A parent can always just kill their own child or the one their child is dating. That pretty much effectively breaks them up, wouldn’t you say, OP?
I would simply tell my daughter not to see him anymore.
Not having daughters I see no flaw in this plan.
Or for my great-great-grandparents, who eventually disinherited their 27yo daughter when she married the boy she’d met when they both were 17 and not heard of in over 9 years (he’d gone away to college, the families had made sure there would be no communication).
It’s easy. Let the whole thing go ahead. Welcome the beloved with open arms. Wait.
My 9 year old keeps asking me what happens if I don’t like her boyfriend…
I keep telling her it’s not mine to like or not - its up to you
This.
The quickest way to end a teenage relationship is to sit down with your son or daughter and have a serious discussion as to how much you approve of their choice of SO.
It happened to me. My parents made such awful threats to me (not on my life, or to physically abuse me, just to make my life miserable by lack of privilege and basically making me feel like dirt) that we ended it. Plus I was only 16 and they owned the car. And it was 1995 so I didn’t have a cell phone. And they owned the computer and the modem. Etc etc.
It would have been much harder for them to succeed in breaking us up in the era of the always-present Internet and ubiquitous cell phones.
18 years later he and I are still friendly but we definitely both moved on completely.
I don’t think their feelings are what anyone is worried about. And there’s more than one way to take that.
Right, but the parents in this case were unreasonable in a lot of ways. The guy wasn’t great, but my friend, their daughter, was 15, and they still didn’t want her to have a boyfriend at all, or even go on one date, or have a normal 15 y/o social life at all.
Their other daughter, who was also my friend, was forbidden to listen to heavy metal music. Likewise, they could control what she brought into the house, what she wore, or put on her walls, or listened to in their presence. But they were not able to make her stop liking heavy metal and force her to prefer inspirational music. You can’t change what someone wants.
It’s very easy for a parent to break up their teenager’s relationship. Just tell them you approve entirely of their friend and to stay away from someone else you like better.
I think parents get confused about this a lot.
On the one hand, if you raise someone consistently a certain way, it does have an impact on their likes and dislikes. On the other hand, studies have consistently also shown that your peer group, not your parents, has the largest influence on what you end up liking and disliking.
There’s also the tiny point that after the kid is 18, they don’t HAVE to do what the parents say any longer (if they’re in a position to move out or be independent) and if the parent has been really controlling of their lives up to that point, they will probably not like the choices the kid makes now that they’re “free.”
If I have kids, I’m planning to take the “have the douchenozzle over a lot for family activities” approach, and also to emphasize that SOs aren’t my problem, they’re my kid’s problem. If they want help or advice, I’m here, but their choices in friends or mates is their choice, not mine. God help me in 15 years when I have to actually DO it though. 
I would consider willing to work his butt off for access to her butt a redeeming quality.
My in laws have an interesting approach to this:
They raised their daughters to be very respectful to them. They never dictated their daughters’ choices, but made it clear that they were never to disappoint them. When my wife and I dated, her father avoided meeting me until we were engaged, because he didn’t want his opinion of me to influence his daughter’s decision. It worked out very well- since she likes me, her family likes me.
Yes, but at the cost of their own relationship with their child. Nothing will ever be the same again, and when the feces hit the fan in future, the child won’t feel comfortable sharing or asking for help.
I agree with the “keep you enemies close” approach. Have the family over for dinner as often as possible, and keep the kids busy and involved. The more you keep them apart, the more they can idealize each other. They have to be together to get sick of each other.
Article linked-to, indeed tells of a very sad situation; but I initially took your post literally, and imagined it as something done by old Joe, to at least one of his kids. (Nothing about that guy, would surprise me.) I learn from Wiki that though he was pretty vile to his son by his first marriage, he refrained from the far-eastern-exile gig with his own offspring.