It can be awkward meeting a significant other's family, especially when you are seriously involved. You are so eager to make a good impression it can be nerve wracking! However, here are 24 stories of significant other's families who did -not- make a good impression and ruined their child's relationship.
The She-Beast
“My ex’s mom was a round, red haired, red faced, she-beast who never spoke below a yell. She also had a very unhealthy and incestuous attachment to the son I was dating. I was young and dumb and stayed longer than I should have (she was a HUGE b—h to me and encouraged him to abuse me) but I began to question the relationship when she made him take her bra off for her. In front me. It was a weird display of dominance- massive bullet dodged there”
The Family That Parties Together…
“I had just started dating this girl. She had a steady apprenticeship and she didn’t give off this kind of vibe. So I was shocked when I met her family and I found out they liked to get together and smoke crack.
They invited me to their next ‘crack night’ when I first met them….At first I thought she was just teasing me but her sister confirmed it by inviting me to the next one. The mum who was in her forties, two daughters (the one I was dating was 22 her sister was 23), the sister’s partner (28 and unemployed) would get together and smoke crack. The 15 year old son would also attend but wasn’t allowed to do crack, only weed.
That along with multiple other things made me get the f–k out of that fast”
Ouch
“This will sound horrible but I met them and realized they would both likely be dead within 5 years (one had cancer, one was early 70s). Girlfriend was very clingy and I thought about having to support her emotionally through two deaths. I realized I couldn’t deal with that after just losing my own parents; I ended 1.5 year relationship about a month later”
This is Sinister
“He was my first boyfriend in high school and my last, meeting his family freaked me out so much that I swore off relationships until I graduated college.
I’m an American citizen but was living in Asia for a time. I started high school in one of those countries. Then I met him. One day, he invited me and our friends to his house for his birthday.
I met his parents and sister at the house, and while they were nice, they treated me with some weird reverence. Everyone in town knew I was an ‘Americana’ and knew I spoke mainly English. At one point they gave me a tour of their house, and his folks were pressuring me to go into my boyfriend’s bedroom alone with him. I said no.
They then began to talk amongst themselves. They failed to realize that I understood their language by then. Turns out that they were conspiring to get me locked in the room with their son, have their boy force sex on me, and then have the two of us marry. All this in the hopes of getting a green card for their kid and a ticket to migrate to America. Apparently my American citizenship was all they saw of me. I was 15.
I went from being that teenager anticipating her first kiss to breaking up with him the next Monday at school. Just knowing his parents were willing to ruin my life like that – nope, not having it”
What a Messed Up Family
“I dated this girl for 2 years, She was cute, but a little off. As in, she would ‘cut herself’ superficially then talk about how much better she felt… Whatever, I was 19, and if you look past that, she was great.
She was very close to her grandfather, I had met him a few times before, Sweet guy. One day she gets the news that he’s dying, so we drive to see him off.
Meeting the rest of the family… this is where it gets fun.
Her mom, didn’t strike me as particularly crazy at first, but once I sat down to talk to her, she started getting overly sappy, talking about marriage, but ‘NO KIDS! Kids are the worst thing that can happen to you!’.. erm ok.
The aunt just wanted to argue with everyone about everything, and belittle her grown adult nieces and nephews.
Her sister was very obviously an escort (and not the expensive kind either) and almost always had some coke residue around the bottom ring of one nostril or the other.
Her brother offered me a slew of drugs while I was there. Much appreciated, but calm down man.
…..And as grandpa lay there, struggling to hold on to the last threads of life. He got to watch his entire family fall apart, mostly arguing over which of his possessions would go to who. There was also some rumors about grandpa sexually molesting family members, this made his bedside as well. It was probably the most f–ked up last days a person has ever experienced.
I left early, because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Too much drama over a dying man. I had been contemplating how to break up with her the following few weeks after all that, when she started hanging out with her manager at work, and after work, getting rides home with him… and boning him- Good riddance”
She Thought He Was Proposing…
“I’d met them before but I guess it’s safe to say this time I really ‘met’ them.
