I am not The OOP, OOP is u/mute_boyfriend
My[24 M] girlfriend[21 F] of 1 year is too embarrassed to attend a family function, because she cannot speak.
Original Post Oct 24, 2014
My wonderful girlfriend of almost 1 year now, was born with malformed vocal chords. Despite an attempt at surgery, she is unable to speak. I've never given a shit about that. I learnt sign language and even though it has been tough, I'm able to communicate with her. She can hear and comprehend English perfectly. She's always had self esteem issues because of that. She is incredibly attractive and guys approached her all the time, but turned away when they learnt about her disability.
We've been in an awesome relationship for a year now. I'm her first, everything. I've enjoyed every moment with her and we're even considering moving in together.
Anyway, my sister's wedding is coming up. I need a date. I obviously cannot take anybody else, but my girlfriend. But she's too scared of being rejected by my family. I keep telling her that nothing like that's going to happen, but still she's very very scared. Now, we've discussed about marriage and a future together and naturally its time she met my family.
Anything I can do to change her mind/help her ? I don't want to force this on her, but eventually she'll have to meet my folks...
EDIT So apparently my ex will also be there at the wedding. AND she is single.
tl;dr: Mute girlfriend is terrified of meeting my family.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
[deleted]
You need to introduce your gf to your family beforehand, in a small and unpressured environment. This large family gathering is obviously too large for a first meeting, and too much for her to deal with.
Progress slowly, my friend. Don't push her if she's not comfortable.
OOP
We land the morning of the wedding.
I absolutely do not want to push her. I totally get what a terrible social situation that this all can become. However, I do have limited options. If its too big an event for her, and too much all at once, its alright with me. I just don't want her to feel bad about not meeting my family, that's all.
okctoss
That's too much pressure for a first family meeting. Can you meet them on another day beforehand? Have them visit? Schedule another visit yourself?
I cannot imagine if my boyfriend had made my first encounter with his family a huge wedding with hundreds of people for me too meet. That's nuts.
OOP
I know, I know. But if I leave her behind, that'll make us both feel terrible.
Skype works theoretically, not practically. But something like that can get very uncomfortable very soon because there's only audio and video. When you take the audio portion out of it, it feels weird. When you've met someone, you can walk around and stuff. I'm speaking purely on the basis of what happened around 3 months ago with a childhood buddy of mine. She had reason to butt out in that conversation because she wasn't the topic of conversation, just came into the view and he said Hi and she waved back. That was it.
intended_result
You're mistaken, and I think Skype is actually IDEAL for this! Skype has text messages!! Let her use that to communicate with your family!
This will only be awkward if you make it awkward. Be ENTHUSIASTIC about your parents getting to talk to her.
Update Nov 1, 2014 (8 days later)
Hello people. Thanks for your replies to your previous post.
So, with all the people screaming SKYPE! SKYPE! SKYPE! I thought that it'll be the right thing to do.
I hooked up a Skype call with my sister, her fiancé and my dad. Mom wasn't going to be there. My sister was nervous but this was better than meeting them all at once face to face.
Turns out, it was a pretty cool idea after all. Everything flowed smoothly. My sister and my girlfriend have quite a bit in common, so they talked for a while. When their conversation stalled out, I had a chat with her fiancé. He seems like a pretty nice guy. Had a long chat with dad. You people have no idea how much this entire exercise benefitted from my dad's presence. My dad's the kind of guy who always has the right words for any and every situation. He respectfully complimented by girlfriend on her looks and told me how lucky I am. This line had her grinning from ear to ear.
After like 45 minutes, we said our goodbyes.
My girlfriend was really happy about it all. But she still didn't want to go to the wedding, so I didn't force the matter on her. She was obviously troubled when she got the news that my ex will be there, but I told her that there is nothing to worry about.
So, I'm going stag to my sister's wedding, but atleast she got to know a part of my family.
tl;dr: Skype call went fantastic. But I'm still going alone to the wedding.
FINAL COMMENTS
[deleted]
Make sure to contact your gf often throughout the time you'll be there. She's uncomfortable with your ex being there and, while it's not necessary because you're not going to do anything wrong, it's still a nice gesture to never loose contact if you can help it.
OOP
Yeah, definitely. I'll keep texting her.
On general principle, I'll just avoid my ex.
~
Sisiwakanamaru
I'm glad that she got to know that she is a part of your family.
Do you and your girlfriend have any plan to meet your family soon after your sister's wedding?
OOP
My sister and her fiancé are going to fly out sometime. Parents will have to wait.
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Awwww that’s enough Reddit for today
Why? This wasn’t really a heavy or negative post at all.
You can tell how old this is because they use Skype versus FaceTime or Zoom.
The mention of Skype made me do a double take on the date lol
Really highlights how badly Skype fumbled the bag
Did anyone fumble the bag harder than Skype during COVID?
I love you can tell something is pre-pandemic because they say Skype. What a generational fumble by Microsoft.
Turning Google Earth into a disinformation machine may top it.
Not really. Microsoft teams is one of the most used video chat platforms and is used by 90% of Fortune 500 and 100 companies. Skype is a legacy software that doesn't really have a purpose anymore.
