Girlfriend's Parents

[moom]

Hey brothers,

Ran into a very strange situation recently that I doubt most people have experience with, but still going to give it a shot by posting here:

I'm 29, and my girlfriend just turned 22.

I come from a religious, Muslim household with very old traditional and cultural values. I however don't adhere to them.
My parents have understood this from pretty much since I was 21 and although it's strained my relationship with my parents quite a bit and we've drifted apart (we never really ever had a good relationship in the first place), they still accept me to a certain degree and understand that I drink, smoke, and fuck and always have. Yet they've always deluded themselves into thinking that I'll grow up and be religious one day. My girlfriend has never met my parents, my mom know she exists but doesn't know who she is. My sister knows her and has met her. I know for a fact my parents will never truly accept us being together, whether we stay together for a long time or not. Fortunately, I don't give a fuck. I'd like to have a good relationship with my parents and respect them for raising me, but will never let any decision I make be swayed by them.

My girlfriend on the other hand is very tight nit with her family and they're not really all that religious, although are still Christian. We've been together 7 months or so, and I've met her parents a handful of times. Her family has really liked me, thanks to my ability to be able to code-switch. They've seemingly accepted me into their family.

Now here's where the fucked up situation enters.

I'm considered a digital nomad. I've got a business that does multiple 6 figures online. Before I met her, I traveled quite extensively, and it was slowed down to a halt due to covid. I had originally planned a trip to go for 6 months to Brazil before I met this girl. Then I met this girl last December and decided to push my trip back to this upcoming November. Sometime during the relationship early on, she decided she wanted to come with me. She had always wanted to travel and this was her opportunity to.

Que her getting a 6 month lease instead of a full year one, look for a remote job, etc. all while never telling her parents what she was planning on doing. The pressure kept building on her, her web of lies to her parents kept getting deeper, and I could see it affect her emotionally. We both agreed it was time to tell her parents, and yesterday we went to dinner with her parents and told them. They basically freaked out. Her mom kept saying I haven't introduced her to my parents yet (which means she feels like she hasn't seen enough commitment from me) and her dad just looked pissed as fuck and said they would talk later. Her mother kept stressing that there might be some cultural differences that would break us up, and that my girlfriend would learn by falling on her ass a few times. My girl took this opportunity to tell them she doesn't want to be in the family business either, and she got real emotional real quick.

Now I really feel for her, and at some point I'm going to have another conversation with her parents. I'm being supportive of her situation as well, she's done all this just to be with me because I wanted to go back out and travel. She also has no real idea of what she wants to do with her life and thinks traveling will help with growth and self-discovery, which I 100% agree with.

However, I feel pigeon-holed. I feel like her parents are pushing me to introduce my girl to my parents, when they have no idea what my situation is like. I feel like they're asking me to prove my commitment to them, when I don't want to be put in a situation where I'm sitting there saying telling them how much I love their daughter. It's going to hurt the attraction between my girl and I if I sit there trying to prove things to her parents about our relationship. I'm running this fucking relationship, and I'm doing it with progression as GC teaches. She'll eventually meet my parents if we stay together that long, but not because I'm trying to make someone else happy.

Any advice in a situation like this?

A few key things to note:

1) I'm very experienced with pick up, ONS, and fuck buddies. However, I've only had 3 serious girlfriends in my life, this girl being the third. Neither of my past 2 girlfriends ever met my parents. This probably has to do with me knowing they'll never accept it. I personally don't care if they don't accept it, the only reason I would introduce the girl to my parents is if its something that's very important to her and if I feel like she's someone whom I would end up getting married to (which I'm completely indifferent to, but it's both important to my girlfriend and will be important to my parents).

2) This isn't a situation that is exclusive to this girl. I'm incredibly attracted to young, white, petite/fit, artsy, feminine girls. This will be a problem no matter what relationship I'm in, with no matter what girl.

 

[Rakehell]

Sounds like it’s an issue of safety and security. Do you live in America?

