These 26 Awkward Dating Stories Prove Parents Shouldn’t Be Involved In Your Love Life

When we got home from the first time I met his parents (we lived a long way apart and were engaged by that point) and he got a very long very dramatic call from his mother about how she disapproves of me and they wouldn’t be at the wedding.  And he didn’t fight her, he called it off.

Dude was 40ish at the time.  I knew he was close to them but I had no idea he was such a mama’s boy,

Bullet dodged.

Slightly different take where I realized I WAS the problem.
I grew up with a family that was incredibly close. Me and my mom were like Rory and Lorelei Gilmore. I told her everything. And it was expected that I didn’t ever keep things to myself. I told her about my partner, the things that frustrated me, our disagreements, or highs and lows, a bit about our intimate life. And I didn’t realize how far I often took it, because it just… was expected.
It has taken a LOT of unlearning and un-enmeshing myself from this dynamic. Realizing that it wasn’t fair to my partner to have our relationship be so open with my mom. He was in a relationship with ME, not HER. Thankfully my partner has been super patient, and I have been in regular therapy/counseling (not just about this, but for other family-related healing), which has really helped me to grow and heal.

I had a heart attack the Friday before Mother's Day. He still left me in the hospital, alone, and drove three hours to go have dinner with his mother...even though there was already a mother's day dinner planned for that Sunday. His mom always had to make sure I knew that she was #1 and his presence there was more important than being with me in the hospital and making any decisions if I was incapacitated.

You know it's bad when the nurses are handing you slips of paper with divorce attorneys contact Information before you discharge. Yes, I left him.

The kicker is, once she got the grandchildren she wanted from ex's brother she no longer pays any attention to Ex.

His mom had a key to our apartment, and she would just use the key to enter the apartment without even knocking during any time of the day. She’d also jump into his bed if he’s in the bed, and cuddle with him. We were 26 😳.

When I cooked he would say "that's not how my mom does it".

I had meningitis and was lying in bed trying not to die and he still begged me to make him boxed orange chicken you just stick in the oven because “he didn’t know how”.

We were 19 and dating for a year. He ghosted me for like a week or two, out of the blue, we didn't fight or anything.

Initially I thought something bad happened, but when the days passed with him not answering my calls I figured he was too of a coward to break up with me, so I decided to move on.

After 2 weeks he calls and shows up at my work begging for forgiveness. I agreed to see him to get answers. Turns up his mom told him to do that, but he couldn't keep up with it because he "loved me so much and missed me".

Yeah I was so done.

My ex boyfriend had to hold my hand and his mom’s hand an equal amount anytime we went anywhere. He would be holding my hand and then “halfway through” whatever we were doing he would go hold his moms hand for the rest of.

We had broken up/gotten back together a few times, so my last straw actually happened after we had broken up for what was to be the last time. This was right after college so we were 22/23.

We had been planning our wedding and I had been asking him for months for a guest list for his side. He kept saying that his mom was working on it and I kept asking him to please ask her for it.

In one of our discussions after the breakup, he told me that his mom had been waiting for **ME** to ask her for the list and if **I** had just asked, she would have given it to me and she saw it as an insult that I wouldn't ask her directly.

It was in that moment that I realized it was never going to be us vs. the problem; it was going to be me vs. him & MIL whenever we had a disagreement and any lingering feelings about getting back together evaporated.

We wanted to plan a holiday together. I had some suggestions of where to go and asked him for his. He said he didn't know and he'd have to ask his mom what he'd like.

We started dating when I was 16 and he was 26. Looking back, that should have been reason enough, but I was a stupid teenager. It took me about 3 years to figure out that he was controlling and jealous, he was unemployed, but I had school, a job and did all the cooking and cleaning. So he started inviting over his mom so that there was an 'impartial mediator' to help us through our issues.

It didn't take me long to figure out that it was just him and his mom trying to convince me that all our issues were my fault. It made me realise that as a stupid 19 year old, I was the more adult one in the relationship. It really helped me flip a switch and made me realise all the other issues we had weren't actually all my fault.

He consulted his family and came back with a bulleted list (I think there were at least 5 items) of everything he and his mom hated about me. Literally a Performance Improvement Plan consisting of everything he (and her) wanted to me to do better in the relationship.

His mom packed him a lunch when we were heading out for the day. Just him. She didn’t pack anything for me. Then she texted him almost the whole time and he answered every one.

At 20 years old, his mom didn’t want him spending the night with his girlfriend (me). He decided to do it anyway because he was an adult.

We went out to dinner that night and I got a text from my roommate that his mom was literally camped in the lobby of our apartment building, buzzing our bell, screaming at my roommate that he was lying and we actually WERE in there and that she would sit and wait until we eventually had to leave the apartment. Between this she was nonstop calling my boyfriend and me.

We stayed out until like midnight then slowly drove past my apartment to make sure she wasn’t still there.

It didn’t last very long after that….

I wasn’t a daddy’s little princess by any means, but my dad would call on his way over to pick me up for breakfast in Saturday or Sunday mornings at like 8 am after I moved back to the same city after college. This was never prearranged or agreed upon, he’d just say “Hey! Your mom and I are on the way to pick you up for breakfast!” I was usually hung over and had my eventual husband in bed with me. I often told him no, I didn’t want breakfast, but he rarely listened, so I’d have to drag myself out of bed, hung over, and go eat. Finally one day, I had enough, said no, he kept insisting and I finally said “Papa! I have a guy in my bed and I’m not going to breakfast.” He apologized and hung up. He called me later to tell me how inappropriate it was for me to share that information and that he was my father and didn’t need to know that. I reminded him that I told him no many times and if he would just listen, he wouldn’t hear uncomfortable things. He started reaching out the night before to see if I wanted to meet for breakfast and always accepted the first “no” after that.

Mama's boy. He wouldn't talk to me about any of our relationship issues. Instead he'd go to his mother and she'd tell him what I should do, who I should be. I met the woman once for 5 minutes. He was also unemployed. I paid he bills, cleaned house, laundry, bills, cooked. He sat around "figuring things out". Yet, I wasn't good enough as I did not have a PHD (he has one).

He now lives off his family without a job. He is late 40's.

I had _known_ him for a month, hadn’t even kissed yet. He got a stomach bug for a few days, I had him food, snacks and water delivered (he lived over an hour away from me).

His mum and his sisters threw a fit because I didn’t even show up to cook for him, how dared I mistreat him this way?

Anyway, that was the last straw and I blocked him.

Sort of the opposite, my mother has never really liked any woman either my brother or I have dated. She finally came around to my wife after years of marriage.

We (my mother and I) did have a few knock down drag out early on when my wife and I first got married. Mostly thru fenders around totally mundane things like who was sitting next to whom at formal dinners. My mother was always trying to separate my brother and I from our spouses. It finally ended when I said I simply won’t come to thanksgiving dinner of if I cannot sit next to my wife.

I dated a guy in university whose parents lived in the Middle East; his mom would call constantly to check in on him. This was back in the mid-2000s and he still had an answering machine. He kept the answering machine on the setting where you could hear the message being left by the person calling, so literally every night between 11 pm and 3 am (she didn't bother taking the time difference into consideration) there'd be at least one or two calls and then the sound of her screeching for him to pick up the phone in Urdu.

That was bad enough, but then she decided to MOVE IN WITH US for "just a few months" aaaaand that was the last straw.

Another fight about how we had no savings because he refused to do any kind of work and I told him that if I ever lost my job, we'd lose the house. His response "my mom won't let that happen." we were in our 30s and his mom was his only back up plan.