Recently just turned 18 but was seeing a 24 year old who just turned 25 while I was 17. Being a gentlemen he wanted to meet my parents instead of sneaking around, but I decided it would be better to lie about his age and say he was 20 rather than the “big” 25. Long story short he met my parents as a 20 year old and a few days later after snooping around they found out he was 24. They blocked his number, told me to never see him again and delete him off all social media, and kept questioning why he would want to be with me. I am pretty mature when it comes to relationships but this is one thing I have been stuck on and I do not want to sneak around with him like a little kid but I am terrified that if I tell them all hell will break loose. Now that I’m 18 I am going with him again and the only reason we decided to wait was until it was “legal”. But how do I make an argument for a guy they think is a creepy scumbag, when he’s better than all the guys my age and 2 years older. How do I tell them about him and get them to accept that we are going to be together but not necessarily approve of it.
Funny how even parents can check up on people on social media etc. nowadays.
now that you’re 18, they can’t stop you legally, they can’t block him on your cellphone… Did you try telling your parents you told him to lie and it’s not his fault, you knew he was 25? What about other redeeming qualities - job, good education, stable lifestyle, no tattoos, piercings, or weird hair, etc.? that should count for something.
(FWIW, my wife is 18 years younger than me, but then she was 23 when we met.)
Python skit:
Parent: “why do you want to marry my daughter?”
Yob: “Cuz I ain’t had it in ages.”
Since most answers will involve opinions, let’s move this to IMHO from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
Sorry, but lying about relationships is not mature.
I think you made a mistake by not letting your boyfriend be a gentleman. If your parents had then forbidden you to see him, they would have been the unreasonable ones.
Instead they’ve got a reason to block you.
As for the future, I agree with md2000. Tell your parents the truth and list all your boyfriend’s good points.
It sounds like your parents have already established that they are the unreasonable ones, you already knew that, and that is why you lied. Given your parents reaction, you did the right thing in lying about his age. You just didn’t get away with it. First, it is none of your parents business anymore, and second, the two or you may very well be maturity-appropriate, while entering a stage in your lives where chronological age no longer matters.
We don’t really know enough about you, your boyfriend, or your parents to give sound advice.
Good advice could range from “find another guy and forget about this one,” to “time to move out, support yourself and live your life the way you want.”
Generally, however, parents are wiser than they appear to 18 year-olds. I say this as a former 18 year old myself. If you have a decent relationship with your parents, talk to them about this. If you don’t, ask yourself why. If they are completely unreasonable, then ask yourself if you’d rather live under their roof and put up with unreasonable restrictions on your freedom, or not. Your choice. I would not advise you to be dishonest about this and keep seeing him but telling your parents you are not. This is not advice from a moral perspective, (although it is that as well) but it will drive you crazy, and further drive a wedge between you and your parents.
You are an adult, make your position clear, and accept the consequences of adult choices.
They made a big deal about him being 20!!! But prior to meeting him or finding out his real age I told them about his qualities, jobs, and ambitions but once they found out about his age they went from being welcoming to hating him. I tried to explain to them still but even a month after they continued to ask if I was speaking to him, which is none of their business besides the fact that I still live with them although in a few months I’ll be away at college.
You are going to college in a few months? so you will be paying for your own expenses and college costs?
If the answer is yes then it is still their business after all you will never grow out of being their daughter. But you are living on you own and will have to make your own choices.
If the answer is no, you are still living off your parents and are not an independent adult.
You did not trust your parents and lied to them. You put an unfavorable light on your boyfriend. If he was a mature man he should have insisted not starting a relationship with your parents on a lie. That is going to be hard to over come. What I am saying may be hard but you have broken trust with your parents doing an immature thing. Trust once broken is hard to regain it is going to take a long time and going behind your parents back will not help. I would not trust your boyfriend or you at this time. These are realities and you need to start with these facts first or heart break will be the outcome. I know I am not giving advice about how to turn the situation around because I am not sure how. But If you put the blame on your parents it will only get worse.
Before you completely disregard my post let me tell you something about me. When I was in college I started dating a girl who was only a sophomore in high school. She is 4.5 years younger than me. Long story short I knew she was younger but did not realize how much when we started dating. By the time I did I was hooked. I have often wondered why her dad did not run me off, but he never complained to me or her about our age difference. We started dating in 1968 got married in 1971 and are still married.
I am not throwing rocks at you because of the age difference but because of the lie and attitude. figure out how to over come those two things first then the age may become a smaller problem to be dealt with. Good luck.
The flip side is that they also don’t have to put a roof over your head anymore.
You lied and destroyed their trust. That gives you two options.
