'My (35M) mother's (58F) new fiancé wants me to call him 'dad.' He's 24. How do I navigate this?' AITA? + UPDATED 2X
"My (35M) mother's (58F) new fiancé wants me to call him 'dad.' He's 24. How do I navigate this?"
ThrowRA_SonOfSands
Please buckle in because this is all so weird. I'm a 35 year old man and for some backstory my dad died when I was 19, leaving my mom with me and my two siblings (I'm the oldest).
It took some time but eventually my mom started dating again. We don't live together per se but our houses back onto each other and have a gate so it's pretty common for her to offer to do my laundry or me just go over for dinner or go look after our dog, that kind of stuff.
Plus me and my siblings go over there for dinner every other Friday night or so. A bit after she started, the men she's been dating have been getting younger and younger and I've never had a problem with them.
She's been very open to me and my siblings that she wants to get married again and we've always been supportive. At least after the initial shocks lol. The latest guy is by far the most serious and they've been dating since around last June?
He proposed at the start of Autumn and they want to get married next Summer, again, me and my siblings are fine with this because it's her life and we trust him. He's a nice guy and they clearly love each other. But anyway...
So long and short is, this weekend, her fiance, let's call him "Phil," calls me and asks me if I could come over. I say yeah sure, I'll be over after work and I assumed he just needed help with some DIY stuff they're doing.
When I get over there he calls me "Sport" and says we need to talk. I should mention this is something he does to me and my little brother, calling us things like "Kid," "Sport," "Scout." "Little Buddy" or my personal favourite, calling us "Red" and "Blue" seemingly out of nowhere.
My brother is 30 by the way. He tried it with my little sister (28) too once and called her "Princess" once but he stopped when she just stared at him. So the thing with Phil is that he reminds me a lot of Charlie Day's character in Horrible Bosses in that his sole ambition has always been to meet a girl, get married and have a family.
When he told me and my brother this, my brother made some joke about how maybe our mom's going to 'come short on the last part' and he got very upset but they made up after. Anyway, so I go round and I ask if my mom's around and he says no, it's just him and that we "really need to talk man-to-man."
I say sure and he starts talking about how he's always wanted to be a father etc. and raise a son to call his own and then he drops this bombshell by saying: "Now I know I can never replace your father, the man who made you, but it would mean the world to me if you could call me dad."
I'll admit it: I snickered a little. And then I knew he was serious because he looked like he was about to cry. And he didn't drop it either. I asked if he really meant it and he got really emotional and started talking about "what it means to be a man" and how his purpose is to have and provide for a family and he wants me and my siblings to be part of that family.
Like he reiterated he'll never replace my "father" (and this did rub me the wrong way a bit) but he's ready to step up and be my "dad" and provide for and protect me and my siblings.
And I'm just sat there thinking, dude I'm a decade older than you and live in a separate house. I don't need 'providing' for and even if I did, I don't think a guy a third of my age who works part-time at the hardware store and is into collecting manga is the man to do it. No offense if you are into that lol, just...I dunno, I was a bit taken aback. I was in shock so I just said "Okay."
He gets emotional again but in a happy way, talking about how he wants to go camping or go to a baseball game (I don't even like baseball lmao) and how he joined the Lions this year and how he wants to bring me into it too "as his boy" which just feels so surreal (I'm a Shriner so all this talk of service and charity isn't the brag he thinks it is) because again I'M 10 YEARS OLDER THAN THIS GUY!
Well I ended it by just saying, this has gotten a bit too weird and I was going home. He got very upset and I left, called my brother who he agreed it sounds "weird as F." Later my mom called me and she...wasn't disappointed but admitted it's made him very upset and depressed. I told her that if he's embarrassed, he doesn't need to be, I get he's excited about the marriage and we can just laugh this off as a funny story.
She then said that wasn't what he was upset about, he (and she too a bit) is upset about the fact he "poured his heart out and I rejected him." She said yeah it is a 'bit kooky' but this is how "he proves to himself he's a man" and I guess I was a bit angry and said something like, first off it's not my job to certify what's between his legs and second this doesn't prove he's a man, it just proves he's a nut job.
I apologised immediately but she said she didn't want to hear it and hung up. She called back 10 minutes later and we apologised and she begged me to just go along with it until he "has some kids to call his own".
I won't go too much into the details here but she sort of let slip they plan to try IVF treatment because she's "not ready to give up on being a mom just yet." And while I uh...have my own thoughts about whether or not that's a good idea, I'm not here to litigate on that.
We finished up fine and I reiterated I'd support her and she agreed that it was definitely a 'stressful situation' for me but begged me to at least think about it. Which leads me to here.
I did think it over and obviously I'm going to say no. I had a dad and he died (Rest in peace Dad) and that's the only dad I've ever needed, I've ever wanted and I'll ever bestow that title on. I'm not asking if someone's unreasonable or what I should do, moreso what I should say
This clearly means a lot to him for some reason and I deeply love my mom so want to try and minimise the damage. Especially as we're still so involved in each other's lives and they live behind me.
How can I make it clear to them, as painlessly as possible that I think this is weird and borderline offensive. I really don't want to rip the band-aid off because I fear what it might do to the family.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
SandalsResort
“You can call me dad.”
“Uhhh…YOU can call me sir.”
El_Dubs2511
This is a 24 YO child playing house. He is either an entirety unserious person or he is a severely deluded one. Your mother needs to wake up and smell the crazy.
MariposaFantastique
I think both he and your mother have some serious delusions going on.
