Bringing home a new boyfriend to meet dad and mom is always a hard first step because one, you don’t want to frighten him off with your family’s antics, and two because as the girl in the family, you know your parents are always going to be putting him through their mental food processors. Most families tend to be a little overprotective of their children in the first place, but as the girl, you have even more to worry about.
If you know it’s time to introduce your family to your boyfriend, or you know there is no avoiding it any longer as he is your date to a wedding in a month, you should also know it’s always best to have this happen when you control the situation. Therefore, you are going to have a lot more control and say in the situations that occur if you introduce your boyfriend to your family on your grounds, meaning your home, instead of theirs. They are already going to feel a little off put being in a home that is yours when they have gotten use to taking care of you most of your life. Take advantage of this little shyness and bring the boyfriend to your house or dorm room to meet them. (But for heaven’s sake, don’t bring him out from the bedroom!)
Before you get to the point when everyone is standing awkwardly together in the room after the handshakes and “nice to meet you” salutations have been exchanged you should be laying some ground work for how the introduction is made. Springing the situation on either side is always a bad move. When people are surprised, they get defensive, so do not allow the situation to occur in the first place. Before it reaches the point when they are going to meet each other, be dropping in hints throughout your conversations with your parents that you have a boyfriend and mention him by name.
Hiding his existence is only going to make it worse, because they will be thinking you don’t really date, and then you pop a boyfriend on them and not only do they feel hurt you didn’t share, they are going to think you must not really value him if you never bothered to mention him, meaning they will not respect him either. You don’t have to obsessively mention him every sentence of a conversation, but when telling them about the weekend you went camping, don’t say, “Yeah I went camping last weekend” say “John and I went camping last weekend.” You don’t have to make a big show about it, but at least they will be aware of a boyfriend’s presence in your life which is going to smooth the meeting a little.
Finally, whatever you do, don’t introduce your boyfriend as your friend John. When you say friend, it makes it look like you two are just fooling around, and no parent will like that, or the guy. Clearly use the word boyfriend and let them know he is going to be around for awhile, it will lower their natural instinct to scare him and help them start to accept him on better graces.
Image by Sydigill
