Looks like Lizardkid will be moving in with the GF for his senior year. I don’t have an issue with it. We really like her and they make a great couple. We love her family, too, but to make it a bit more complicated, her dad is his boss and supervises his research. I just don’t want it to turn out like high school where he spent all of his time with his high school girlfriend, and when they broke up, he really had very few other friends from high school.
Hit me up with your stories and how it worked out.
I married the boy down the hall who walked into my room the first week of freshman year and never left. It’s worked out great.
During field exercises at the academy one summer, our son was put in charge of a team that included his GF. At the end of the exercise, he rated her performance lower than she expected. That didn’t work out so well. He didn’t “cadate” after that.
Because there’s nothing you can do about this (and it doesn’t look like you’re asking for advice), just grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the stories here, but fingers crossed for your son, @vwlizard.
Most of my kids dated for years in college, I’d just be worried about a breakup and a lease (saw it several times). My 24 year old met her current boyfriend 6 1/2 years ago at orientation, they did not live together in college, were a 3 hour flight away from each other in grad school, he’s living with us now because his job is 40 minutes away, and they both have loans. I strongly suspect they’ll get married, but no need to rush things. My husband and I met at 12, started dating at 22, got engaged at 27, moved in together (we had separate apartments) at 28, married 6 months later.
My life would have been a disaster on steroids if I’d married my college BF (I ran into his parents a while back– quite by accident, we live in different parts of the country– and got the entire download. Including the fact that as I was planning one kid’s wedding, he was celebrating the birth of a new baby…. I lost count as to how many babies with how many ex-wives…. ).
So I get your reluctance. People change and that’s ok. I’m not sure if your kid can manage the research supervisor piece, but if it were me I’d just make sure that down the road, your son doesn’t feel locked in to this relationship because of her dad. That sounds to me like a bad Victorian novel in the making- or at least the worst episode of “Sex in the City” ever made.
When my future husband had finished his Bachelor’s in Engineering, he called down to UT-Austin to find out about grad school. He was connected to my dad, the head of the department. Dad encouraged him to come and DH got a job doing research as he worked on his master’s degree. He and I were in several classes together.
Dad was his direct supervisor. In our case, it could have been difficult because of the strict church I grew up in. Dad was NOT happy when we announced (just a few months after meeting!) that we were engaged.
To his credit, Dad was always professional and never let anything personal interfere with their working relationship. Eventually, Dad moved past the situation and everything worked out. If we had said we were moving in together, though, things might have been different!
A grad school friend of ours said to DH, “Are you crazy? You’re a Yankee in Texas, and you’re dating your boss’s daughter??”
Our wedding colors were blue and gray - Union and Confederate.
My younger kid was a college junior when Covid hit. She had met her bf, who lived in a different city, the previous summer, and they’d been dating long-distance since then. She already had a summer internship planned in his city. When it was announced that the campus was closing at spring break, they talked with the friends they had planned to live with for the summer, and the friends said sure, you can move in now! So, kid asked me and her dad whether we’d be okay with her doing “Zoom U” from there rather than from home.
It seemed to me that going from never-having-lived-in-the-same-city to quarantining together might be… a lot. But it was an all-or-nothing choice, and I knew she wasn’t going to be happy at home. Plus, she was already starting to think about post-college plans through the lens of being with this partner. So I figured, welll… maybe it’s for the best, to go ahead and stress-test this relationship now; they’ll certainly find out whether it works or not! And it did - they’ve now been together for six years!
Anyway, I agree with some others that the working relationship with the dad sounds like the potentially trickiest part of this. Hopefully everybody has good boundaries…
Lizardkid loves the dad and wants to be the dad when he “grows up”. Dad is quite well known in the field son wants to be in and they have a great time hanging out. They get along so well, I asked Lizardkid who he was “dating” first. Turns out it was the dad, but GF lived across the hall and it all came together around the same time. Luckily, Lizardkid and the GF are both very “no drama” which is what I think probably attracted them to each other.
@MaineLonghorn - sounds like my son has it easy compared to your husband.
Just to clarify, I’m good with all of it. My thoughts are just that by not living together, he at least spends time with, and does things with, other people. But, then again, he’s always had a close, but intentionally small, circle. He spent all of his time in high school (boarding school) with his GF. They broke up the beginning of their first year at college. He hasn’t talked to anyone from high school since then (he does talk to friends from outside of high school). He met the new GF just a few weeks after the breakup. They are both part of a larger group that skis, hikes, climbs, and hangs out together, but it seems to be less big group and more just him and GF lately.
My son met his gf the first week of college. They lived together for a year or a little more before she went to PA school. Now she is a PA, he is a veterinarian doing his residency, they bought a house and have been married 2 years!
My younger daughter and her BF have been dating since junior year of high school. They went to different high schools and different colleges (she got into his college, but I was a “no” on her choosing it just because he was going there. She didn’t fight me on it.) I think it was great that they went to different colleges had their own experiences, made their own friends, etc. They still managed to take turns seeing each other at least once a month (mostly twice a month) and they went to the same city (but different programs and living spaces) for a semester study abroad.
They graduated in 2025, have jobs in the same city and now live together. I have no problem with it because rent in our city is expensive, and it would make no sense to be paying 2 rents. I’ve long since made peace with the fact that they are each other’s “lobster” and they want to be together. DH is a much harder sell on the living together part. He’s still not thrilled about it but he keeps silent.
He would have been a HARD NO for them living together while still in undergrad (and we paid her rent and expenses, so…)
DH and I met freshman year of college. We never officially lived together but we cohabitated, usually at his apt. since I lived in a sorority house. I remind him of this when he voices opposition to the living together. I also remind him that D and her BF will be 23 soon and DH & I were married at 23. I also point out that my older D and her then-boyfriend/now husband lived together for three years after college before getting married and there was no opposition to that.
Anyhow, I had the same concerns as you about them having their own friends, interests, etc., but they do a great job of balancing time together with doing their own things outside of their couple-ness. It may help that they live in their hometown, and both have family here and many friends from childhood who have come back after to college to live here.
The boss issue may be the only sticky thing, but it would be sticky even if they weren’t living together and broke up.
This could be the more problematic aspect in various ways. Even if they strictly keep business and home/family life apart, that may not prevent others from perceiving something corrupt or nepotistic going on.
I guess it depends on the organization. We never heard hints that anyone thought it was improper.
Kind of funny - I was supposed to do wood research with a professor but he was waiting for funding and for the first semester I got paid but had nothing to do. Then the funding fell through, so they put me on one of my dad’s projects! But officially, the other professor supervised me. I enjoyed working with a material that he helped develop in the '60s and gained a lot of recognition for.