I’d been dating this guy for four years. Everything was going really well. We had excellent communication within the relationship. He was intelligent, funny, intuitive, handsome; he came into my life and completely swept me off my feet. I thought marriage was a sure thing.
It just so happened that one late afternoon I’d finished work and was making my way home. My boyfriend called me while I was driving and requested a change of plans so instead of us two dining at one of our regular restaurants, we’d be going to his parents’ home for dinner. He also mentioned that there would be a surprise.
I was completely psyched. The man I’d spent four years of utter bliss with was about to propose that we take our relationship to the next level.
I got home and got ready in a flurry and then left to meet him. When I arrived his entire family was beaming. I’ll never forget the way his mother said, ‘Welcome to the family’ and hugged me. Again, this solidified my assumption that after dinner was over I’d be admiring a diamond upon my finger and planning our future. When we sat down to dinner, conversation continued as normal but everyone was simply so affectionate towards one another that it was clear the night wasn’t totally routine. The only thing I took special notice of, however, was that dinner had been very light and consisted of salads and crackers only. I was then perplexed when his family – mom, dad and brother – excused themselves from the table and my boyfriend’s dad proceeded to pat his shoulder on the way out and smile rather warmly. At this point it was just my boyfriend and I. About ten minutes later, his family emerges, proudly wearing lobster costumes. This wasn’t what ultimately confused me the most, because in the container his mom was carrying were five live, gigantic lobsters. I looked to my boyfriend for some kind of explanation. He grins at me, takes me by the hand, and leads me to the kitchen, his entire family in tow. So we get to the kitchen and I see five boiling pots on the stove. I’m totally lost at this point. You can probably imagine where this is going…or so you think.
Before my mind has a chance to even try and process what’s unfolding before me, my boyfriend quickly takes the container of lobsters off his mom and within moments is placing each lobster in a boiling pot. I’m standing there mouth agape as my boyfriend hands me the remaining lobster and nods towards the last pot. At this point I begin to hear a rhythmic clicking just behind me, followed by two voices singing in unison. It went something like,
‘Hello lobsters, my tasty friends,
I’m glad I got to see you again
Thanks for joining me for supper
As I cover you in butter
We may part ways now
But this isn’t the end;’
His brother then shouts loudly, ‘YUMYUMYUMYUMYUM’. At that point I pretty much bolted from the kitchen and took the lobster home with me (alive).
My relationship subsequently went like this: there was no marriage proposal and one was not on the cards either. The whole point of this bizarre ‘romantic’ night had been to include me in their weird ritual of Friday night lobster sacrifice. I noped the f–k out of that relationship and his crazy family real quick”
The Hoarder Family
“I was with her for 2 years and finally met her family. Her mother was an abusive heavily overweight single mother that scolded her constantly and put her down because she was an insecure wreck due to her own weight issues.
I also found out that she was living in their house and there were 9 cats living indoors that would urinate and defecate on the carpets.
It was never obvious because she was well kept but upon entering her room for the first time (she always come to my place) it was a bomb site and stunk of cat urine.
I met her father a day later and found he was an abusive alcoholic who also suffered from serious cleanliness problems… (a yard full of car parts, vehicle shells and rubbish bags full of decomposing rubbish)
Being a person that likes to maintain a clean home i just couldnt do it and when i tried to talk about it to her, pre breakup she lost her s–t and accused me of using her and screamed at me for a solid few hours about how hard it is to iron and defluff clothing just so she could be around me; Months later she’s back to wearing cat piss stained clothing”
Crazy Runs in the Family
” I met my exes family and I absolutely loved her mom. She was super sweet and funny and amazing but her siblings were total screw ups. Her sister was 16 and with 2 kids from different dads of which both were in jail. She even tried getting me to bed with her. Her two brothers were 17/18 and both had girls pregnant and were in continuation school for being kicked out because of narcotics possession. I met some of her cousins who were nice but all drug dealers or alcoholics or trying to get me to bang them. I also found out multiple men in her family were registered sex offenders.
But she also took the cake because when it was spiraling down out of control I found out that:
My ex did the whole pregnant thing.
She did the whole abortion thing.
She did the ‘I am going to tell the police you raped me thing.’
