How do you treat romantic relationships of your college age kids away at out of state campuses? Is it a good idea to meet them during your visit or invite them to your town? Do you send them any gifts? Is there a need to meet their parents? What’s the protocol for new generation?
As times have changed and every kid and every relationship is different, how to tread carefully so you get to know if they are good for your kid as they may end up becoming family in future? It used to be easy in our times but with more racial, religious, cultural, political diversity among dating pool, you don’t want to ruin something good by saying or doing something insensitive. Bottom line, how to be supportive without being intrusive?
The only time I’ve met my kids’ SO’s parents have been at wakes/funerals. My 24 year old has been dating her SO for over 3 years, he’s always invited to our family functions (she lives with him and his mom since covid, we have a full house). We live in between my 20 year olds boyfriends’s home town and their university, so he stays here several days a month during breaks, and she stays at his house. My 23 year old dated his ex for a couple of years, never met her family (20 minutes away). Unless there is talk of a wedding I don’t see the need. All of my kids had long term relationships starting in HS. For Christmas I always give the couple a shared experience (restaurant gift card, broadways tickets) rather than a physical gift. Ds23 has a new girlfriend of only 2 months, I met her once, they just went away together this weekend. We are renting a shore house for a week soon, all SO’s are invited.
My DD has been in a relationship for close to a year. I met him for the first time on our holiday ski trip. She asked if he could join us after the trip was planned for months and I said fine and he made arrangements to join us. It was a fun trip. She has met his entire family since he lives in the same city as their college and his family has invited her to join them for things and she’s stayed at his parents house a couple of times. He is coming to visit her here for a couple of weeks this summer.
My son and daughter have been dating their SO’s for 5 and 4 years. We give gifts at Xmas. I send Venmo for bdays if one of my kids reminds me. When we visited our kids at college, if the SO was around, they came along for lunch or a walk. When the kids are with their SO, we take them out if we are, for example, going out to eat. They have dinner at our home. Both SO’s can stay the night at our house in our kid’s rooms. We know they’re going to do whatever they’ve already done. Beyond that, we just interact when the SO’s are at our home, which is often.
Edit: We invited both SO’s on our recent family vacation, as both of the SO’s families have invited our kids on vacation. One of the SO’s joined us.
Follow your kid’s lead, if they want you to meet them they will see that it happens. Let them know the SO is welcome at your home and see if they bring them.
So far we’ve only had one relationship in which we didn’t already know the boy & his family. DD set up a lunch and shopping outing for us to meet him within a couple months of them starting to date. He’s been out to our place a handful of times in 3 years. Met the parents once, but not worrying about doing it more because I think it’s not going to last…
I think it depends on you, your kid, and your family dynamics. Every person and every situation is different. As for meeting your kid’s SO’s parents: I wouldn’t rush anything. You don’t want to seem too eager. Again, it may be different if you happen to already know the SO’s parents or you run into them at some event, etc. Your kid is an adult and it’s important to remember it’s their relationship and you don’t want to get overinvolved or put pressure on them. That said, I do think it’s important to meet your kid’s SO and include them in certain things.
But you really don’t want to overstep: I’ve seen that happen…
I think the SO’s parents are tricky, tbh. It’s always going to feel forced and weird if we try to arrange parental meetings. I certainly would NEVER try to finagle a meeting with parents if the SO is pretty new. I remember a friend became very friendly with the GF of their son. Of course, the kids split up and it was super awkward to see the parents at sports events and the like. I don’t plan to be super chummy with SO parents until it’s clear the kids will stay together.
My son’s GF’s family is local, and we have never met with them outside of seeing one another when we used to drop the kids at each other’s houses. They are nice people. Haven’t seen them for two years now. Yikes! Maybe hubby and I should invite them for a bbq this summer.
My daughter’s BF’s parents were more complicated to meet, because she met him at college. We had always figured we would meet them at the college, certainly at graduation. Well, covid came along. We did finally meet them by working it into a shopping trip near their home last summer. They are very nice people, but yes, it was a bit awkward. We then invited them to our house for a hike and lunch last fall. I do actually feel they are people I could like outside of our kids’ relationship. There’s no doubt it’s a bit strange though.
I would have not made an effort to meet the BF’s parents if the kids hadn’t already been together for several years. I figured by then that it was time, even if they do end up not being together in the long term. Time will tell for both of my kids, but so far, they are both in pretty solid relationships.
Now that I think of it, I’d meet the parents of my kids’ SO’s during prom pictures, then I’d exchange emails with the moms to exchange pictures. I’m still Facebook friends with most of them.
I didn’t take high school interests too seriously, other than being nice to kid’s romantic interest like I was to their other friends.
It seems their college relationships have more potential of going long term and unlike local high school crowd, we don’t know much about college love interests as their colleges are in different states than ours.
