Awkward family dinner reveals woman's boyfriend had past affair with her mother. + UPDATE
"My (26F) boyfriend (36M) has started acting distant and ghosting me after meeting my parents (49M and 50F) last week, how do I reach out to him?"
My boyfriend Derek (fake name) and I met through mutual friends 6 months ago and we immediately hit it off. He is sweet, funny, kind and just generally a good guy, he is super extroverted and I have never seen him dislike or not click with anyone. I mentioned him to my parents a couple times and they said they were excited to meet him.
My parents live a road trip away so me and Derek had to book a hotel nearby. About two weeks ago we dropped all of our stuff in the hotel and arrived at my parents house, My parents are the most welcoming people you'll ever meet, they have met some of my past significant others in the past and have always been warm and kind.
Since both my parents and Derek are charismatic and welcoming I thought that dinner would go smoothly, but I was wrong. It didn't start off too bad, my parents and Derek seemed a bit awkward but I assumed he was just nervous.
We sat for dinner and my parents asked us a couple questions, how did we meet, how serious is the relationship, etc etc. Ive never seen Derek stutter or hesitate before this dinner but he did.
As soon as I finished eating he thanked my parents for dinner and said we had to go, it felt like he was rushing to get out of the house. When we got to the hotel room he ran to the bathroom and I heard him throw up.
He said he felt sick and he was going to head back home but he insisted I stayed and enjoyed the rest of the trip without him. I agreed since I really missed my parents and he seemed to want to be alone.
I texted him a couple times asking how he was doing/if he felt better but he didn't reply, after two days passed I started to get really worried that maybe he was really sick and had to go to the hospital or something so I cut the trip short and headed back home.
I went to his apartment and saw he was okay, I asked him how he was doing and why he wasn't replying and he said he felt fine and that I was overreacting, he told me he still felt sick and he wanted to be alone.
I went back home and texted him asking if I did anything wrong and if our relationship was okay since he was acting so weird and cold, a week has gone by since the text message and he has not replied.
Derek is the last person I’d expect to ghost me. I’m torn between wanting to give him space and wanting answers. How do I even reach out to him without pushing him further away?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
Ask your parents. It sounds like they know each other or something happened that you didn’t see or something like that.
Either he slept with the mom before, or they had a threesome. It's Reddit, so you know it's going to be good. 😁
"How do I even reach out to him without pushing him further away?"
There really isn't a "further away" than what's happening now. There are two options you could take, depending on how badly you want answers: Go to his apartment again and tell him that you need him to tell you to your face why he isn't responding to you.
Send him a text saying "I haven't heard from you for a week and at this point I'm going to assume the relationship is over. I'm extremely disappointed by you not being honest and upfront with me and I thought that there was more respect between us than this." Unfortunately this is the torturous part about ghosting, the lack of answers.
I'm going with "prior affair" or "realized they're somehow related."
Six days later, the OP returned with an update.
Sorry I didn’t reply to that many of your comments, they were mostly just saying Derek was secretly my brother, (which is horrifying) so I wasn’t sure how to reply. I tried to reply to questions when I saw them pop up.
The past few days have been a mess but now that everything is settled I thought I would go on here and update all of you. I took you guys advice and decided to speak to my parents rather than Derek to discover if maybe they said anything or knew each other in the past, like many of you suggested they might.
Four days ago, I called my mom and told her about Dereks weird reaction after our dinner, I her asked for advice or if she knew what happened. She was silent for a moment and I heard her start crying, she started apologizing and I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me at first.
Eventually, I got her to calm down and she told me what had happened. My mom is a high school teacher and apparently Derek was her student in his senior year and she told me that they had an affair.
She didnt give me that many details (honestly I don't even want to know) All she said is that they only slept together once before she shut it down and that my father knew and they had attended couples counseling years ago to work through this.
She cried a lot and said it was her greatest regret then she told me she wanted me to break it off with Derek because he brought back really awful memories and she found the age gap concerning (she's one to talk about age gaps). But ultimately she said it was decision and she didn't want her past mistakes to ruin my relationship.
I went to Derek's apartment again and he invited me in. He said he had to tell me something but I stopped him and told him I had already talked to my mom and knew everything. He promised me he had no idea up until the point we had come over for dinner where he immediately recognized her.
He apologized for ghosting me and said he just didn’t know what to say and he was scared that he would ruin my relationship with my parents or maybe ruin their marriage. I forgave him but told him that the whole situation was just way too messy for me and he agreed.
So yeah that's how my past few days have gone down, honestly I do kind of miss Derek but not too much since the whole banging my mom thing is a massive turn off. Thank you for all the replies, I feel like I will never see my mom the same again. How can I work on rebuilding our relationship and trust moving forward?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's update:
Your mother had sex with a child, one that she knew for some time before. She never was caught from a legal standpoint. That is far beyond disappointing.
Whats more disappointing is that this story sounds beyond fake lol.
Kudos to whoever figured out where this fake story was going in the last thread.
i don’t think i could have a relationship with a parent after finding out they groomed a child. she used her place of authority to have sex with him when he was in HIGH SCHOOL.
I would be utterly disgusted by this and advise any family friends with children to stay the hell away from her. Also, please look after yourself. this is a lot of heavy information to process in a short amount of time.
This is really disgusting though. I meant the mom's action.