Since February 2025, I knew my dad had a fiancée for almost a year now. At first, I couldn’t care less since I was dealing with my studies. However, this summer I was confronted by the reality and it made me realize that I wasn’t overjoyed by this news for multiple reasons. First, I don’t know his fiancée because she is from another country, we don’t speak the same language at all. It doesn’t help from what I’ve seen, she doesn’t seem to understand the culture I’m living while I only have a small understanding of her culture since my second nationality is the same as hers. Second, I was the one who discovered and my dad wasn’t possibly going to tell me before they were going to marry. Third, all the previous information makes me stressful to meet her and interact her. I have difficulty to trust and bond with people and I know my dad wants me to be close with his future wife. I feel I have to please my dad and pretend to be happy and excited to meet her but truly, I don’t. I love my dad and he is an honorable father but I don’t know if I want to sacrifice my sanity for his happiness. I tried for days to not get be overwhelmed by this anxiety and pretend it doesn’t bother me. Unfortunatly, it bothers me a lot because I feel like a bad person for feeling badly about my dad’s future prospect. I do not want her to be in her life and I don’t want her to be in my life. I wish to never meet her and never have the obligation to interact with her even if she seems to be a nice person. However, I have talked about this situation with my best friend and they advised me to at least meet her once since it’s the polite thing to do. I wish I could do that but when I think about it, I feel throwing up, having a panick attack and crying at the same time. Should I really meet her even if I don’t want to?
TL;DR
I don’t know if I should meet my dad’s fiancee that I do not know and do not want to know and sacrifice my stability or at least meet her to be polite.
Comments
Language like “I don’t want her to be in my life” is you choosing your hill to die on. Examine why you have these feelings, my guess is that you lack emotional resolution of other feelings in regard to your dad/mom. Why are you so against her specifically?
Do you mind if I ask a few questions?
Is your mother still around? If so, do you live with her part-time, or do you live full-time with your father?
Do you come from a cultural background where it is normal to marry someone and move them into your home before introducing them to your children? Where I live, it is generally deemed unacceptable to move a someone into the family home who is a complete stranger to one’s children. Here child psychologists frequently opine that expecting one’s child to accept someone they do not know as “family”, much less a parental figure, will backfire spectacularly, ultimately traumatizing the child and fracturing the parent-child relationship. There is certainly an abundance of professional literature to back up their opinions, however, nearly all of it stems from work done with families in the U.S. and western Europe, and may not be as applicable to other cultures.
and expect the children to be okay with it, particularly when the children are school-aged.