As well as the ‘sneak into room and try to suck me off while I’m sleeping to get me to get back together with her’ thing.
She also took inappropriate pictures of us and sent them to my new girlfriend way after we broke up telling her we were still doing things even though I was in vacation with my girlfriend at the supposed time of infidelity”
Family Black Sheep
“His family was super nice and elegant and they all had high paying jobs, except for him. He said that he worked for his father’s property management company, which in reality meant that his dad does property management and gives his son money. He even started to pick up a ghettobilly type accent that none of this relatives had- I realized this was a bad sign”
The Beginning of the End
“This was after she met -my- family. She wouldn’t stop being extremely possessive of me around them (lots of kissing/inappropriate touching) then get mad when I (politely) asked her to stop. Then she lied several times. We’re talking being pregnant, not being pregnant, actually being pregnant, having an abortion, having cancer. Among others. But really, her meeting my family was the beginning of the end”
Just No
“I intended to marry my ex, but after meeting his mom a few times I couldn’t do it.
She was extremely possessive of her son, and never smiled when I’m with them. I was the blame for her son not eating properly (I always cooked healthy food for him), sleeping properly (he worked 16 hours a day) dressed properly (I ironed his shirts for him when he was too busy to do it), any blame you can think of. She was also a single mom who has had two sons with two different ex-husbands, and had lots of drama with both. She wanted to retire at 45 but didn’t have a stable income, so my ex had to give her money every month so she can ‘retire’ and not work. All in all I couldn’t see myself dealing with the mom so I eventually broke it off before it was too late”
That’s Not Sugar
“I was staying at girlfriend’s parents house. First morning her father was out feeding animals. Girlfriend and her mother were getting breakfast ready. I saw Girlfriend put what I thought was an artificial sweetener into her father coffee. I ask if I could try one. She explained to me it was not a sweetener but a ‘chill pill’. They kept her father dosed; I decided right then I was not going to be part of this family”
I Wonder If She Regrets It…
“I married him anyway, but from the day I met his mom she hated me. She would rave about how much she adored his brother’s girlfriends, but hated me. I tried so hard, but she hated me. My husband is her favorite and she has an unhealthy attachment to him, so I think it’s not personal and more along the lines of no girl will ever be good enough for him in her eyes.
She’s a b—h though. She once faked an severe panic attack to keep her son’s attention on her not me. The doctors at the hospital could see right through it though and knew she was faking. She called my husband the night before our wedding and told him if he married me he would be miserable for the rest of his life. When we went home for Christmas she tried to hook him up with her coworker/ Her married son. While I was right there.
We rescued a shelter dog and shortly after he broke a leg due to malnutrition in his neglectful home. She told everyone that I didn’t want to pay the vet bill and asked the vet to euthanize him. She laughed at me when she learned I was depressed. She told me I was being dramatic when I started crying after receiving news of my grandpa’s death.
She tells everyone that I come from a poor family and married my husband so I wouldn’t have to work. I don’t work right now because we just moved for his job. In reality my parents are wealthier than her. She tries to belittle me, but it honestly doesn’t bother me at all anymore. I laugh when she does and it really pisses her off.
My husband thinks he can play Switzerland until his mom’s hourglass empties”
Every Family Member Was Horrible
“His family was horrible to me, and he treated me so poorly while we were visiting (3 weeks solid because they lived in another country)
His mother constantly called me by his ex’s name (I have the SAME NAME as his sister, how is it possible to get that confused with another name which both starts with a complete different letter and is much longer than mine??)
His sister wouldn’t actually speak to me, or include me in any kind of conversation. Her partner was totally lovely and tried his best to include me, but the times that I spent with his sister/mother I was basically just the tag-along who was asked to hold the baby while they did things.
His dad wasn’t so bad all things considered but he made snide comments about my weight (which, yeah, is fair), family (who he’d never met), ‘lack of career aspirations’ (while I was financially supporting his a–hole of a son who was trying to make a go of a business at the time!) and was just generally a terrible human being.
He wouldn’t stick up for me or correct any of this and whenever I brought it up, would basically say I was imagining it. By the end of this trip we were sleeping in separate bedrooms and I broke up with him not long after”
Red Flag
“A guy friend convinced me to break up with my boyfriend because of the family trends.
