Dear Eric: I’ve been dating my boyfriend for roughly two years. We took a break because he hadn’t told his grown daughters he was dating. I asked that he do that for us to move forward in our relationship because I didn’t want to be a secret. So, he did tell them. His 24-year-old was accepting, according to him. The 27-year-old was not happy and said she had past trauma from his last relationship and that she had started therapy three weeks prior to him telling her he was dating. She told him she needed space from him to work on those past traumas.
He lost his first wife to cancer (the daughter’s mother). He remarried two years later because he was trying to have a mother figure in their lives because they were teenagers at the time of their mother’s passing. How can he and I move forward to what could be marriage if his daughter doesn’t come around to talking to him or approving of him being with me?
—Kind of Stuck
Dear Stuck: It’s important to let her work through whatever she needs to work through. You can be encouraged by the fact that she communicated her needs clearly to her father and that she’s already in therapy. Those are some of the building blocks of a healthy relationship. So, don’t try to prod her or speed up the process. It will take the time it takes.
In the interim, however, I think it’s important that you and your boyfriend start pre-marital therapy. There are a few things that might create stumbling blocks for you, and this is a great time for you to explore them. For instance, you may already know what aspects of his past relationships were traumatic for his daughters, but a therapist can help you both process them and come up with new strategies so that the relationship you build with each other and with his daughters is healthier and happier.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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