Her weight spurs debate
Dear Carolyn: What do you do when your father and stepmother adamantly refuse any acknowledgment of, or contact with, your significant other, because in their paraphrased words, they think she is wrong for you and therefore refuse to show approval of the relationship?
My girlfriend is wonderful; she is a partner in every way, and I respect, admire and am in love with her. Even if my father and stepmother’s objections were what I’d call reasonable – my girlfriend was unkind to them or to me, prone to fits of psychotic rage, into Kenny G – I’d find their boycott to be a far less than mature and reasoned way to handle the situation.
Their objections, however, are that my girlfriend is “heavy” and this somehow means problems in later life, that she is overbearing, and that when my stepmother sent her a Christmas decoration last year, my girlfriend thanked her in a subsequent card rather than sending a specific thank-you note. I am not making this up.
My gut is that the core issue is my stepmother’s tendency to try to control situations and relationships – which I’ve seen over the years in other contexts, including her own family, from which she has been essentially estranged for the past three years.
To my 38-year-old self, this is insane and unacceptable. How do you proceed in a case like this, lovingly yet firmly, when your father asserts nothing but unconditional acceptance of his wife’s absurd demands?
Within the Beltway: You assert nothing but unconditional support for your freedom to think for yourself. And for your girlfriend’s dignity, but in a way that’s secondary.
You need to establish your independence from their approval. When your dad and stepmother invite you sans mate, explain to them that it will be your pleasure to spend time with them, but you won’t insult your girlfriend to do it. They can then choose to include her or exclude you both.
And when you’d like them to visit you and your girlfriend, invite them to visit you and your girlfriend. They can then choose to accept or decline.
In other words, you proceed in such a manner that puts the responsibility for their next familial estrangement precisely where it belongs. If you were to choose, lovingly but firmly, to stop seeing them until they accept your girlfriend, then you’d grant them the right to say that you severed ties with your dad.
This will make it tougher on you. It’s for a good cause, though, because if you choose to welcome them into your life on your terms, then it forces them either to accept your terms or own their cruelty, again and again, every time they say no.
Maybe even more important, it will leave open the possibility of dad coming alone. Wishful thinking, but still. Principles may be all we have, but it should remain a last resort to lose a father to one.
If they mistreat your girlfriend to her face, though? You’re gone. No cause is worth putting her through that.