B
betabeta
Guest
This is my first time posting in a forum, so I apologize if I commit any forum faux pas! One of which is sure to be the length of this post. This is another occurrence of the ubiquitous “parents don’t approve of relationship” situation where it has created significant tensions within my family between my parents and I and my sisters.
Firstly, my family has always been very tight-knit. I confided very closely in my parents growing up, especially my mother, about my hopes, dreams, crushes, etc. I didn’t really have any close friends that shared my Catholic world-view until late college, so my relationship with my mother also essentially filled the role of BFF as I attended college close to home. I was your typical goody-two shoes, straight-A’s kid who never really felt an inclination to rebel. My parents were somewhat strict, but I was OK with that. I have not lived at home since my sophomore in college (now 2 yrs post-grad) and am currently self-supporting with no more financial assistance from parents.
My relationship came into the picture the summer before my last year of college. By this point, I’d matured in self-acceptance and felt ready to enter into a relationship whenever God was ready for me to. I met my boyfriend on a Catholic singles site that we had respectively joined without seriously intending to find relationships on the site, but we began talking and messaging and were pleasantly surprised and excited to find out how much we had in common, besides the obvious… our Catholic faith. Prior to beginning this relationship, I had dated several guys and learned much from friendships with other guys to understand what I desired in a future spouse. Growing up, my parents had taken me to many talks and given my sisters and I many books on Christian dating, chastity, etc, from which I gained an understanding of appropriate physical boundaries and behavior in a relationship. My parents have also been involved in marriage prep counseling at their parish, from which they’ve shared what they’ve learned about things to consider in a future spouse.
My boyfriend and I have now been dating for almost 3 years. The length is due to both this difficult situation and his being back in school for an additional degree. I feel that the strengths in our relationship are our shared faith & values, mutual respect, ability to honestly communicate with one another, common goals, and unselfishness. The flaws in our relationship that we are both aware of and accept are our contrasts: my impatience, his patience… my preference for structure, his spontanaeity. We’ve been meeting with my Deacon and talking with him about our relationship and discussing a FOCCUS inventory prior to entering into an engagement and he’s been very supportive and helpful.
Unfortunately, my family does not have a positive view of my relationship. My boyfriend’s somewhat introverted personality does not fit perfectly into my family dynamic and they have become hypercritical and made negative assumptions about every aspect of his life and behavior. My parents are also critical of the fact that we met online and that it didn’t take their preferred course of a friendship slowly developing into a relationship, thus the very origin of our relationship does not merit approval. They consider him to be a pathological liar because he occasionally mixes up people in stories, they consider him to be hopelessly rude because of his failed attempts to joke and get along with my family members… they also don’t think that he’s Catholic enough. He was confirmed when he was in 2nd grade and received no RE after that, but has always attended Mass every Sunday and participated in campus ministries while in school. He acknowledges his need for more catechesis but is currently more limited in his ability to seek it out due to mountains of intense engineering homework… they think that I should see that as unacceptable. I could see reason to disapprove of the disparity if we had fundamental disagreements about Church teachings or if he were not open to learning more when opportunities arise, but that is not the case.
My parents would bring up their concerns to me and dismiss any of my attempts to respond by clarifying his intent on his behalf (they’d never say these things to his face) as whitewashing a hopelessly flawed person. This disregard for my viewpoints has been very upsetting for me over the years; I’ve shared these opinions with my boyfriend… which my parents also take issue with. My boyfriend is disappointed with my family’s persistent dislike of him, but remains in the relationship because he truly cares for me and is willing to make any effort to help us reconcile. He would never intentionally desire to offend the family of his girlfriend… but that’s not reason enough for my parents to forgive and try to get to know him better.
Several arguments between my parents and I in the past few months have escalated to the point of tears. I finally told them that I wanted to discuss our issues in a mediated environment where I didn’t feel the need to be constantly on the defense. We eventually met with their pastor after meeting with him individually, but the meeting together bore little fruit as I think they came into the discussion assuming that their pastor would just spend the entire time telling me that my parents were right about everything and that I’m a horrible, disrespectful daughter for daring to disagree with them about things and continue in a relationship that they don’t like… which was not the case. They are not open to meeting again, since it was initially my idea.
I’ll be meeting again with just my parents on Saturday afternoon, so if I could ask you all to pray for me to keep my anger in check and prepare my thoughts thoroughly and with charity, that would be much appreciated. Any advice is more than welcome and God bless!
