Ask Amy: Disappointing daughter expects support
If I don’t support her relationship with her boyfriend, they’ll all hate me.
My husband, who wants to retire soon, wants me to at least support her relationship, and is willing to tell my daughter to take loans and support herself.
Could you weigh in?
– Heartbroken Mom
Dear Heartbroken: I see a distinction between “support” and “accept.”
Yes, you should accept your daughter’s choice because she is an adult and she has the right to make terrible choices.
If you accept her, must you also “support” her? Absolutely not.
She may need to experience the reality of living a marginal life – far from her upper-middle class privilege – in order to make a choice about it.
If she continues with her graduate program and you can afford it, you might choose to pay only her school bills (directly to the school). If she completes each semester successfully, you can choose to pay for the next semester. This would be extremely generous. She and “Clay” will then have to work to support their living expenses – as countless adult couples are expected to do.
Invite them over for dinner, include them in family events, and yes – you may be forced to face and tolerate your disappointment in your pot-using daughter and her choice in partner, but until she is forced to face her own choices and disappointments, she will never be inspired to perhaps choose differently.
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