'AITA for telling my daughter's girlfriend to get off of her phone during dinner?'
"AITA for telling my daughter's girlfriend to get off of her phone during dinner?"
I (56M) met my only daughter's (Lauren - 20F) first serious girlfriend (Heather - 31F) yesterday. Given the age difference, I will admit I was already a bit stressed out but I gathered myself for Lauren.
I'm Lauren's only parent, I'm very proud of her and I love her so much. I prepared dinner and I expected it to be a typical meeting your daughter's partner dinner. It was not what I hoped it would be.
Heather is a big-shot lawyer. She brought a fine bottle of wine with her, and at first it was all okay. As the night went on she came off as very self confident, arrogant even, and every five minutes she would leave the dinner table to take a 'very important call'.
I counted in my head. This happened 7 times in the course of an hour. So I just asked Heather if her very important job could wait a little bit so we could talk together. Heather gave me a very nasty look. She said it couldn't.
I asked if it was more important than meeting her girlfriend's father. She said it actually was and Lauren understood and could explain if I wanted. She then left the room. Lauren said some matters need Heather's personal input.
After Heather left for another phone call, Lauren told me I was being childish by asking to have Heather's full attention at a time like this and she said she was embarrassed by my comment.
After they left, Lauren hasn't contacted me (like she usually would) and acts cold towards me. AITA here?
Info from OP:
I did a whole background check on this person when my daughter told me she was dating her as I was suspicious about the age gap. Career-wise she never said anything to me but through my search I found out that she was good at her job. That's probably the only thing she's good at.
Let's see what internet users had to say.
theferal1 writes:
Nta- and I’m not sure how welcoming I’d be with a 31 year old full grown adult after my 20 year old not even legal to drink (in the US) barely adult kid. She’s big shot lawyer who lacks common courtesy and can’t find someone her own age date….
itsnotmanualdate writes:
NTA. Heather was making a point that your daughter's family is less important that her job. Most likely she treats your daughter the same way. If it was a real emergency, she would have apologised profusely, spent time on the phone once and sit down for proper dinner.
After third time I would have suggested that since she has a clear emergency, she should go work and you and your daughter can have a nice dinner.
maypopfop writes:
NTA: While this might not be the case, you should talk to Lauren about how older, powerful women can be predatory too, and looking for young trophies they can control. It’s not exclusive to rich men.
They have an eleven year age difference and your daughter isn’t even old enough to drink. Heather also seems disrespectful in general. SEVEN CALLS? Making a good impression should be important if she cares about Lauren.
NTA—but everyone needs to cool it on the age difference thing. On the other hand, even if Heather was only 21, I'd be concerned that she brought wine as the gift for meeting her underage girlfriend's parent(s).
Although it does sound like maybe it wasn't going as well at first as you thought? Did you and Heather have very different values and maybe she was trying to get away from the conversation rather than say something inflammatory?
Affectionate-Emu1172 OP responded:
She didn't really talk much for the first part of the night. But did have normal human decency at least. It was an alright time until she had her first phone call. After that she just turned into this arrogant entitled person