For a brief moment a few weeks ago, we thought our daughter and her deadbeat boyfriend were going to break up. They were on the phone for well over an hour and were arguing about her going away to college a year from now. He was in Florida, where he was supposedly looking for a community college to attend. If they didn’t break up that night, then we were hoping he would stay down there and eventually forget about her.
But unfortunately for us, his terrible grades kept him from being accepted into any school and his family brought him back here. Rats! Now Deadbeat Boyfriend is back to torment us by stealing our daughter’s concentration and focus on school, gymnastics, cheer, and even her own family. He’s nineteen years old, unemployed, and not going to school anywhere, so he presents an enormous distraction for her.
He’s been back less than a week now and has already been working his ugly black magic on our daughter. Within two days of returning to her school schedule this past week, she decided to skip gymnastics practice and spend the afternoon and evening with him. She never bothered to tell her gymnastics coach she wasn’t coming to practice and was thrilled when she thought she fooled us into thinking she had been there.
My husband and I warned her that the next time she skipped gymnastics practice or a cheer event to spend time with Deadbeat, their relationship would be over. (She did both last year- multiple times- so the fact that it’s happening again doesn’t please us at all.) We feel as though we’re giving her the opportunity to make choices with appropriate consequences.
As with last year, we fully expect her to screw up and make the wrong choice- again. She proved to us more than once that she has trouble learning from her mistakes. I just hope my husband follows through with his threat to put an end to their relationship, especially where it involves him calling Deadbeat’s parents and telling them the relationship is over. That’s something I’d love to see! So in a twisted sort of way, I hope our daughter isn’t any smarter this year than she was last year….