If so I feel it’ll be hard to convince her parents that her going with you out the country will be a good idea. Especially if she’s never travelled before. I feel it’s less to do with her having met your parents, and more that they know nothing about your background. To them you could be trying to hurt their daughter and I doubt they’ll ever be fully on board.

So maybe consider just taking the hit and introducing her, and telling them about the situation with your parents.

End of the day your relationship with your parents is irrelevant to your decision making as you’ve said. She might not feel the same about hers.

All else fails as a last resort i’d consider telling her that you’d love for her to come with you, but don’t want it to strain the relationship with her parents. But sadly nevertheless it’s still somewhere you have to go whether she decides to come or to stay.

 

[Beck Bass]

Chill man, chill the eff up.

I think they are just mad at her lies. Like she's been lying to them for quite a while, and it's all related to you.
And to top it, they don't know you all that well, or they thought they did, but then out of the blue there's all that stuff, they of course are skeptical.
I think they just need more time to take things in. Your girl needs to tell them all they need to know and hopefully make you not look bad to them.

Not be offensive, be you being muslim also can scare them a bit, there's a lot of sexism still in arab/muslim contries (like real sexism, not saying silly shit, but keeping women locked in at home, hitting them like they are animals and stuff, at least some people believe it), so maybe it's important you tell them you basically don't follow Islamism and really cares about their daughter, because maybe they are afraid of leaving her alone with you in another country they don't know and can't do anything if something happens to her.

Your girl also is scared, I mean, it's Brazil, I live here, it's full of women, she probably thinks you in the very least would fall in tentation and cheat on her here, maybe even get another girlfriend here. Btw what part of Brazil are you coming to? São Paulo? Rio? I live on the south, if you wanna meet up an talk hehe
So maybe also you should put her mind at ease, if it comes to her not being able to come here with you, that she'll still be your girl.

Good luck

 

[Chase]

@moom,

Keep in mind:

• She's 22 and not seriously religious. Her parents likely expect her to have several serious boyfriends before she settles down with one at 27-31 or so. That means they may like you, but probably assume 70/30 you're not "the one"
  
  
• Her parents apparently expected her to enter into the family business. She, on the other hand, decided she's not going to do that, but will tag along with you (someone her parents probably view as a "serious-ish but not forever life partner" relationship), completely uprooting her life and altering her career trajectory, without involving them in the discussion at all -- just a complete and total shift
  
  
• You and her have apparently discussed this for months, without cluing the parents in. You then confronted the parents together. It comes across very much as an "us vs. them" situation. You and her conspired together, and are only just now letting the parents in on what their baby girl will be doing -- leaving countries, leaving family, leaving her expected career, to go traipsing about the globe with a man who is not her husband

The right way to handle this would've been as soon as she started talking about it telling her, "I'd love that, but you need to discuss it with your folks." She's not a woman with an established career and her own life at this point yet... she's a kid presumably just out of college. I don't think you can really consider a girl "grown" until 24-26, depending on the gal.

She should've discussed it with them herself, without you there. Then it's a family issue. With you there it's a lot more likely to come across as if you've orchestrated this whole thing and are the one tearing their daughter away from them. Far better for them to see it as her making her own choices while you are trying to be gracious and considerate to them -- not as you pulling her away from them without also at the same time giving assurances that this is super serious "forever marriage." She's still a child to them with a lot more growing up to do.

The age gap exacerbates this. I'm not against age gaps at all, and am all for going for younger chicks. But you need to keep in mind the difference between a 29-year-old who's been post-college for 7 years and a 22-year-old who's newly graduated and still figuring things out is VAST. The parents are going to tend to assume (probably rightly) that she has no idea what she's getting into and you ought to be behaving more responsibly than you've so far shown you do/will.

Her parents pushing for you to introduce her to your parents is actually pretty cool on their part. They are saying, "Well, we're not going to COMPLETELY object, but at least give us SOMETHING! Show us this is really super serious and headed toward marriage, if she's going to uproot the whole rest of her life for you!"

The problem you have is that this whole thing revolves around her doing it for you.