My ex’s father was always away on business and his mom was a super cute, bubbly teacher. She would go out with her (female) teacher friends at night and the dad would get super jealous and have massive phone fights. My ex and his sibling became super possessive of their mom and hated their dad to an unhealthy level. They thought both their parents were probably having affairs. My ex was 18 and had never done a single chore in his entire life. Their pets poop all over the house and the mom cleaned everything (even my ex’s bedroom).
Our mutual guy friend took me to lunch one day and was like, ‘Seriously, is this the future you want? He’s a cool guy, but the dude is seriously a terrible BF and will be the worst husband!’ Turns out he had been cheating on me the whole time anyway with two girls that were best friends- they would just switch off days they had sex with him”
If It Weren’t For His Family..
“I knew a really sweet guy who went to the same college as I did who was super religious but I didn’t mind since it wasn’t ‘shoving pamphlet’s in your face’ religious. While, because he had a pretty strict religious background (much stricter than normal as you’ll see) he couldn’t date a girl until he ‘courted’ her for two years. Essentially, he had to know you for over two years (regular contact in person and only interacting in groups) before he could officially ask you out on a date.
Now, this was a really good guy. He got his arm stuck in a vending machine for me. He was good. But obviously I wouldn’t be telling this story here if his family were great people.
About a year into knowing him we were in the break room chatting about issue’s with a website and the entire time we’re talking he’s glancing at the clock nervously like it’s going to explode. I check and it’s 4:00. I’m still watching it as it turns 4:01 and suddenly I hear a car horn go off. I think that it’s just traffic- until it’s still going off at 4:04. I ask him what he thinks it’s about and he’s white as a sheet and sheepishly explains that it’s his dad and he needs to go home now.
It was quite the eye opener. If this dude (his dad) was willing to lay on the horn for over five minutes (during finals!) I can’t imagine the other crap he’d do if I was ever late for anything. It sucked because the son was just trying to spend a few extra minutes with me which was sweet, but I told him that I had been doing some thinking and while we were good friends we weren’t really compatible relationship wise and he handled it like a champ.
Last month I discovered that I had dodged a bullet. You see, he had a brother. And his brother got hit by a truck. He lived, but in critical care. And no one in his family visited him because he stopped attending their church. The fact he moved seven hours away eludes them. They also refused to attend his wedding. I’m very glad they’re not my in-laws and I didn’t pursue a relationship with someone who refused to visit their critically injured brother because of religious views”
She is a Keeper!
“I used to work in central London and one sunny afternoon as I was patrolling along the Thames near Westminster a hen party asked for a photo with me. Afterwards one of them gave me her phone number (not the bride to be) and I followed it up.
She was lovely and my parents loved her. Her parents? Mr & Mrs Upper Middle Class who were dismayed that their (only) daughter was involved with a policeman.
When I proposed her parents gave an ultimatum to her. They would not pay and possibly not turn up to the wedding as ‘my type’ would be there.
I was up for throwing it all in and leaving my girlfriend as I’d had enough. Every time we’d been round to her parents I had to endure disapproving looks, comments, downright rudeness.
But my fiancé was having none of it. She told her parents to f–k off. We went to see them a week after the ultimatum and she literally said, ‘Mum, Dad, I love you both and this hurts so much, but you can both f–k off. I’m marrying him and I don’t want you there or having any part of it.’ And she walked out, leaving me sitting on the sofa with my bone china tea cup staring at her parents who had gone into shock I think. I followed her out and we drove home.
They didn’t come to the wedding, but my parents were amazing – helping us with the cost and my Dad walked her down the aisle.
It was five years before my wife decided to contact her Mum after being ex-communicated. She was pregnant and wanted to give her Mum a chance. She kind of apologized, but they have been very distant, only seeing their (by now) three grandchildren at Christmas really and paying almost no interest. They moved some distance away ten years ago ‘to be near the coast’.
20 years later we’re still married, still rarely hear from the in-laws. It still hurts my wife, but as she says, ‘F–k them, it’s their choice.'”
