Introduction to family and friends

[Batya33]

8 hours ago, Coily said:

if she had asked me I would have balked with introducing her to my parents; due to the pressure I would feel from them to make her my bride. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to do anything, so to shield her I would have balked. 

Yes but she didn't ask so you two were on the same page.  I understand your preference as a couple was to hang out privately.  Also in the OP's case he's now gone out several times with his friends and not invited her even though she asked to meet them with the excuse being alcohol so I think that makes it different too.  I dated someone who assumed most families were like the Cleavers and I found that really annnoying -mine was not. We dated for 6 months.  I think he met my parents once but nothing "official."

[smackie9]

Your only answer is the communicate more with him. 

[Angel_325]

Thanks everyone for your opinions and perspectives. I think one thing I need to do is reflect on the relationship itself, as mentioned by some of you, but also upon thinking about it further I think some of the reasons he may want to wait to introduce me are the following.

1. He hasn't been in a relationship in a decade and this is all very new to him so there may be some hesitation there. He tends to get nervous about this probably due to lack of ling term relationship experience and things that seem to not work out for him. I wonder if this is the biggest reason why he hesitates to introduce me to his friends

2. When we first met he wanted to keep things casual at first but ended up really liking me after a couple of months so we became official. The fact that things moved quicker that he then he anticipated or wanted may also instill some sort of nervousness or fear in him. He felt very weird and nervous when we became official even though he was willing to take that step because it's been so long.

3. He has a somewhat complicated family situation with a relative who resides with them at the moment and even though she lives in a different part of the house, there's some issues there and he doesn't want her to see me because she may say bad things. His parents also don't go out much other than daily chores since covid . I don't think this issue was there with his family in his previous relationships.

4. His parents know about me because I know for a fact that he discussed me with his mom and I know she has expressed a little bit of discomfort about the age difference and while he doesn't care about the age difference, in the back of his head that might be something that he's thinking about when it comes to introducing me even to his friends

5. He said his friends are like family to him. He also hangs out with his friends maybe twice a month so perhaps he just wants to spend time with them alone for now because he hasn't have a chance to see them very often. Just thoughts

6. He didn't tell his friends he was dating me until we were together for nearly two months and he only started telling his friends once I started asking if his friends knew about me. I think he used to be a little bit more open when he was younger but in recent years has become more closed off and even more private so that may be why he was more willing to introduce somebody sooner in the past. Also, I would imagine his past experience shapes how he views relationships now and in the past if things didn't work out he may be more hesitant to move quickly.

[Wiseman2]

19 minutes ago, Angel_325 said:

a relative who resides with them at the moment and even though she lives in a different part of the house, there's some issues there and he doesn't want her to see me because she may say things about me as he days she's not good.

Has he ever invited you to his home in the 5 mos. you're dating? Who is this relative? This alone seems unsustainable.

[Andrina]

So, at 32 why does he live with his parents? Can he not afford a place of his own? And you said his friends picked him up. Does he not have a car, or was his friend the designated driver?

What are your must-haves for a serious relationship? Do you believe love conquers all and you don't need a financially stable person? Assuming he works, what does he do in his spare time when he's not with friends? How often does he make plans with you, and does he pay for things or do you always hang out at your house, or you pay?

You say he's a private person but that can always translate to a person with things to hide. You have a lot of assumptions because it seems you know little more about him than you did when becoming exclusive. What made you want exclusivity with someone who feared it and didn't feel 100 percent confident in that step?

 

[Angel_325]

2 hours ago, Wiseman2 said:

Has he ever invited you to his home in the 5 mos. you're dating? Who is this relative? This alone seems unsustainable.

We've been together for a bit over 4 months and the person is his step grandmother. They have a very bad relationship. He did casually mention to me that if I wanted to come over and meet his dad and brother while she was out of town with his mom, I could do that. This is in a couple of weeks. I think he's building up to it perhaps?

[Angel_325]

2 hours ago, Andrina said:

So, at 32 why does he live with his parents? Can he not afford a place of his own? And you said his friends picked him up. Does he not have a car, or was his friend the designated driver?

What made you want exclusivity with someone who feared it and didn't feel 100 percent confident in that step?

