JLTraveling
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2005
I just want to say I feel your pain. I also want to warn you against making the assumption that the girl's view of her family is "skewed and childish" or "that of a rebellious teen." Here's what I'm dealing with as we speak:
I met a man on vacation almost a year ago, and over time we became long-distance friends and then more. Long-distance dating for approximately 8 months when I went to visit him. He's 24, a bit younger than me, but we're extremely compatible, and we gradually fell in love. Anyway, I knew he had been staying with his parents since he discovered his fiancee was cheating almost a year before we met. He also told me that his parents were terrible, toxic people, very similar to how this girl describes her family. He works for his dad and he was saving up to move out again. Over the summer, his dad was arrested on several charges, and my bf ended up spending his savings to bail him out and hire a lawyer. Bunch of other drama happened too.
Anyway, I went to visit him in early September. We rented a hotel room locally, but ended up spending a fair amount of time at his parents' house too. I saw some of the issues, but the family was largely on their best behavior when I was around. I left after a week, knowing that there were problems but wondering if my bf was also a bit overreactive.
A month later, we were closer than ever. Then I got a text from his sister that he was in the hospital and I needed to come up. BF had gone on a drinking binge, and was extremely sick. He developed serious complications, was airlifted to another hospital, and I spent the next 3 weeks with him in a medical coma and therefore not a buffer between me and his family. Words cannot describe how sick and twisted these people actually are. Fistfights in the hospital parking lot. Screaming arguments with nurses. Throwing things at me, across the bed in the ICU where their son/my bf was laying in a coma, because they were fighting with each other and I was in the line of fire. And then they suddenly turned on me without warning and threw me out of the hospital. Sent the older son looking for me. When he finally woke up from the coma, they convinced him that I had lied to him about a bunch of stuff (easy to prove that I didn't lie, it was stuff like my age and job). But for whatever reason, they convinced him that I'm the enemy and he's not currently speaking to me.
Honestly, if you've never been in the middle of it, it's easy to downplay that kind of family situation. Like I said, I downplayed it myself after spending a week with them with my bf as a buffer. But when I was with them for a longer time period, without him running interference, I got to see the full force of the insanity.
I'm not saying the girl is definitely telling the whole truth. Or that she has a full adult understanding of the situation. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see the red flags in her story that some have mentioned, because I really am dealing with a family that's every bit of what she claims, so I know it's possible that she's telling the whole truth.
Either way, bless you for helping the girl out. She's going to need a lot of love and support, as well as a lot of life lessons. It's not easy, and I'm so happy that she has someone she can trust through this huge change in her life.
I met a man on vacation almost a year ago, and over time we became long-distance friends and then more. Long-distance dating for approximately 8 months when I went to visit him. He's 24, a bit younger than me, but we're extremely compatible, and we gradually fell in love. Anyway, I knew he had been staying with his parents since he discovered his fiancee was cheating almost a year before we met. He also told me that his parents were terrible, toxic people, very similar to how this girl describes her family. He works for his dad and he was saving up to move out again. Over the summer, his dad was arrested on several charges, and my bf ended up spending his savings to bail him out and hire a lawyer. Bunch of other drama happened too.
Anyway, I went to visit him in early September. We rented a hotel room locally, but ended up spending a fair amount of time at his parents' house too. I saw some of the issues, but the family was largely on their best behavior when I was around. I left after a week, knowing that there were problems but wondering if my bf was also a bit overreactive.
A month later, we were closer than ever. Then I got a text from his sister that he was in the hospital and I needed to come up. BF had gone on a drinking binge, and was extremely sick. He developed serious complications, was airlifted to another hospital, and I spent the next 3 weeks with him in a medical coma and therefore not a buffer between me and his family. Words cannot describe how sick and twisted these people actually are. Fistfights in the hospital parking lot. Screaming arguments with nurses. Throwing things at me, across the bed in the ICU where their son/my bf was laying in a coma, because they were fighting with each other and I was in the line of fire. And then they suddenly turned on me without warning and threw me out of the hospital. Sent the older son looking for me. When he finally woke up from the coma, they convinced him that I had lied to him about a bunch of stuff (easy to prove that I didn't lie, it was stuff like my age and job). But for whatever reason, they convinced him that I'm the enemy and he's not currently speaking to me.
Honestly, if you've never been in the middle of it, it's easy to downplay that kind of family situation. Like I said, I downplayed it myself after spending a week with them with my bf as a buffer. But when I was with them for a longer time period, without him running interference, I got to see the full force of the insanity.
I'm not saying the girl is definitely telling the whole truth. Or that she has a full adult understanding of the situation. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see the red flags in her story that some have mentioned, because I really am dealing with a family that's every bit of what she claims, so I know it's possible that she's telling the whole truth.
Either way, bless you for helping the girl out. She's going to need a lot of love and support, as well as a lot of life lessons. It's not easy, and I'm so happy that she has someone she can trust through this huge change in her life.