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Regain their trust. This will take a long, long time especially if you are going behind their backs already.
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Move out on your own. Get a job. Pay your own bills. Be an adult. Because as long as they are footing the bills, they can dictate to you. That’s one reason why I joined the military at age 18.
I brought up to them the day they found out that they wouldn’t have given him a chance if they knew how old he was, and they said they would’ve sent him away even if he told the truth, I hate lying to them but unfortunately it was the only resort for them to see him as him not his age
This is a silly blanket statement. Would it be immature to lie if the truth of your relationship would expose you to risk of harm from your family or society or punishment from the state?
Lying is a tool of both mature and immature people. It’s a question of whether or not one believes that lying is justified under the circumstances.
and how well did that work out?
You know, it’s okay to tell your parents to bugger off when it comes to your private life.
If you really want to be mature, you need to NOT care if they accept him or not. You’re an adult now. You shouldn’t need mommy and daddy to validate you anymore. So stop trying to impress them and be your own woman.
And none of the above means you have to love your parents any less.
Look, your parents only want the best for you. They want you to go to college, get a degree, get a job, and get set with your life. They basically know your not going to settle with a man you meet at age 18 because we as adults know how rare that is.
They dont want a sad 24 year old moving back in after her breakup/divorce with a kid in tow.
Why cant you just put the relationship on hold and concentrate on college?
Has any 18 year old ever in the history of the world considered themselves too immature to make relationship decisions?
I think a relationship between a 17 year old and a 23 year old is a big deal. It’s as weird as an 18 year old dating a 14 year old.
But the OP is obviously going to do what she wants to do, but two things: DON’T get married and, goddamn it, use birth control.
Them questioning why he would want to be with you stuck out to me. They are being protective of you, and worried that this guy isn’t interested in you necessarily as a person, but that he’s interested in you because of the age difference. There are guys out there who are in their twenties but want to date girls in high school or right out of high school because it’s easier to control the relationship. I am curious how you met him. If you met at some general interest thing, like you were both volunteering at an event, then that is one thing, but if you were in the bleachers at your high school football game and he was one of the few older guys there hanging out with the high school kids, then that’s less good.
But even if he is a good guy, not aiming to be a controller, he still is older and has more experience and likely interested in different things. When you go to college and you might be limited in what parties or mixers or activities that freshmen go out and do, if he’s not interested in going with you and doesn’t want you to go. You’ll be having a different college experience than a lot of freshmen; not better or worse, just different.
I’m not saying you should break up with him, or that you should keep dating him and hide it from your parents. Like **Procrustus **said, we don’t know enough to give really sound advice. Forbidding you from seeing him is probably overboard, since I’m not sure if that’s ever worked out well, but also I’d say they’re not crazy to be concerned.
Lying about his age under these circumstances was immature. She’s not hiding him from the SS or something.
I tend to agree with the parents about being skeptical of people who date “below” their peer group such as this. The most common reason I see for 25 year olds to date 18 year olds is because other 25 year olds won’t date them and the 18 year olds don’t notice the maturity flaws because they’re not at that stage yet.
You say you are going “away” to college. Do that mean you are also moving away from wherever your boyfriend lives? If so, a long-distance relationship is going to present its own issues even apart from the age difference.
FWIW the deal with my children (now both grown) is “my roof, my rules”. If you are being supported by your parents, you are subject to their rules. If you aren’t, then you aren’t. I am not saying you are entirely in the wrong, but mature people do not lie about their relationships. Given that you misrepresented his age, convincing your parents that he is really a great guy is going to be a tough sell, and a long process.
Regards,
Shodan
Rightly or wrongly, many people wouldn’t approve of a 25/17 relationship, even putting any legal ramifications aside. That’s not to say it can’t work, but speaking from my own experiences at that age, I can say that I was a VERY different person at 25 than I was at 17 and, frankly, by the time I was 25, I wouldn’t have wanted to date a 17 year-old because we would have had very little in common.
Consider for a moment a typical life progression, graduating high school, going to college, getting a job. If he’s 25 and he did this, that’s a significant amount of life experience and a very different place in life. If he hasn’t done this, it would make more sense. But at that same time, if you haven’t done this, and you feel at the same level now, how will you feel in several years when you’ve gone through this life experience and grown as a person. Chances are, you’ll be much more mature at 25 than you are now.