It is not "her doing it for her" in the parents' eyes. The lying, the suddenness of it, you there backing it up, it all looks orchestrated by you, with you clearly leading and her following.

"Man leading, woman following" when the woman is young, inexperienced, and giving up her life and prospects for the man really means only one of two things:

1. This guy is THE one... he's going to wed her, keep her safe and secure and well-provided for, be the father of her children, etc.
   
   
2. This guy is a charming conman who sucks women into him, carelessly tears them away from their lives, then ditches them to figure it out on their own wherever in the world he ditches them at once things unravel with them

What the parents do not want is to get a call from their daughter a year from now saying, "Mom, Dad, moom and I broke up. I'm in Southern Indonesia and I don't know anyone here and I'm not even sure if I have enough money to get home. You guys were right, I wasn't ready to leave everything behind. I just want to come back. What can I do? [SOB]"

For future situations like this, you really just need to let the girl handle her family herself, while you preferably are not even there... or if you are, you slightly take the parents' side as a voice of caution / reason to the girl.

For this particular situation... I would assess if I was really sure I wanted the responsibility of taking this newly-22-year-old girl around the world with me, probably paying for everything for her, probably having to help her deal with culture shock and not being able to communicate with people in foreign lands and not having her own money for a good long while and feeling totally dependent on you, or if that is going to end up being a burden you don't want.

Personally, the idea of bringing a girlfriend around as I traveled the world to other places with good-looking girls feels a lot like bringing sand to the beach. Can't take a local girlfriend to show you around and serve as interpreter... can't do pick up anywhere... it's a much more limited, tourist-like form of travel.

I don't know.

The whole situation with your girl here feels like it's gotten super serious... but like you personally are not ready for or thinking "super serious."

I guarantee you that is the parents' concern, because it's exactly what I'm thinking about just looking at the situation.

If I was you, I'd start talking to her about how serious this really is, then telling her she needs to talk to her parents about it, just her and them, without you there, because you don't want it being some thing where they think you're influencing her and trying to peel her away from them.

Chase

 

[moom]

@Rakehell Yes, I live in America. Thanks for your advice, I definitely feel like that's the case as well, to which Chase has added to.

@Beck Bass I totally get this, I've already told them the situation with my parents. And I get the stigma behind having Muslim parents- and even though they're nothing like that, and much more like her parents really in the way they run the household, its still the whole matter of "the black sheep son whose going to bring shame upon the family by not only dating but possibly marrying a non muslim girl" a very traditional old school way of thinking. In my parents mind, I'll go to hell because of this. My girl's mind is at ease however, she knows I'm serious. I've already been on a 3 year stint of travel in the past, and I know what happens or what situations we'll run into.

@Chase As always thank you for your advice. I've already taken alot of these points into consideration after reading what you wrote and have brought them up as well. I agree with pretty much everything youve said, including that I fucked up bringing this up with her infront of her parents as a sort of confrontation. Truth is, she's just been afraid to say anything to her parents for months and I figured I would be strong for her and help her finally spill the beans, when instead I should have told her that it would be best if she brought it up to them herself. A few things I should clarify:

1. I've done this whole traveling thing before quite a bit, infact had a 3 year stint. Had a ton of fun, a ton of lays. However, I'm getting to a more serious part of my life (who knows if it will last), but I'm definitely serious as can be with this girl.
2. I'm progressing our relationship towards marriage- we make a great team, she's hot, and feminine/mother material. Of course it's still early with this girl and anything can happen, and time will tell how it goes, but its not like im not dating her without an end goal. We're both working towards the same thing.
3. I totally get the whole sand to a beach thing, but I'm expecting the whole tourist travel thing. At this point in my life, I want to travel with a girl, see the world a bit more, and build my business online while having a reliable, nurturing girl by my side.

I have her talking to her parents today without me, and coming clean about everything. I've told her to talk to them and before she does, to really ask herself if this is something she wants, and isn't just doing it for me.

As always, thanks for the awesome and enlightening advice Chase.

Lets see what happens, will update here.