They Were Shocked
“We weren’t at the ‘marry’ stage of things yet (gay marriage wasn’t legal back when this happened), but we had been dating for over a year and were considering moving in together.
Apparently my girlfriend had always used a gender-neutral nickname for my name any time she talked about me to her family and she never corrected them when they said ‘he’. But after a year of us dating, we were finally going to have a family dinner with them (she had already had dinner with my parents, and they loved her), and when I showed up her parents had a really sour look on their face. Apparently she hadn’t told them that I am a girl until about 2 hours before the dinner was supposed to happen.
Her parents weren’t actually homophobic, just severely disappointed that they wouldn’t be getting grandkids (girlfriend was an only-child), and that soured the mood of the dinner. Honestly, I’m sure they would have come around eventually. But that whole incident told me that my girlfriend wasn’t ready to be out of the closet yet (one of the discussions during dinner was ‘don’t tell grandma’y), and I wasn’t going to move in with someone just to be ‘the roommate’ to most of the people they know- I told her that I’d rather live by myself for now, and she got upset and we had a fight and ended up breaking up”
Wow
“My husband successfully kept his entire family away from me until the week before the wedding, they all flew into town and descended upon us like carrier pigeons of evil directly from the gates of hell. His 12 yr old niece was wearing a sweatshirt with large block letters announcing ‘abortion is murder.’
His sister told me our marriage would never be recognized by God because this was his second marriage. His parents lamented the entire time he was marrying a white girl, wipes tear, shakes head in disbelief…looks at me and sobs all over again- Yeah, we don’t talk”
No Girl Is Worth This
“This girl was completely amazing and my best friend in the world. I loved every second of being with her and we were talking marriage, until I met her parents.
Her parents were extremely wealthy and extremely weird. Her dad was a high strung workaholic who seemed to do anything he could to stay away from his family, be it traveling for work or training for marathons. But her mom… Jesus Christ. Obsessed with everything vegan and holistic, had a blatant hatred and distrust for anything artificial, especially medication. Extremely untrusting, and would flip from hot to cold on a dime. When she found out that the girl I was seeing, the ‘baby of the family’, and I were intimate, she began essentially bullying and shaming her for it.
She pressured her heavily to give (extremely personal and violating) details about our sex life, and then would flip her s–t when my girlfriend would cave and tell her. She found every possible excuse to shelter her and keep her as her little baby. Mind you, this was in college.
Eventually, her parents started doing things like dropping in on campus, calling her to make sure she wasn’t sleeping over at my place, and guilt tripping her to stay at home as much as possible to make sure that her 21 year old daughter wasn’t drinking or having sex with her longterm boyfriend. Her 3 older sisters were all free to do pretty much whatever, just not her.
I couldn’t take it anymore. We split. Didn’t see another choice. We literally couldn’t be together unless she wanted to cut her mom off, which I didn’t want her to have to do, and which she didn’t wanna do either, as it would mean being isolated from her family pretty much, which I would feel completely terrible about. We kept touch in secret for a while, and her mom continued to keep a death grip on her, telling her if she slept with a man before marriage again, she would literally be disowned. She had no problem with her other daughters having sex out of wedlock either. I couldn’t help but wonder ‘What the f–k is wrong with this woman?’ Eventually, my (then ex) told me:
Her mom was diagnosed as severely bipolar in the 80s, and refused to believe it, and decided that all doctors are liars and that medication is the devil, and refused to get any of the treatment she desperately needed. Glad I dodged the bullet of engaging with anything too long term with this girl- I thoroughly believe her mom would have literally murdered me if I ever proposed”
They Called Off The Wedding
“I loved her completely. Her father was a successful businessman and self confessed narcissist. I tried to include him in venue selection and he through adult tantrums at each venue and told me he would not allow us to get married unless we did so on his terms. My fiancée wanted a surprise wedding at our engagement party which happened to be at their house. I tried to support this idea though I knew the red flags were there. The day before we told him our intentions. He yelled at us for an hour and told me how disappointed he was in us both and how he wouldn’t let us do it because there were people ‘he wanted to invite’ that weren’t there. The whole event triggered my anxiety and 6 months later after couples counseling our relationship fell apart”
They Turned Her Into Someone Else
“When I met her she was as close to perfect as any one could ever hope for.