And, again, age isn’t everything, it really isn’t even all that important, but it is indicative of other things. I’ve often heard from people “well I’m mature for my age”, but I’m not even really sure what that means. Unless you’re already providing for yourself in a significant way, unless you’re already taking on the challenges of early adulthood, you’re probably not as mature as you’d like to think you are. And, for the record, a lot of 17-18 year-olds think they’re a lot more mature than they are because of the idea that 18 means adult
Hindsight is 20-20 and all, but this is a mistake. Lying to your parents about part of the relationship, once they find out, will just leave them questioning what other aspects of your relationship you’re lying about. If he’s willing to lie about his age, what other things might he be lying about? What might he be lying to you about. The worst part is, this isn’t even the type of lie that’s arguably harmless, in the “oh I think that looks great on you even though it doesn’t or I don’t really care” type of way, as there’s no way that they wouldn’t eventually find out his age.
Regardless, the point is, you’ve now planted seeds of doubt and distrust over the entire relationship, and it will take time and effort to repair that, even if everything else has been in the clear. If you want him to gain acceptance with your parents, the best thing to do is to come clean, own it, and make a concerted effort to remain clear and honest with them going forward
I don’t know enough about your parents to say one way or the other, but I see two likely motivations here. Either they are inherently untrusting and were going to dig into learning more about him, or they felt something was fishy or didn’t believe the age or something else that was said and wanted to follow up. Even if it’s the former, the fact that you lied to them still makes it legitimate, in my view, to investigate and figure out what else he may be lying about.
Even if you’re now 18, that they’re able to block his number and delete him off social media implies to me that they’re probably providing your phone and internet access, and presumably even still living at home too. In that case, even if you’re 18, you have to abide by their rules. If you want to have all the privileges and freedoms that come with being an adult, you need to take on the responsibilities, like paying for your own phone, so that you control the account, etc.
And that they’re questioning why he’d want to be with you, frankly, I think that’s a legitimate question, especially in light of the fact that he lied to them about his age and that he is doing other things with his life. I know that when I was that age, working full time in a career, in grad school, etc, I wouldn’t have wanted to date someone in high school or just out of it. Again, his situation is probably different, and it’s not inherently bad that he is, but you can’t really blame your parents for wondering what his motives are in that case, especially since you’re their daughter.
Frankly, based on the evidence here, I can’t agree with this assertion. You chose to lie to your parents. If the relationship were to go anywhere, you had to know they’d eventually figure out how old he is. Yes, it’s good to not want to sneak around, but I wouldn’t call that so much being mature as just having a normal relationship.
This is at least one good thing, if he was not pressuring you for sex when you were under 18. For that matter, I hope he’s still not pressuring you for sex and that whatever happens is stuff you’re completely comfortable with.
Frankly, you don’t. You haven’t given us anything here that proves he’s not better than guys your own age, or even guys his own age. Again, that he was willing to lie about that, to me, is evidence to the contrary. I have not ever lied to my parents, or anyone, about the nature of one of my romantic relationships. Sure, maybe I waited to say things, and certainly as an adult, my sex life is not their business.
But ask yourself this: What makes him so much better than other guys? Ignore age, ignore your feelings or attraction. What is he doing with his life? The lying aside for a moment, how much integrity does he have? How does he treat you? Everyone thinks that someone they are pressed on is the greatest person ever, but you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re doubling down on dating this guy and not at least trying to look at who he is as a person objectively and where this relationship might lead you. Yes, at your age, it’s very tempting to follow your heart, and I can’t blame you, but what if this relationship at some point requires compromise or sacrifice on your part? For instance, what if it interferes in some way with your college education? What if you get pregnant? What about when things get rocky (and they will)?
You’re 18, they can’t make you not see him, but as long as you’re living at home, they’re paying for your phone, food, car, education, whatever, that gives them a measure of control to attempt to limit you seeing them. They very well may be wrong in not liking him, but can you really blame them given the evidence? I was 18 once, and I can say that I thought I was a lot more knowledgeable about how the world works then than I really was. My parents were wrong about things, a lot of things, but so was I, and I would have done well to realize that they did have my best interest at heart and even if they were ultimately wrong about certain things, they had years of wisdom that informed that and I would have done well to at least really consider them.
My advice to you is thus. At least hear out the objections of your parents, aware that they are more experienced. They might be seeing red flags that you’re missing or ignoring or they might just be concerned about how this could turn out. You’re still young, and even if he seems like, or in fact really is, an awesome guy, consider that you’re in an important part of your life, getting an education, starting a career, and take that into consideration regarding how this relationship progresses. In fact, take that into consideration in all of your life decisions. I’ve seen many people with promising futures make illadvised decisions, particularly for romantic partners. Often they didn’t work out, but even if they did, was it worth it?
So, I guess my point is, you’re asking the wrong question. You shouldn’t be worried about convince your parents to accept him. You should be making sure that YOU are really convinced that he’s as good as you hope he is and that this relationship will serve you where you are now and where you’ll be in the future.