r/Advice•
ATWA444

Confusing relationship with dad. I'm not sure if he should meet my boyfriend yet.

Hi, I'm a woman who's 22 and I've never had the best relationship with my dad. He has anger issues that stemmed from him being insecure growing up and ended up verbally and emotionally abusing myself, My mom and my sister who is 16. We moved out of our house five years ago. We lived with our grandmother ever since, but he still some grudge against my mom. He's rude to her when he sends audio messages discussing my sister and I, and I think what's happening is he probably feels guilty a little, but also mad that we're still living with our grandma and that things turn out this way such as him having to pay child support.

I've tried to keep the peace and spend time with him and when I spend time with him, he's like a different person. However, he gets upset with my mom when my sister doesn't visit on holidays because sometimes she's not feeling well. I try to talk him through it and he rants to me but then he kind of sends mean audio messages to my mom like swearing and saying she's a bad mom. My mom just told him not to involve me anymore like not to ask me questions because I say something to him and then he gets mad at my mom even though I just focus on my sister and tell him to just try to understand the situation.

That was background, but this why I'm posting here:

I have a boyfriend who is long distance to me. He knows everything that's happened with my dad and although he feels bad for me, he doesn't have anything against my dad because his dad wasn't the best either. funny thing, I see some resemblance between my dad and his dad in terms of looks.

So I have a trip booked in about a month and I'm going to be there over a month visiting my bf. My dad happens to have a few days off so I invited him to join us and I'm actually looking forward to it. I feel like this will help solidify my bf and is relationship and so my dad can meet him and also so I don't feel bad about missing my dads birthday.

However, when he acts like this, I just feel stuck again and I feel like maybe I shouldn't even tell my boyfriend what just happened because I don't want to make my bf uncomfortable, and maybe I shouldn't encourage my dad to come anymore since he's still deciding, like change topics or avoid it altogether.

Another thing that makes me feel awkward is that my boyfriend and I have had some problems because of trust issues and insecurity and although he didn't yell at me or act like my dad, in fact, I was the one who was louder, he feels like he hurt me too, so it's like I'm with two men in my life who hurt me in someway and it makes me feel awkward, even though I don't compare them, and my boyfriend's demeanour is different than my dad's, it's just something that's a bit at the back of my head.

Idk what to do about this whole situation.

PS. I just want to add in case anybody brings this up, I don't think he's going to ruin the trip or start taking his anger out on myself or my boyfriend. He's actually really calm and collected with strangers and other people and he doesn't want to make a bad impression so I'm not worried about that.

Posted Apr 5, 2026, 2:50 AM UTC

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