She was smart. Independent. Funny as hell. She enjoyed the same things I enjoyed. We got along very, very well and my idea of a ‘Dream Girl’ was shattered in front of me as I realized she was my dream girl.
When we met she was estranged from her father. She just said that he was kind of a prick and that was that. Many years later we were engaged. I asked her about her dad and she said she’d like it if he’d come.
But I could tell she was on the fence about it. I wanted her to be happy so I gave her the push I thought she needed. You should give him a chance. I’d say. You should write your sisters (her dad + step mom kids) a birthday card for their birthday. We should visit them this weekend for fun.
I gave her the push she needed to make amends with him. What came next was the issue. One weekend at a BBQ, I heard her grandfather say, ‘That boy is a good man. But he’s not for you. It’s fine to date him, but just remember to keep our bloodline clean.’ (I am white and she is Black)
I had a talk with her and told her it is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable. She agreed that it was out of line and we both said we’d pull away from interacting with her grandfather for a bit. She said she’d talk to her dad about it and see if he could talk to him.
On day for lunch. We’ve all met up (me, her, her dad, step mom) for lunch and I asked if he’d had a chance to talk to his dad about ‘the thing.’ and he replied with ‘What issue?’ I figured my girlfriend just slipped her mind and forgot to tell him. So I start to explain about it and he cuts me off and says, ‘No. I know what happened. but why is it an issue?’
I took this as ‘he’s an old man stuck in his ways. Just ignore him’. laughed it off and finished lunch.
The following year, my girl had started to change. She was no longer strong or independent. She’d call her dad or step mom for -everything-
I’d make a decision on something. She’d call her dad and ask his opinion. The weekend would come up and she’d decide every single weekend to visit her family. Never mine. Never a weekend alone. Her sisters were over every other day. They’d come inside without knocking.
She started to try out ‘full body cleanse’ stuff. She was a nurse, I assumed she’d be more intelligent. I figured she was just trying it out because someone suggested it. Just to humor them.
We were eating kale and spinach daily. She threw all of the pork out because it was unclean meat. Suddenly we weren’t allowed to ‘work’ on Saturday. Because it was the REAL day God rested when making the universe. If we didn’t cook and prepare food on Friday, we just didn’t eat anything cooked on saturday. Suddenly oral sex was ‘unsanitary’ and anything other than missionary was too much.
As time went on, I kept trying to talk to her about all of this and when she said, ‘Okay, we’ll work this out.’ I assumed we were going to repair things. Her idea of working it out was me sitting down with her Step mom as she explained that vaccines cause autism. That the government is REALLY run by the Rothchilds and Samburgers. And that in the next few years people will start getting rounded up and put in internment camps. That banks will freeze all accounts and I needed to pull our money out of banks RIGHT NOW and buy as much silver as possible.
We tried and the relationship floundered until I called it off when she said she didn’t know how she felt about me and marriage anymore. I moved out and we’ve split up-She’s getting worse as time passes and I mourn the loss of my best friend”
Respect Lost
“It was one of my earliest relationships, great guy we had a lot in common enjoyed each others company etc., but one day his dad passed a remark about my dad that really upset me and I couldn’t respect him after that. Context: my dad after retiring the head of a company returned to finish the law degree he’d started 30 years ago. He was clearly doing it to pass his time, but the ex’s dad says to his son/my bf ‘if you don’t study now (we were in college) you’ll end you like him and have to study in your 60s’.”
They Made Her Salty (Get It?)
“My ex’s family was crazy (hence why he is my ex now). It was stressful, any time I went over he would force my ex to do an hour of math before we could go out or do anything.
They also tried to be super healthy, they ate fish twice a week and wouldn’t put salt on anything. They made home made soup one time, and it had no flavor in it whatsoever, so I asked for the salt and they all gave me this stare like I had just killed their dog, and proceeded to hand me the pepper. Like I don’t give a f–k one shake of salt isn’t going to give me a f–king heart attack!”