My daughter just moved home after graduation. We really have never met any boyfriends during college since she was so far away. She’s also not wanted us to meet anyone that isn’t serious.
She just started seeing someone new, though she’s known him for years. It turned into dating about a week or so ago.
His parents had her over for dinner last night. I just thought woah that’s fast! He doesn’t live at home. I would like to meet him but I follow her lead. Until she’s comfortable she takes her car so she can leave when she wants. He came here for a party she had but I was out for the night.
How soon do you meet your kids new person?
I think so much of this is dependent on other factors. If she is living in your house and dating someone in the same town, then I’d expect you to meet him much sooner than a boyfriend at college 4 hours away.
It sounds like he is in this same town - I would encourage you to wait and meet him organically, like perhaps he stops over to pick her up or something, rather than arranging an official Meeting.
Our daughter was dating her boyfriend for two years before we met him last August. But they live in another country, so it’s not like they can just drop by on the way to the movies. They recently told us they’re getting married. We will be spending more time with them in June when we travel to visit them. I wish we could see them more, but our respective locations make it challenging.
We didn’t even know my youngest had a girl friend for a year. He met her on a study abroad and she went to college in the same area so it was relatively easy to stay together. I think we met her when she came for Thanksgiving, so they’d known each other almost two years. I remember when I was in college my aunt and uncle who lived in the same town would invite my boyfriends to come with me for dinner. (My parents were overseas at the time.) I’m sure they reported their impressions. They would have met them within months of us becoming relatively serious.
Sons went to schools on opposite coast and both met their SOs there. We met SO1 when helping move her and DS1 into their apartment in this part of the country; they’d been together for a year by then. We met now-DIL a year before either she or DS2 told any of the parents they were involved.
D2 was dating a guy for a couple of years, but it never seemed that serious. He was 7 yrs older and from a very different background. He always seemed to be conveniently out of town when we were visiting her city (a plane flight away). When we were finally scheduled to officially meet him, she broke up with him the week before. Now she has been dating a guy for several months, similar age and backgrounds, and had been out with his parents a few times (they live in a nearby city to them). She is bringing him home to us to meet him next month…if they’re still together. ?
S1’s college gfs, we didn’t usually meet before they broke up. There was only one longer college relatiionship, and we met her 7 months after they started dating. The gf he eventually married (they met in grad school), we met her 8 months after they started dating.
We met S2’s gf, 15 months after they started dating (she wasn’t available, when we visited him 11 months earlier). They broke up 2 months after we met her.
We met middle son’s SO of a year when we visited him in Beirut last year. We took each of them a lot of camping gear which he had requested. We made it clear to the young lady that this was her stuff to keep, whether they stayed together or not. Later, DS told me they were offended that we implied they might not stay together since they were planning on getting married.
Then two months later, they broke up. Thank goodness we didn’t say anything negative about the girl, because now they’ve gotten back together! Ugh, so complicated. I have to remember to keep my mouth shut in these situations.
S started seeing someone last August. They were both here during the holidays, and we got to meet him then (so about 4 - 5 months in). S had already met SO’s family, which is local to them. We “met” D’s bf on their first date, although they did not say that it was a date.
You may know my story that, after their first date, she came home and announced he was coming to meet us, the next weekend. But that was uber serious from the start. Unusual. If yours is just testing the waters, it’s ok to wait.
Great advice I got when mine were little is to be the house their friends want to be at. We all walk that fine line between our own curiosity and respecting their lead.
I generally met my girls’ SOs as soon as they decide to be exclusive. I flew D1’s now husband to where we were living (outside of country) after they were dating for few months. D1 told him it was necessary. His parents were kind of concerned.
Same for D2’s various BFs. I usually met them after few dates.
This never occurred to me before but it has been almost right away, almost always. Weird?
Part of it might have to do with the fact that one of my kids is LGBT and I’ve always been accepting. You would be astounded at how many people in my very urbane, liberal area just are not at all OK with that for their own kids. A LOT. So I’ve been a temporary surrogate mom from time to time. We even had one friend living with us for a short while when there was friction in their family (with mom’s permission, ofc.) I felt like I was running Petra’s House of Wayward Teens for a while.
I met my daughter’s significant other when they were 12.
We’ve only met one of our kids’ SO. S had been dating 8 months and we were there for a convention and staying with him afterwards. We took him to dinner to celebrate his 30th bday and he invited her to join us, so we met. So far, he hasn’t met any of her family, tho they’ve now been dating 2 years!
We met one S’s gf after they had dated a month (we had no idea he had a gf). We met D’s bf after six months maybe. Other S, we met his gf after a year together (they lived far from us). Now we have to meet her parents in a few weeks, at our S’s insistence.
We met my D’s Bf about a month and a half into their relationship freshman year. She was having a little drama wit her roommate and feeling a little home sick so he offered to drive her half way (a little more than an hour) to meet us for lunch as he had a car at school and she did not. As seniors they are still together and he stays at our home frequently when he comes to visit her over breaks. We have also gotten together with his parents multiple times as we vacation where they have a summer home. Both the bf and his parents are wonderful people and we have really enjoyed spending time with all of them.
It just seemed like dating for a week was premature to go have dinner at their house. I’d tend to wait until it was a bit more settled. She did tell him that now he’d have to meet us. It’s not like I don’t want to, I just think having for dinner vs meeting when he comes to pick her up is a little much. But I also know my d and how quickly she tires of people.
Btw, she had a fine time and really liked them and it wasn’t a big deal to her.
I did try to combine curiosity with altruism to meet DS1’s SO sooner than we did. She was making a grad school visit to our part of the country and I asked him to have her get in touch with me if she needed anything while in the area, rides or whatever. Of course she was fine, and there are more comfortable circumstances to meet your SO’s mom, but I wanted to make the offer. SO’s parents met DS1 when they hosted him for a few days on his way back home their first winter break together.
We first met DIL knowing she was DS2’s SO when she came to stay here for a week over their winter break. We Skype-met her parents beforehand, and DS2 took his laptop around the house, introducing his brother, showing them the smoke detectors, whatever he could think of to reassure them she’d be fine with these total strangers. It was very endearing.
Before they started dating, my daughter and her BF were good friends for the first semester of freshman year. When I was making a trip to campus for a concert at the end of the first semester, she told me she was happy that I’d be able to meet him. I asked if they were dating, and she said “almost but not yet”. LOL We had plans to go out to dinner before the concert, but she had a last-minute rehearsal and couldn’t join me. And so, this very sweet young man met me (for the first time) at the restaurant, and we had a nice dinner together. I assume he must have been nervous, but he endured my CIA-style interrogation very well! 
I was impressed, and gave him major points for bravery! He also sat with me at the concert. Before leaving my hotel the next day, I spoke with my D and told her I’d enjoyed his company very much. She let me know that they were officially a couple now. I laughed and asked if she had been waiting for my approval! She said “Well, kind of… I told him it was important to me that you get to know him”. I was really surprised by that – I would not have given a thought to my parents meeting my college boyfriends! They are still together. 
We offered to fly him up to our house in Maine after he finished his summer internship, a few days before his family drove up to Maine for a week at a rented cottage, coincidentally not too far away. So not only did we get to know him over a few days, we got to meet some of his family and they us. It’s been over three years, we’ve flown him to our house in Asia for two Christmas breaks now. They are both our “kids” at this point, even though they aren’t married. They are the great couple!