 

Yes, the fact that he lives with his parents was a concern for me from the beginning but he does have a pretty good job. He doesn't make as much money as me but he could definitely afford to live on his own. However, he helps his family pay some of the mortgage expenses as the family seems to need a little bit of help. He also believes it's a good way to save money as what he's paying at home is much less than what he would pay elsewhere. This I could actually understand.

As far as why I decided to be exclusive, he seemed to want to take the relationship to the next level and I was the one who initially brought it up, and he said he was ready for it but did admit to be nervous just because it was so new to him. He gets nervous easily and I think he sometimes gets into his head probably due to life experiences and just his personality. Recently, he hasn't really been that nervous about the relationship and has expressed confidence in how he feels about it and the potential that it has.

[Batya33]

1 hour ago, Angel_325 said:

Recently, he hasn't really been that nervous about the relationship and has expressed confidence in how he feels about it and the potential that it has.

He still sounds very lukewarm about his being committed to you and your future.  I think this is the main reason why he is not ready to have you meet his friends- who are like family to him -and his family.  Is "not that nervous" really your standard -in a new relationship I think especially at your age you'd want someone over the moon and excited to be with you!

I think you're rationalizing way too much about his past -certainly it might be that he's not available to be happy to commit to anyone - but really who cares - I'd tread carefully here and up your standards -if very very soon he's not excited to be your boyfriend and discussing future things to do together as a couple etc I'd consider moving on.

[LootieTootie]

Have you introduced him to your family?

[Angel_325]

7 minutes ago, LootieTootie said:

Have you introduced him to your family?

I invited him to my birthday party which would have many of my friends and possibly my parents there as well he didn't come because it was all women and he felt a bit uncomfortable and overwhelmed meeting everybody all at once and he thought that it would take away from the party if he was the only guy there. We are meeting one of my friends individually in a couple of days.

He took me out for lunch separately for my bday and got me a card and small gift.

[LootieTootie]

When was your b-day party? 

I would re-introduce the idea of meeting your family again and see his reaction. Just your family, no friends.

 

[catfeeder]

Sounds like you're dating a Peter-Pan. He can rationalize living with his family to help them, but there's no reason he couldn't help them from his own home. His frat-boy drinking with friends to whom he won't introduce you, his unwillingness to attend your birthday party and meet your people, his unwillingness to introduce you to family and his overall lack of long term relationships all add up to the emotional maturity of an adolescent.

If this is okay with you, then here you are, but expecting this guy to mature into someone who can be emotionally and socially satisfying as partner material are pretty slim.

The fact that you've felt a need to post multiple threads about this guy speaks of your discomfort with him. You get to decide whether this is enough for you, but I'd consider whether my fertility years are important to me, because what you see is what you get with this guy.

I'm sorry, and while I hope I'm wrong, I've seen this before. It's not good.

[Tinydance]

I'm not sure if it's necessarily a bad thing or not but it sounds like your boyfriend really does have very little experience with dating and relationships. I did think it was quite odd when you wrote in your other post that he keeps bringing up crushes from high school and college at 32 years old. It does make some sense that he's still thinking of them if he hasn't really been in any relationships. And also why he's a bit clueless that you shouldn't talk about your ex's or old crushes to someone you're dating. 

I understand everyone's life is different but you're saying his last relationship was maybe 10 + years ago and it only lasted two months? Or did I get that wrong? Do you know why this is? 

I don't think in and of itself your age gap is a problem. But where it might be a problem is if you're in your 40's, you've been living out of home and had relationships. And he hasn't experienced any of that. So really that eight year age gap might be mentally more like ten or fifteen years. Because your boyfriend has relationship and life experience more like that of someone only in their 20's. 

I wouldn't really worry that he hasn't introduced you to his friends and family yet because you haven't been together that long yet. It sounds like they know about you, or at least some of them do. So it's not really like he's been hiding you. 

Just wondering what are you looking for in a relationship? Like, to settle down and have kids? It's OK if you aren't though, I was just wondering.

I'm not saying that you are having the same experience or will have the same experience as me. Last year I was dating a guy for 2.5 months. I was 36 and he was 30. I didn't mind the age difference but he did actually tell me that he had very minimal dating and intimacy experience and was a virgin.

