Woman Shocked by Boyfriend’s Disrespectful Behavior When She Met His Parents

Meeting your partner’s family is already stressful, but for one woman, the stress of meeting her boyfriend’s parents came from him.

On Reddit, the woman shares that she’s been dating her 28-year-old boyfriend “on and off” for two years. She recently drove up to meet his parents for the first time, as they live two hours away.

“I brought flowers and dressed nicely,” she writes. “When I arrived he kind of scoffed at me for bringing flowers.”

The woman shares that her boyfriend’s parents greeted her and were “very sweet.” They hugged and then all sat in the living room together to talk. During the hours-long chat, however, her boyfriend “hardly said anything.”

Instead, she caught him scrolling on social media and “even sat back with his eyes closed practically napping.”

“I had a nice time chatting with his parents, but I felt really disrespected, and I kind of felt his parents were put off by him too,” she writes. “I was embarrassed, and it was stressful for me to carry the whole interaction.”

That night, they had a lengthy dinner with his parents and his parents’ friends, but still, the boyfriend seemed disinterested in the group, bringing out his phone “to scroll instead of converse.” Meanwhile, the poster kept her phone in her purse the entire four-hour dinner.

“I also caught a few times where his mom was reminding him to say please and thank you to the hosts,” she adds.

Since it was a long drive home, the couple planned to stay the night at his parents’ house. The next morning, she noticed that “he was going to leave the bedroom a mess with his towels on the floor and bed unmade etc.”

However, she “tidied up,” noting that she “wouldn’t treat [her] parents home like that.”

The woman feels “really put off by his behavior” and “wants to end things with him,” but wonders if she is overreacting.

“Your bf sounds like a teenager. You’ve been dating on/off for two years & this was the first time meeting the parents? Seems like you have a lot to think about,” one person responded. 

The woman replied to this comment, “He has shown me some disrespect in the past and I called him out on it, but I was kind of surprised he was so disrespectful in front of his parents. Maybe you are right, and this was his way of signaling to them I’m not important.” 

Another person wrote, “When you’re with the right person they don’t do things that will confuse you. They act the same way almost all the time, which is caring, loving, respectful and interested in you and your life. Anything less than that is a red flag. The reason this relationship is ‘off and on’ is because it’s bad.”