“My Partner’s Parents Ask Intrusive Questions”

I’m in a relationship with a lovely man made “Zach.” However, he and his parents, who live out of state, do NOT have such a lovely relationship. He hasn’t visited them in three years and rarely speaks to them apart from text messages (he talks to mom sometimes but ignores his dad who seems to reach out a lot). As soon as we became public about our relationship on Facebook, Zach’s parents added me as friends, and Zach’s dad started sending me occasional messages, asking me pretty intrusive questions about Zach (like why he hasn’t come to visit). He also messages me and asks me to tell Zach to look at what he posted on Facebook or to ask how Zach is doing. I feel like he’s disrespecting Zach’s boundaries and putting me into a weird position when he does this. Zach tells me I don’t need to respond because he doesn’t want a relationship with his dad, but I still have some pity for his father and culturally-ingrained feelings of obligation to “fix the family” even though I’m not their family. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with his dad, or should I just keep not dealing with him by muting him on Facebook? — Ms. Fix-It

 

I think for as much as you wish Zach’s dad respected Zach’s boundaries, you need to respect Zach’s boundaries, too, and that means not communicating with his parents. I’m sure that feels uncomfortable for someone who comes from a respectful and loving family with normal boundaries, expectations, and behavior, but for whatever reason that is not Zach’s family, and it’s not your job to make it like yours (or to “fix it.”). What IS your job, as Zach’s girlfriend, is to support him and to continue building a relationship based on trust, shared values, and common goals for the future.

Support Zach by respecting his boundaries and STOP communicating with his parents behind his back. De-friend them on Facebook (send a quick note if you want telling them that while you hope to one day meet them if that’s something Zach wants, until you do you aren’t comfortable being connected over Facebook). Discuss your values with Zach and what you want in your future, for yourself and for your relationship. Hopefully, in time, Zach will open up about his childhood and his relationship with his parents, but until he does, you have to ask yourself whether enough trust, shared values, and common goals exist between you to continue moving your relationship forward. You certainly don’t have to have all the mysteries of a person solved to love him and build a future together (if a shared future is what you even want), but it does help to know why a person would have so little interest in maintaining a relationship with parents who seem to very much want a relationship with him.

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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].

2 Comments

  1. Anonymous says:

    I definitely wouldn’t write anything to the parents, especially not that you want to enforce Zach’s boundaries — you don’t even know why, don’t be a Stepford wife and robotically support all of your boyfriend’s decisions, especially those which hurt your values. I would mute them indeed, and try to understand why the situation reached that level in a discussion with Zach. I would be wary of building a relationship with someone who ignores his family, unless they are some very serious reasons. But anyway, the parents shouldn’t reach you instead of him. So stay out of it and assess your boyfriend’s situation in a more informed way.

  2. You are trying to ‘fix’ Zach (that’s what ‘fix his family’ really means when it is Zach who is the one who has chosen distance from his family, especially his father. You say that he does sometimes talk to his mother. It seems his father did something, not necessarily directly to him, that he cannot get past. I tmight be very bad. You don’t know). He is a guy that, for whatever reason, has decided that he doesn’t want his parents to be a part of his life. Because he doesn’t want to reconcile with his parents, you view him as broken and in need of being fixed by you. That is not your job, and you are over-stepping normal boundaries. You have two choices: either decide that you can’t be happy in a relationship with a man who is estranged from his parents and MOA, or accept that your bf isn’t an infant and has the right to determine what relationship he will have with his parents.

    That you apparently don’t know what caused the breach in bf’s family, this is a very touchy subject with Zach, which he is not yet ready to discuss with you in depth.

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