He had also never lived out of home prior to that but only just around the time I met him did move out. My state had very strict long COVID lockdowns but you were allowed to see your partner. So I did actually spend that 2.5 months just with him only and I saw him all the time.

Personally I found that his lack of experience actually was a problem. He had no idea how to be in a relationship and basically didn't actually want to do anything at all together as a couple. When I was at his place all he wanted to do was play video games with his online friends. He said he was so happy he finally got a girlfriend and was telling everyone about it. But we actually had nothing in common and any attempts I made to do activities together were rejected by him. I brought it up to him that we don't seem to share common interests and he said it doesn't matter and that we can just do everything we want separately. I almost felt like he just wanted to have A GIRLFRIEND, he didn't even care who it was.

Another thing was he had always lived at home prior to that and he said either his mother or stepmother cooked all the meals. I know he had just moved out but he didn't cook anything and just ordered pre made meals. He did have a lot of snacks in the house though. I said it might be nice to cook meals together and as I love shopping, began to buy ingredients to cook. It was basically just me finding the recipes and buying ingredients but he did help cook. 

A couple of times we said we would cook something when I came over, but one time I was a bit late getting to his place. He was in a really bad, irritable mood and snappy at me. I asked what was wrong and he said he was "hangry" because he was waiting for me to cook dinner. He hadn't had any snacks or anything else but he had also not communicated with me at all and never said anything.

Another time we said we'd have a picnic and I went on a walk to go buy all the picnic food. I first had a video call appointment with someone and then I wanted to get a coffee. I was updating him about everything I was doing, e.g. going for coffee.

When I came back after my walk and got all the food, he was irritable with me again. He said again he was "hangry" because he hadn't eaten anything at all that day and he was waiting for me to come back and set up the picnic. I actually had no idea he hadn't eaten anything because he never said that. But also it just sounded like basically he was so used to being cooked for that he was unable to actually get himself anything to eat and was purely just relying on me to provide the food.

Anyway I guess the point of my story is that the age difference wasn't a problem but that guy's immaturity and lack of life and relationship experience was the actual problem. I knew that he had to get experience somehow but I'd been in relationships since I was sixteen years old and I just had no patience for him basically.

[Batya33]

I don't think wanting someone you care about and see a future with to meet your people has much to do with relationship experience -it's a natural desire/urge -you want to share your life with the person and that means the people in your life, you want the people in your life to see how happy you are that you've met this special person, you want the support of those people to maintain your relationship and they do that by getting to know your partner. 

My friend married her fiancee when she was 39 and he was 29.  They'd been together a couple of years and he had been her dance instructor -a hobby of hers.  The only way the age gap factored in was I think it motivated her to get a prenup since her financial assets far exceeded his.  They had children a couple of years later when she was in her mid 40s.  They'd never been married before. 

[Wiseman2]

On 11/10/2022 at 7:00 PM, Angel_325 said:

He took me out for lunch separately for my bday and got me a card and small gift.

That's a nice gesture, but it's still important to evaluate why he lives with his parents and why you're banned from his house because supposedly grandmother won't like it.

It's all about compatibly and viability.  If you feel you have to steer the relationship because he's just along for the ride, how happy will that make you in the long run?

[Angel_325]

I talked about this with him and he has made plans to introduce me. When asked why it hasn't happened then why the hesitation, the response was that this was all very new to him and that now that he is in his thirties he has to take things more seriously and consider more things. I'm guessing that the previous introductions didn't really have serious implication but now he feels probably that they may and not having had anyone for so long made him very nervous and want to take things slow. He said that he loves me and he does want the future with me and has made plans to introduce me to his family and friends but I still have a lot of stuff to consider based on everything else in the relationship. He is immature and this situation is more evidence of that

[Batya33]

And did he make an actual plan ? Watch the feet - what he does - not the lips -what he says 

[Wiseman2]

1 hour ago, Angel_325 said:

I still have a lot of stuff to consider based on everything else in the relationship. He is immature and this situation is more evidence of that

Research "Peter Pan Syndrome". Ask yourself is you would be happy in the role of his mother if/when he ever leaves home. Introductions do not matter and are not an indicator of the quality of the relationship when there are more serious red flags to consider.