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My girlfriend is 16....
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hi Guys,
First of all I've come here looking for help and in the hope that I'm taken seriously. I'm 17 and my girlfriend is 16 and we both think the world of each other. We've been together 7 months but there's something else.. (always a but!) - We're separated 180 miles between Scotland and England and we see each other once every two months for around 4 days.
Today, she tried to board a train to come and see me however her parents turned up at the station and bodily removed her and told her that she was never allowed to see me again.
Is there anything we can do?
PS - When she leaves school in June she was planning to come and live with me (obviously her parents will not allow this) so can the authorities actually forcefully return her to her parents? I've read somewhere that as long as she is in no immediate danger with proper access to food, water etc and is living healthily that there's not much they can do.
Please let us know where we both stand.
First of all I've come here looking for help and in the hope that I'm taken seriously. I'm 17 and my girlfriend is 16 and we both think the world of each other. We've been together 7 months but there's something else.. (always a but!) - We're separated 180 miles between Scotland and England and we see each other once every two months for around 4 days.
Today, she tried to board a train to come and see me however her parents turned up at the station and bodily removed her and told her that she was never allowed to see me again.
Is there anything we can do?
PS - When she leaves school in June she was planning to come and live with me (obviously her parents will not allow this) so can the authorities actually forcefully return her to her parents? I've read somewhere that as long as she is in no immediate danger with proper access to food, water etc and is living healthily that there's not much they can do.
Please let us know where we both stand.
0
Comments
"In most circumstances, anyone over the age of 16 can leave home without the consent of her/his parents or anyone with parental responsibility. A parent or person with parental responsibility could take wardship proceedings in court but it is unlikely that any court would order someone over 16 to return home if s/he did not want to."
So, basically, if your girlfriend chose to leave home and was not in any danger or under any duress then it is highly unlikely that she could, or would, be forced to return home.
As to whether or not this would be a wise decision in her case really depends on your circumstances. You are both still quite young and you'd need to be in a position where you could both live and support yourselves. You might have to compromise on such things as further education, which could impact upon the rest of your lives. Plus the fact that your girlfriend could alienate herself from her family and that in itself might have long lasting consequences.
I'm sure you have thought about all of this so I don't mean to patronise at all.
Wouldn't it be better to address this (if possible) and have their blessing, rather than force her to choose between her family and you at such a young age...
this.
You didn't mention any reason why her parents are against the relationship. If you don't know them, high time to find out. Some parents are understandably alarmed if their young daughter travels half the country to go see someone they do not know. Try to talk to them, maybe you can phone her and talk to their parents on the phone, telling them you'd like to come visit them and get to know them.
This would be the best way to do it, I reckon.
Thanks Stu, we both have a very mature level head on both of our shoulders and we completely understand the possible consequences of this. Thanks for your input.
I honestly wished I knew why her parents were against it, the way me and my girlfriend both met is quite remarkable actually and without going into too much detail i'll give you an insight.
They moved from Scotland 6 years ago however her brother stayed behind and met his woman, they then married in 2010 and my father was contracted as the drummer for their wedding band. I went along with him
and this is when I met my soon to be girlfriend. Remarkably, we never spoke that night however we did set eyes on each other but like I said - never spoke. So a few weeks after the wedding passed and she continued to play on my mind so I decided to literally man hunt facebook to find her (I didn't know her name or where she stayed or anything) and amazingly I found her, and we've been together since then.
Of course, I agree with you that I'd rather have the parents blessing but we refuse to be parted as we genuinely have something special together, and if it has to be done the hard way then so be it. The parents have no reason to have a dislike towards me, and personally the only thing I can think of is that they just don't know me well enough. We tried to resolve this by me visiting them for four days over the course of last week, but clearly it hasn't worked.
So this means once the credit in her mobile has run out we will have no more contact (we call each other every night on the house phone) so I think this just proves that they don't want her having anything to do with me.
A stranger who has made no attempt to contact them, travel to see them.
I'd say that they have every right to be concerned.
What are you on about? :S
I already stated above that I've met her parents on three occasions, plus just spent four days at the family home.
For the sort of thing you are talking about, as a parent, I'd like to know you a whole lot more than that before I let my 16-y-o travel like that.
You have to see this from their perspective, given the news stories around the world. They are trying to protect their daughter.
You need to be patient and work up to this kind of move.
That kinda renders their point invalid, they let her travel to Scotland over Christmas by herself to see me.
They aren't going to react like this for no reason, on a whim, are they?
I don't understand what you mean by that, sorry.
Her mother met me back in 2010, and twice since then, and then I saw her mother again (and met her father) for four days last week.
Well like I've already stated, they've let her do it twice before so yeah, their argument is rendered useless.
As I said, they wouldn't react like this for the hell of it. They have a reason. You need to find out what that is.
She still has credit, so get her to find out. Or ring them yourself.
I would end the relationship and look for someone else much closer.
No, that's not an option.
I have sent her father a long lengthy email today just after it happened, she's told me he's been on Facebook since and he hasn't replied. I've done all I can do but ending the relationship is not an option, and will never be one.
I'm really sorry to hear that you're having a bit of a rough time at the moment. It may sound a bit of a cliche, but lots of people have difficult relationships with their partner's parents. So do know that, although your situation is clearly unique, you're not alone in having to work through problems with the 'in-laws'.
I'm quite struck by how complicated your situation seems. As lots of the posts before me have demonstrated by picking up on different aspects. Obviously there's the issue with her parent's difficulty coming to terms with your relationship, but this is also impacted upon by the distance between you and her relatively young age. And I'm not entirely sure that's all of the various aspects of your situation.
I think it's really helpful for us all to recognise when situations are like this: unique, complex and multi-faceted. Maybe you'd find it helpful to start thinking about what different elements there are to your situation? It may be that by doing so you can start thinking about it or more 'bite-sized' chunks.
I think that Slartibart's viewpoint - or his attempt to see her parent's point of view - is quite valid. Perhaps thinking about the complexity of your situation, of the many different reasons that they might find it difficult, will help you to answer the question that Slartibart is challenging you to: why?
Hopefully that's a bit of food for thought. Do let us know what you're thinking and we'll keep doing what we can to support you too.
Will.
February 17-20th was the last time we spent together but what angered both of us was that she still had a remaining nine days off school.
We want her parents to understand truly how much we are really in love with each other and four days every two months is hard, but it's made even extremely harder when you know there's days there wasting away that we could be using to spent time with.
Thanks Will, you're about the only person who has spoken to me straight up today.
That's not entirely fair, no one's been disregarding you (reading the thread objectively).
The thing is, the damage she could do to her relationship with her parents in the long run is really worth considering. My girlfriend has been estranged from her parents since she was 16 (she's 32) and it's been pretty rough; she was homeless for a while and never went to university.
I'm not saying any of that will happen to your girlfriend, nor that you aren't capable of living together as adults but it's a pretty dramatic move from not seeing one another for up to two months at a time, is there any sort of compromise you could consider? Can you move closer to her, maybe?
Moving closer to her isn't really an option, I'm only 17 myself so finding tenancy would be extremely difficult. I guess things may sort themselves out in time. I will keep you updated, i'm still welcome to suggestions.