I still wonder how they didn’t become the default during the pandemic
https://youtu.be/ZI0w\_pwZY3E?is=SQHCC1TzMqlqovU\_
Skype was already being starved out by Zoom well before 2020. Skype was incredibly glitchy and unreliable but could in a sense be mandated by the odd person calling in during travel. Plus Zoom was so flexible about requiring logins. But once you could ONLY do meetings online ? Abruptly Skype was no longer in the game.
Classic Microsoft. Windows phone, Zune, and soon enough Xbox. Shit, even Windows itself is getting fumbled nowadays. No, I do not want to buy a new machine just so it can run Windows 11 specially with how expensive hardware is nowadays.
What a generational fumble by Microsoft.
You can apply that sentence to a lot of things.
As a former employee of the company that made GoToMeeting, it was astounding to me to see so much of our market evaporate during a period where our corporate customer base should have been excellently placed to expand to cover their newly-remote workplace. It was pretty obvious why, though - Zoom was *vastly* cheaper than us, especially for organizations like schools, where they were just giving it away. Which was a smart long-term move. Those "Zoom kids" have been filtering into the workplace over the last 7 years, and it's what they're used to.
He brought up the ex multiple times. It sounds like he was worried the ex would say something or cause a scene. Hopefully everything went fine.
Not exclusive to the ex but my mind went to someone would confuse mute with deaf and say something rude in OOP's gf's presence thinking she wouldn't hear it.
Thank god they decided to use Skype before meeting for the first time. That would definitely have been too much to meet for the first time. I'm glad things worked out.
Man, this thing is ripe for a new update.
More like rotting. This was 12 years ago.
Yeah, one Skype call is not enough to then attend a full blown wedding. Explaining her disability to every new person seems like a nightmare. I'm really surprised they've been going out for a year and it doesn't seem like he's prepped his family about her disability. Surely that's something he would bring up with his parents? I know discussing disability can be difficult, but personally I'd rather the news got around his family well in advance of an actual meeting. I bet there are things the family could be aware of or do to make things easier for her.
I mean, it also sounds like he's never interacted with his sister's fiancé before. Could simply be a family that isn't close, or that this particular guy is bad at staying connected.
Difficult?? Shit that's something I'd be telling my parents first time I talk about the person. Have wait an hour, how wonderful day I'm home, and I'm even learning to sign because *fill in reason here.* Or at least it would definitely come up with questions. Like how did you meet, what was the first date like, what do you guys do?
It doesn’t sound like the family wasn’t aware of her muteness, they just hadn’t met her.
It's pretty obvious from the posts that they don't live close, and need plane trips to visit. He probably TOLD his close family he's dating someone and she's mute, but when that's all happening a plane ride away it's just a "Huh, weird..." factoid that they might not even remember.
12 years ago. I wonder what happened since then.
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They broke up. It was awkward. She finds it hard to speak about it.
Sad that we never got another update considering that he dropped his ex would be there
Okay but.... why was the single ex going to the wedding? Did I miss that part? It's entirely possible it's like his sister's best friend or something not necessarily malicious on the sisters part, but where did she come from????
Probably a family acquaintance or something similar
Since that was the last update I'm going to tell myself they eventually meet in person and it went fantastic. OP proposed and they got married in a lovely ceremony with all the family attending who cheered for them and they lived happily ever after. I refuse to believe otherwise without any more updates.
My incredibly patient boyfriend (now husband) met the majority of my family during my aunt’s wedding. He’s also an only child with a pretty small extended family, whereas mine is huge. He managed great but certainly isn’t something I would want to do to anyone who was not ready for that experience. I wonder how this couple is doing now.
This guy is doing everything right.
Given that this is Reddit, I was somewhat surprised that there wasn’t an update saying STTEO “Welp, I made a mistake and hooked up with my ex at my sister’s wedding. How do I get my gf to understand that it was just a one time thing and it didn’t mean anything?” 🤣
You know this is an old post because of Skype. I hope she’s doing well and feeling like she belongs.
my question is how is he dating someone for a year, his sister is with someone long enough for marriage and yet his family has never met his gf in any capacity and he's never met his future BIL in any capacity? especially since it doesn't seem like there is an estrangement issue going on that would explain it.
I mean, it sounds like they live far away, so it doesn’t seem that odd. My brother recently got engaged after dating someone for around a year. I’ve met her once, briefly when I was somewhat near where he lived for a work trip. We live on opposite coasts and rarely see each other. I do at least know about his fiancé though.
It's obvious from the posts that they don't live close, plane ride away at least. OOP is also fairly young, like "just done with college" age, and plane tickets are expensive.
Probably because it's a load of bollocks and about at true as anything trump says?
I hate that dad complimented the gf on her looks. Did she really have no other redeeming qualities?
OOP was also very focused on her looks, and being her "first everything". I get that communication issues are difficult, but has he told his family nothing about her except that she's hot? Nothing about her hobbies or dreams or idk, favourite tv show?
She was grinning from ear to ear you jackass? No complementing a lady on her looks is wrong? Fuck off.
Why does she not use AAC? She would be the perfect candidate!
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