All posts have good advice and wisdom but i found your reply most helpful. It’s important to respect our adult children’s judgement and let them choose who makes them happy and how to proceed about it. I think all we’ll do is to take their cue and show our support.
My son has been dating his gf for 4 years now and engagement talks are in work. I met her a couple months after they started dating at an award ceremony I had to fly to campus for. I’ve seen her a lot since then. She was really easy to talk to and that helped. Sometimes I feel I like her more than him!
They have stayed at our house and hers and gone on vacations with both families. I usually give her something like her lift tickets or ski rental or airfare. I did give her a gift for graduation.
I met her parents and siblings once for about 5 minutes at an airport. We have talked a little over texts and have tried to meet up other times but it just hasn’t worked out. We are almost 12 hours away.
We’ve let our kids lead. So far, no problems at all with that and now two are married with the other in a seemingly significant relationship.
If they wanted us to meet their SO and/or family, we did. If not, we didn’t worry about it. It was up to them. Lately when we’ve had family travels we’ve invited everyone (our boys and their wives or SO). We also tend to pay for most things - not souvenirs or things they do on their own, but most other things.
Some parents have been to our farm and others we’ve only met elsewhere, but that’s mainly due to distance for those who haven’t been here.
One set of in-laws we only send Christmas cards to. Another set we regularly play games (online) with when the kids set things up.
It’s all up to our kids, which to us, is how it should be.
My kids had very close long term friend groups in high school, I was always polite to the bf/gf’s but I was definitely closer to their same sex friends, knowing that they would probably be in their lives longer (and I was right).
During her freshman year in college, it became clear to us that D19’s boyfriend was also her closest friend, and it was natural that we would meet him when we visited. Now, they have been to each other’s houses multiple times, and he spent six weeks living with us when they went virtual for fall semester. It was like having another kid (a super helpful, polite kid who didn’t fight with his siblings). I loved it.
I actually had the opposite experience from @Mjkacmom, who was close to her kids’ same sex friends in high school, and those were the relationships that lasted, not their SO’s. D21 had very close friends since kindergarten who grew up in and out of each other’s houses and bonded with each other’s families (small town). They went different ways in high school and are no longer friends, which broke my heart along with D21’s. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, who also did many things with our family and vice versa, is still very much in her life, and I think they will remain friends if they break up.
My general philosophy is to be welcoming to all friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, and invite them whenever and to whatever my child wants. I did not send gifts until I met them, and then it has been mostly shared experiences, like tickets for a show, or a weekend at the beach. As for meeting the parents, we did when the kids set it up. It was fun, not awkward, but I think we must have lucked out with the personalities!
Our kids didn’t really date much in HS or college. Our S did date a woman for awhile who lived in a different city from him but after awhile—some months of longer, they broke up. We never met her.
A few years ago, we were visiting S in the city where he lives and he asked if he could bring a friend to dinner and of course we said yes. He admitted they’d been dating awhile—20 months or so. We’ve spent time with them in our subsequent trips to DC.
We told S she’s welcome to come to our home anytime and she was planning to come to HNL 4/2020 for a wedding but then covid cancelled that and so much else.
D told us to just let S take the lead. As far as I know, he’s never met her family at all but she’s met several of our family members and they all get along. We’ve not met any of her family. At this point, they’ve been together maybe 6 years. They sent out joint photo Christmas cards this past December for the 1st time.
We are fine with having as direct things as he prefers.
I think in high school it’s a bit more common to meet the SO’s parents…since you’re going to so many school functions and in high school you kind of want to know the parents of the kids your kid is spending time with…
College son has been seeing his GF for 2 years, and she is always with him. So when we visit him at college, she comes along and we buy her lunch or dinner. She has also stayed at our house for weeks at a time as they migrate about during the summer (and during COVID remote school). That’s all fine and we enjoy seeing her. We invited her along on our extended family vacation this summer (well, son asked us to invite her), which was a big deal bc no SO had gone on extended family vacation. We had some trouble navigating whether we should pay for her flight or not, as we were paying for everything else. In the end, we paid for some of it and her family paid for some. Next time we’ll probably just pay for everything to avoid the hassle. Met her mom at a function at school once. I suspect we’ll see more of her family during senior year events.
HS son has been dating a young lady for over a year, and we see her parents a lot. Sometimes, just to keep these two from being alone too much, her mom will invite all of us over. We get along quite well, and I would not be surprised if we socialized even after that HS relationship runs its course. HS GF has not taken trips with us though. I don’t think her parents are ready for that.
I live in a town were there is a 2 degree separation between everyone, my kids are 4th generation, it’s very easy to find out a lot about people even if you haven’t met. 28,000 residents, everyone seems to know everyone (3 square miles).