For parents who are dating, the first time you introduce a partner to your kids can be a pretty big deal. Even if you love the person you're seeing, there's no way to know how they're going to respond to your kid (and vice versa) until it happens.
Recently, a 31-year-old dad of a 7-year-old boy shared that his 24-year-old girlfriend met his son for the first time. He says they've been dating for four months, and he felt like it was time.
Unfortunately, the night didn't go quite the way he hoped it would, and now he's questioning her maturity level.
The meeting wasn't planned.
He writes that his girlfriend was lonely, so he invited her over before his son went to bed:
"We've talked for a little while about when and how she would meet my son. Last night, she was lonely and wanted to come over (quarantine understandably driving her nuts). So I said sure, come over meet my son before he goes to bed, and we can hang out for a bit."
First of all, she was late.
The dad says the night was already off to a weird start because she was late:
"She came later than we agreed, so I let my son stay up just a bit later to meet her before he went to sleep. We were playing rocket league and hanging out when she came. I stopped the game and introduced the two of them."
Then his son wanted to chat.
Like a lot of kids his age, the man's son was excited to tell her all about the video game, but she wasn't super present for the conversation:
"He wanted to tell her all about the game (he's obsessed with it) but she said maybe five words throughout the duration of the conversation. She went on her phone and really just ignored us. Eventually, it was bedtime for sure so I went to tuck him in."
She apologized, and it all seemed OK.
After the dad came back downstairs, the girlfriend apologized for her behavior:
"When I came downstairs, she apologized and said she was really nervous and didn't know what to say. Not ideal, but I appreciated the apology and explanation."
But then ...
However, when it was time for the dad to get to sleep, things started to fall apart:
"Fast forward to around midnight. I need to go to bed so I can get a reasonable amount of sleep before getting up to get him ready for school and go about my own work day. She isn't ready for bed and tries to get me to stay up later. Me wanting to go to bed and her wanting to stay up is pretty common, but it's never when I have to get up to take care of my son."
And it just got worse.
Things didn't really improve.
"Fast forward to 2 am when I say I absolutely need to go to sleep. She wordlessly gets up out of bed and goes downstairs. She makes a phone call. I can hear the call from my room. She wasn't being crazy loud, but she also wasn't being very quiet either. I came downstairs and gave her the ole' 'what are you doing?' gesture. She says just a minute."
Thirty minutes later, it really got bad.
She even stayed on the phone for another 30 minutes.
"Fast forward half an hour and she's still on the phone. Now I'm pissed. The evening has not been a disaster, but none of her actions have made me feel very good about her maturity when it comes to me being a dad. We argued in bed for a long time and now I'm exhausted to the point of it [expletive] up my day."
Now everyone's upset and she's crying.
His girlfriend got upset, and she thinks it's his fault.
"Now she's mad at me for putting all this pressure on her and complaining that the night didn't go 'how I'd hoped it would go'. She cried and went to bed mad at me."
So he's asking for advice.
The dad wanted to know if he was really a jerk here, and people had a ton of opinions. One man commented that his girlfriend doesn't sound ready to be a stepmom:
"I get she's probably 'fun' for you, but if you really look at this situation, your 'girlfriend' just realized that you're ACTUALLY a father – as in before it was trivia that you just had a kid, and now you ACTUALLY have someone who's never going to be less important than she is."
Like, she's super not ready.
The guy continued: "And you introduced her to him – which is usually a sign you want to be 'serious', and she didn't make much of an effort to know him or understand your situation.
"Grown [expletive] man to grown [expletive] man: don't try to wife her – she's not ready."
The dad immediately understood:
"I think your comments about her realizing I'm actually a father and don't just play one on the weekend is the heart of the issue."
People echoed this idea.
A woman also commented that she was once the girlfriend in this scenario, and she gets it:
"One day, I met the kid and I think I did okay? We didn't have phones or anything to distract myself with, but I didn't make a point of interacting with the kid. I just hung back and watched dad, ex and the kid. Shortly after this, I dropped that guy like a hot stone. I wasn't ready to be a stepmother and the fact that this guy introduced me to his kid made the kid real and not just an abstract reason ex BF was living with a roommate and working two jobs."
They also defended the girlfriend.
No one seems to blame the 24-year-old for not knowing how to be a mom, which is good, since she's never been one before. As one commenter said:
"She’s a 24 year old girl who acted like a 24 year old girl there's nothing inherently wrong with her not knowing how to play a parent because that's not a life experience she’s gone through yet. You can't blame someone for not acting the way you think they should when you put them in an unfamiliar situation to them."