Firstly, my family has always been very tight-knit. I confided very closely in my parents growing up, especially my mother, about my hopes, dreams, crushes, etc. I didn’t really have any close friends that shared my Catholic world-view until late college, so my relationship with my mother also essentially filled the role of BFF as I attended college close to home. I was your typical goody-two shoes, straight-A’s kid who never really felt an inclination to rebel. My parents were somewhat strict, but I was OK with that. I have not lived at home since my sophomore in college (now 2 yrs post-grad) and am currently self-supporting with no more financial assistance from parents.
My relationship came into the picture the summer before my last year of college. By this point, I’d matured in self-acceptance and felt ready to enter into a relationship whenever God was ready for me to. I met my boyfriend on a Catholic singles site that we had respectively joined without seriously intending to find relationships on the site, but we began talking and messaging and were pleasantly surprised and excited to find out how much we had in common, besides the obvious… our Catholic faith. Prior to beginning this relationship, I had dated several guys and learned much from friendships with other guys to understand what I desired in a future spouse. Growing up, my parents had taken me to many talks and given my sisters and I many books on Christian dating, chastity, etc, from which I gained an understanding of appropriate physical boundaries and behavior in a relationship. My parents have also been involved in marriage prep counseling at their parish, from which they’ve shared what they’ve learned about things to consider in a future spouse.
My boyfriend and I have now been dating for almost 3 years. The length is due to both this difficult situation and his being back in school for an additional degree. I feel that the strengths in our relationship are our shared faith & values, mutual respect, ability to honestly communicate with one another, common goals, and unselfishness. The flaws in our relationship that we are both aware of and accept are our contrasts: my impatience, his patience… my preference for structure, his spontanaeity. We’ve been meeting with my Deacon and talking with him about our relationship and discussing a FOCCUS inventory prior to entering into an engagement and he’s been very supportive and helpful.
Unfortunately, my family does not have a positive view of my relationship. My boyfriend’s somewhat introverted personality does not fit perfectly into my family dynamic and they have become hypercritical and made negative assumptions about every aspect of his life and behavior. My parents are also critical of the fact that we met online and that it didn’t take their preferred course of a friendship slowly developing into a relationship, thus the very origin of our relationship does not merit approval. They consider him to be a pathological liar because he occasionally mixes up people in stories, they consider him to be hopelessly rude because of his failed attempts to joke and get along with my family members… they also don’t think that he’s Catholic enough. He was confirmed when he was in 2nd grade and received no RE after that, but has always attended Mass every Sunday and participated in campus ministries while in school. He acknowledges his need for more catechesis but is currently more limited in his ability to seek it out due to mountains of intense engineering homework… they think that I should see that as unacceptable. I could see reason to disapprove of the disparity if we had fundamental disagreements about Church teachings or if he were not open to learning more when opportunities arise, but that is not the case.
My parents would bring up their concerns to me and dismiss any of my attempts to respond by clarifying his intent on his behalf (they’d never say these things to his face) as whitewashing a hopelessly flawed person. This disregard for my viewpoints has been very upsetting for me over the years; I’ve shared these opinions with my boyfriend… which my parents also take issue with. My boyfriend is disappointed with my family’s persistent dislike of him, but remains in the relationship because he truly cares for me and is willing to make any effort to help us reconcile. He would never intentionally desire to offend the family of his girlfriend… but that’s not reason enough for my parents to forgive and try to get to know him better.
Several arguments between my parents and I in the past few months have escalated to the point of tears. I finally told them that I wanted to discuss our issues in a mediated environment where I didn’t feel the need to be constantly on the defense. We eventually met with their pastor after meeting with him individually, but the meeting together bore little fruit as I think they came into the discussion assuming that their pastor would just spend the entire time telling me that my parents were right about everything and that I’m a horrible, disrespectful daughter for daring to disagree with them about things and continue in a relationship that they don’t like… which was not the case. They are not open to meeting again, since it was initially my idea.
I’ll be meeting again with just my parents on Saturday afternoon, so if I could ask you all to pray for me to keep my anger in check and prepare my thoughts thoroughly and with charity, that would be much appreciated. Any advice is more than welcome and God bless!
Just kidding! Supporting myself and living on my own isn’t the easiest, but I’m managing it just fine. I’ve achieved physical independence from my family, but it is true that this situation is making autonomy more of a challenge. In retrospect, this may have not been so difficult if I had chosen to attend college, live and work out of state as many of my friends from high school opted for, but I’ve rooted myself down where I am and plan on remaining.
nice advice for a very pregnant lady. My husband is very sad that my parents do not like him. Dad is way too protective of “his baby” and refuses to acknowledge that I am an adult. I think if mom would have lived until her granddaughter was born, she would have changed her mind about my husband – what grandmother can be mad at the man that helped give her the first grandbaby – but that didn’t change dad’s mind. If anything, he’s giving more unwanted advice about raising the baby.
I’d like to think so!