Girlfriend/family stress
Hi, I’m feeling really lost right now. My girlfriend doesn’t want to see my family at all and I don’t know what to do. She thinks my parents are racist (and has a point). Basically she is Black and my parents are Latino/white. She doesn’t want anything to do with them and doesn’t like them. She doesn’t want to engage with my parents at all. But I am stressed out because I don’t want to cut my family off and I still want to see them, but I don’t know if I can do a relationship where my girlfriend doesn’t ever want to see any of my family members. I am feeling really lost and confused and unsure what to do.
Today I spent the evening cooking with my cousin, who I thought my girlfriend liked. I asked if my girlfriend would want to join us if we went out for lunch or something, and my girlfriend said that she didn’t know, she didn’t really like my family.
So I guess I am just feeling really lost and confused. I love my family and I care a lot about them even though I feel a lot of anger and disgust towards them for a lot of reasons including their values and beliefs and political views. And I also love and care about my girlfriend and I definitely don’t want to break up with her, I love her a lot and care about her. But I am feeling lost and confused right now because I don’t know if it makes sense for me to be in a relationship if my girlfriend doesn’t want to see any members of my family ever. I also don’t feel like I want to cut my family off. I feel a lot of anger towards my family and I have a lot of issues with them but I don’t want to cut them off or entirely stop seeing them.
So I guess I am feeling really lost and confused and unsure what to do. I just feel really overwhelmed. I do have a session with my therapist tomorrow so I think that I should talk about this with him and see what he says. I think that would be a good start because I am feeling a lot of strong emotions and I am definitely going to need some help working through them.
I am also open to feedback and thoughts from others, I just feel really lost right now and really want someone to talk to and want some advice.
This is a very hard situation. As you said your girlfriend has a point, she can't be forced to see your family if she doesn't feel comfortable around them. Respect her wishes and if you feel like you can't stand this situation, do what feels best for you. Did you ever try to confront your family about this?
I wish you the best and I hope you can fix this.
@Lifeonmars787
I think I do need to confront my family about this, but maybe where I should start is by asking my girlfriend what message she would like me to convey my family. I think that could potentially be productive. But I also think that maybe she would feel frustrated and annoyed if i asked that, because she wants me to stand up to them without having to put her at risk. So I guess this is something I should think about.