SGTPepper1008
If it’s so important to his personal identity to find a girl, have kids with her, and raise them as their dad, it seems like marrying a 58 year old woman with adult children significantly older than himself is a pretty ineffective way to achieve those life goals.
If it’s so important to him, he should find someone his own age and make that happen the normal way. It’s not your responsibility to make your mom’s boy toy feel like a man. You’re closer to being his much older brother than his son. Weird.
kemikica
I'd just be loudly laughing the whole time and wiping my tears from laughter. There's nothing you can do NOT to offend a 24 year old man who wants a 35 year old man to call him "dad". He's gonna be offended, no matter what.
Shut that down, have him call you by your first name (or any nickname you go by) EXCLUSIVELY and don't worry about offending his feelings. He'll get over it. He's a big boy(toy). And, yeah, don't get involved in the crazy-ass IVF thing at all. You wish them luck and that's it.
Four days later, the OP returned with an update.
ThrowRA_SonOfSands
I showed my brother the post and he laughed so hard he started coughing lol then said we should call him "Dr Phil" and each other Blue and Red (so swap the nicknames he gave us around), thoughts?
As people were asking, he has no access to my mom's money or anything like that. She rents the house and it came pre-furnished and otherwise has no real 'assets'. She doesn't make a lot of money anyway so there's no pecuniary motive we could think of.
Anyway so I told both my siblings and we agreed we'd collectively put our foot down with Phil at our next family dinner next week. Especially after an incident where Phil referred to my brother as "sport" and asked if he wanted to go see a baseball game with him.
Admittedly...I was a bit spurred on by what you all said and got involved, pinging him back with "aw no tickets for me daddy 🥺" and my brother responded with "daddy wants to me all to himself hmm? Hot 😉" and Phil took a few minutes to respond before saying he was 'shocked, speechless and disgusted'.
He then messaged to me in private to say he was 'utterly appalled' and that he'd 'never disrespect his own father the way you boys did'. I kind of lost it at this point and said "right, that's because you're not my father Phil, you're a 24 year old manchild dating my mother. You have no right to my respect, especially not to the respect a father gets."
I immediately said sorry but then blocked his number and left the group chat. Apparently he sent a similar thing to my brother who responded with more daddy stuff and Phil blocked him.
Well uh, that aside, I don't think that family dinner is going ahead. After the original post blew up it seems someone from his Lions Club found it and reported it to their Chair or whatever and Phil has either been expelled or resigned or in the process of one of the two.
He has removed nearly all mentions of the Lions from his social media and no longer mentions being a member with his last post on it being some cryptic goodbye post where he kinda drones on about what it means to be a man in the modern day and the 'duty of fatherhood' bestowed on all men at birth, really weird stuff.
My mom called me half in a panic, half in a rage after, about the "stuff I'd been telling" about him before breaking down and saying we need to meet, which we did and got my brother to go over too.
I know he has temporarily moved back in with his parents in the next town over but from my understanding they still want to go ahead with the wedding. But I think that's moreso because they've already spent money on it.
When she said she was "determined to have more kids" (plural...) my brother did step up and asked if she really thought that was a good idea at her age, and I pointed out that, assuming she had the baby next year, and she lived to 80, they still wouldn't have finished college.
She just stammered on about how "people live longer these days" before breaking down crying and admitting she's not ready to give up on mothering due to some deep-seated trauma and fears about the family breaking apart that I won't go into for her sake.
When we re-assured her that we weren't going anywhere she calmed down and we had a very good honest conversation where she's agreed to drop the IVF stuff on the grounds that it'd be too expensive and unlikely to get greenlit (but she's still adamant it's scientifically possible and she should be allowed to do it from an ethical standpoint) and has agreed to look into fostering instead.
Me and my brother highly doubt anything will ever come of that so we're not that worried anymore. The very good news is she's also agreed to look into therapy/psychiatric help to deal with her trauma and we've helped get her in touch with a nice lady in town to unpack all this in a more healthy way. So at least one person is getting the help they need.
I have no idea what's happened with Phil or what's going to happen with him but I did make it clear to my mom that he is not my 'dad', he's not even my 'step-dad', I'm not a kid. And he's never going to be either one outside of legal nonsense.
She relented pretty quickly (I think she's finally broken out of her shell at least) and we've agreed that if things go ahead that's going to be a huge red line though I dunno if he'll want to be friends with me after all this lmao. Anyway thanks for the help on the original post y'all.
The same day, the OP returned with another update.
ThrowRA_SonOfSands
Edit: Bit of an update as I can’t respond to everybody but I think the marriage is off. Phil has gone awol again and has had a huge argument with his family as they’ve demanded he call off the wedding and date people his own age.
This apparently made him snap. Me and my mom have met his mom and older brother who said Phil is very insecure around girls his own age and has “never been able to talk them” hence his…preference.
This very deeply upset my mom and after some begging from all of us, she has agreed to “push the wedding back” though she wants to keep dating him. I have no idea where Phil is, though his brother assumes he’s couch surfing with his DnD friends who have been sending me and my brother some not nice messages because clearly we’re just jealous of “the milf Hunter.”
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
loveandsubmit
Is this a message from inside a sitcom somewhere? This cannot be real.
ThrowRA_Elk7439
I love how Phil's craziness escalated the already crazy situation of a 58 yo dating a 24 yo so much so that it's not even a part of the discussion anymore.
adorablegadget
There's delusion, and then there's this. Dude is not mentally well if he's trying to get people a decade older than him to see him as a father figure.
FleurDisLeela
WAIT? so Phil ran home, to his mommy and daddy?!? great job, kiddos! great update, thank you! 😂😂😂💀
CummingInTheNile
Literacy was a mistake.