In Lalalaletmeexplain's hit column, readers ask for her expert advice on their own love, sex and relationship problems.
With over 200k Instagram followers, Lala is the anonymous voice helping womankind through every bump in the road. An established sex, dating and relationship educator, she’s had her fair share of relationship drama and shares her wisdom on social media to a loyal army of followers. Every week thousands turn to her to answer their questions (no matter how embarrassing), and her funny, frank approach to love and relationships has made her the ultimate feel-good guru.
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Dear Lala,
I am in a lovely relationship, we’ve been together for seven months and in that time we’ve had no issues whatsoever. My concern is not with him, it’s with his dad.
We’re both 22 and still live with our parents. We tend to spend more time at his because it’s a lot closer to both our workplaces but I’m becoming very uncomfortable around his dad. I’m sure that there’s domestic abuse between the mum and dad as he’s dominant, aggressive, loud and shouts constantly. He orders the mum around and she just does what he says without question. He also does horrible things like slap her bum or grab her boobs while she’s serving dinner in front of us and then he’ll look directly at me to see if I saw and start laughing.
I don’t know how to describe it, but there’s this underlying sexual predator sense about him. I hate saying this because he hasn’t done anything predatory to me directly, but sometimes he looks at me and holds a stare for too long and it scares me. At times he has also come extremely close to me unnecessarily and it’s made me freeze, but I’m unsure if I’m being dramatic and maybe it’s all in my head.
He also made a comment after we watched a news story about a rape trial where he said: “Women who lie about rape should be punished with rape”. I’ve also heard him make gross comments about women on TV. He once saw a woman crying in a film and said: “She just needs a good f*ck”, then he stared right in my eyes.
I expected my boyfriend to challenge these comments because he is a good ally for women, but he just lets it slide every time. My boyfriend classes himself as a feminist and I’ve witnessed him call out guys on things before, but he weirdly idolises his dad. When I mentioned my concerns about how his dad treats his mum, he got defensive. He won’t hear a bad word about him, and when I suggest spending more time at mine he refuses because we’d have to wake up an hour earlier for work. How can I get him to see how awful his dad is?
Lala says…
I don’t think that you’re being dramatic and it’s not in your head, but it’s sad how conditioned we are to question ourselves rather than stand firm in the knowledge that this behaviour is intolerable. Even without all the examples, even if it were only your gut telling you there was something off about it, that would still be a valid reason for your discomfort, and you would still have grounds to feel that he gave off predatory vibes. But with all the behaviours you’ve outlined towards yourself, the mum, and women on the TV, it is apparent that this man’s behaviour is misogynistic and that he views and treats women in a worrying way.
I wonder if it’s that your boyfriend can’t see it because he’s been raised with it and it’s normal to him, or whether he can see it, but he doesn’t want to because acknowledging that your dad has these traits is hard to bear. The fact that he’s been a loving partner who has proven himself by standing up against misogyny in the past would suggest that he hasn’t emulated or learnt from his father and that sexism isn’t normal to him.
Challenging his father is likely to be a lot more complicated for him than challenging men in the pub. Coming to terms with the fact that his father has such vile character traits and that he’s probably abusing his mother is a huge thing. It may raise major emotional issues for him about his own identity and childhood, conflicts around loving his father whilst hating his behaviour, guilt for not protecting his mother, embarrassment, and shame. Making him see how awful his father is, is likely to be a massive life changing thing for him and I don’t think it’s something that should be done lightly. And he probably already knows, he’s just not able to accept it or admit it to you.
However, I do think that you have the right to feel safe in the relationship and in an environment where you're spending lots of time, and you do have the right to express how his father’s behaviour has made you feel. I’d avoid pressing the issue around domestic abuse between the parents at this stage and keep it focused on how you’ve felt when you’ve heard or witnessed certain things, be non-confrontational. It is natural for him to want to defend his family so it’s important to find the right words – calling his dad an abuser or predator will probably feel like an attack, so choose language that conveys how you’ve been affected by his behaviour rather than labelling it with strong words.
You also have the right to challenge his dad yourself, to tell him you feel uncomfortable, to pull him up on comments, but I also understand why that might feel impossible in his home, with such a big age gap and power dynamic, and especially if you don’t think you’d be supported by your partner. You may never be able to change how your boyfriend views his dad but what you do need to do is ensure that you’re not subjected to the discomfort of having to spend time with him.
Set your boundaries around this, don’t force yourself into discomfort. This is a really threatening sounding environment for you, and if you don’t want to spend any more time there then that’s very reasonable, but this will need to be communicated thoughtfully and sensitively. Couples/individual therapy might help you with finding the words, setting the boundaries and communicating. You could also think about your options for moving in together, but don’t do that if your relationship hasn’t already naturally reached readiness for that.
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