'hmmm he's not coming to you is he?' in this snide way with a head tilt I'd have said

'no mum, because the party for his eighteen birthday isn't here, it's at his house'

That's quite unhelpful @Torin, given the OP's issues. She's taken quite a sensible approach to all of this and seems to have followed her own instincts successfully.

@StumbleBee glad you got your thread moved to this board, MN is a great place for getting a good variety of opinions especially the teen years.

Also there may be other boards that may be of use to you too. Welcome and have a good look around. Please avoid the AIBU (am I being unreasonable) which is like a fight to the death sometimes. Best avoided.

Given your caring needs I wholeheartedly agree with everyone saying he visits for a day. Weekends are much cheaper for travel to London from Yorkshire and it is an easy day trip, couple of hours each way. And yes, I know where Yorkshire is, I live here. But she doesn't go alone, she takes a friend or two who can be there at the initial meet up and be close by in case anything makes her feel uncomfortable.

I wouldn't be saying any of this, certainly not a patronising bloody head tilt to her own seventeen year old daughter

Maybe the head tilt is a bit MN That said, it's a good opportunity to have a discussion about healthy relationships and each person making roughly equal effort as the other, and that one person making all the effort and being 'in thrall' to the other is not healthy and she should expect better.

V uncomfortable it is the girl doing the travel and spending the money/making the effort.

I would strongly encorage a 'no' and 'dont do it' argument. Meeting for an afternoon sonewhere middle ground/middle distance is much more sensible, far fewer variables the could come into play, many of them bad.

The boy isn't that much older than the OP DD if it's for his 18th so all the comments about he should have gone down to meet her are a little off. He may not have much money himself. His parents may have had their own reservations and been hoping it would fizzle out.
I would either expect her to plan a get out in case it goes wrong or she feels uncomfortable or replan to meeting in public first, maybe halfway and the weekend to follow.

Think what you'd like. Far too many people, as shown by some posters on this thread, think that being cautious is OOT and believe what they are told online. My post was not for the OP alone on here. OP may also wish to show her daughter so that her concerns are taken seriously. I have my own anxiety/illness issues, but I would rather have a full understanding of dangers to my children than have them hidden from me or try to ignore them.

Strangers on the internet are still strangers no matter how many conversations we have with them online.

I was this teenager, but worse. I didn’t mean to worry my parents but I decided to meet with someone off the internet whom I’d never met, for the first time , while visiting London with my parents (I’m from Scandinavia). Needless to say I had only formed an opinion on him based on 6 months of internet chat rooms and a few phone calls. I also had no idea how to get around London.
I was 18 and he was 19. We went ahead with the meeting against my parents wishes under the condition they met with him before we took to the streets. Without really having seen much more than a blurry picture (scanners back in ‘99 weren’t the best), my mum spotted him coming into the hotel amongst a crowd of others. She shouted out “There he is” and lo and behold, she was right.
She based her first impression of my future husband (22 years and still going strong), solely on a nervous smile. My dad was much less enthusiastic.

While this story turned out to be quite romantic, I completely hear where you are coming from OP. I’d go absolutely insane if my daughter wanted to meet up with a stranger from the Internet in a foreign country!!
But young love is … what it is. And I met the love of my life that day in London.

It can be fine, but you have every right to be cautious and I wouldn’t be keen on overnights at first meeting. If she wants to do this so badly she can save up the money (he can split the cost with her for a b&b) and they can meet up but with strict rules. I’d also want to speak to his parents.
I wish you luck.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks this boy should be travelling to London to meet her for a day first. They both need to be travelling to meet somewhere halfway, preferably being accompanied by a parent who can be nearby if needed.
It's not really reasonable to expect him to spend his 18th birthday away from his family but they could really meet either before or afterwards.
I have 3 boys and I would not feel happy about any of them travelling so far from home to meet some random girl whose family I knew so little about.

I wouldn't either. Families need to be involved.