meeting my boyfriend’s mother

 “She really wants to meet you,” he said one night. “She asked if you’d want to go down to Florida, just the three of us.”

“Oh,” I replied in mild shock. Meeting my boyfriend’s mother for the first time on a trip? In Florida? A fun idea in theory, especially when posed against the backdrop of Boston’s blustering wind rattling against my apartment‘s windows. 

But what if she hates me?

I could envision it perfectly, rolling my suitcase and failing to meet her expectations upon first glance, answering her questions with ineloquent responses as my sweaty palms rested in my lap below the dinner table, deflating the hopes of my [inevitably future ex-] boyfriend with each rambling sentence, disappointing myself, fighting back tears, a sip of wine, a tightness in my throat.

“I’d love to!”

So there I was, standing in a stall of the Fort Myers airport bathroom to take a few deep breaths and pray to some higher power that the weekend would not unravel into the personal hell I envisioned when I laid in bed for the last five nights.

I exited the bathroom to where my boyfriend was waiting for me and we walked to baggage claim, the roller coaster beginning its ascent. Don’t look down; it’s far too late to change my mind.

“There she is!” he exclaimed.

“Yay!” I replied. Oh god! I thought. 

We hugged hello, I smiled, she smiled, he smiled, this is going fine, isn’t it? 

And so we were off. We tracked down our rental car and I climbed into the back seat while my boyfriend and his mom caught up on three month’s worth of news.

“I saw Mr. and Mrs. Kelly last week,” she told him. “Did you know Emma is getting married?”

I stared out the window, watching the strip malls and palm trees and American flags flick by. A Hoooters, I noticed. I didn’t realize those still existed.

“Nora, do you keep up much with Michigan politics?”

My head jerked to the rearview mirror like a deer in headlights where her expectant eyes met mine.

“You know,” I started slowly. “I should keep up more with Michigan politics, but I really just follow national news. I did hear Pete Buttigieg is a contender for the open senate seat, though.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she replied.

I nodded and smiled with my fingers clasped tightly, sensing that while perhaps I didn’t score an A on the answer, I at least passed by the skin of my teeth.

And that’s where my troubles lie: within my persistence to score perfectly every time and feeling a deep sense of failure when I don’t. Even in those rare moments when I do meet my own expectations, I hardly process it because I’m too concentrated on perfecting whatever my next test, my next challenge, could be.

The curse of the good girl, that’s what my high school therapist called it. I would sit on her couch and report that I had a horrible day, ticking off a list of errors I had made in the preceding hours — receiving poor marks on my math homework, stuttering during a class presentation, feeling awkward during a conversation with my (then) boyfriend’s friends. 

“Okay,” my therapist would say. “And can you list off some good things that happened today?”

I would proceed to list at least ten positive highlights, and my therapist would point out that logically, if more good things than bad things happened, then I should consider it a generally good day rather than a horrible one.

 

“You can’t only focus on the things you felt like you did wrong,” she told me. And after a long pause: “Everything you tell yourself stems from this self-belief that you are not enough. That’s not helping you.”

I remember the day my mom called the therapist to set up my first appointment. I was sixteen, quietly sitting at the top of the stairs and eavesdropping on her conversation below.

“Well, I think she struggles with her self-confidence,” my mom said gently. “Uh huh. Yes, she can do next Tuesday after school.”

For the last eight years, I’ve tried to write a list of three things I’m grateful for when I wake up every morning. It’s an exercise my therapist recommended, and I, wanting to do all things — including therapy — perfectly, followed her instructions with religious consistency.

The point of the gratitude practice is to shift my focus away from everything I’m doing wrong in my life and instead focus on all of the things that make my life feel beautiful. 

“That’s real resilience,” my therapist said. “Being able to pick out the good things, even when things don’t always feel good.”

The curse of the good girl was a recurring topic of discussion during our sessions. “Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is an identity so narrowly defined that it’s unachievable,” writes Rachel Simmons in – you guessed it – The Curse of the Good Girl. “When girls fail to live up to these empty expectations—experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field—they become paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits.”

It was my only diagnosis during my two years seeing her — not depression, anxiety, nor an eating disorder. I was a good girl, with the fear of being irremediably bad.

And while I’ve intentionally worked to rewire my brain — learning how to politely disagree with others and giving myself permission to leave a situation when I feel uncomfortable — the old habits nag with an impossible stubbornness. 

Because at the end of the day, all I really want, like almost every woman I know, is to be good. And at the cost of self-confidence, I far too often strive for perfection with the hopes of achieving goodness.

We crossed the bridge to Siesta Key and arrived at our hotel suite, where I stood in shock at its mere size: three bedrooms, a full kitchen filled with top-notch appliances, a living room, a balcony. At least four times bigger than my apartment in Boston.

“Well, it’s not the Ritz,” my boyfriend’s mother sighed.

She pushed her suitcase into her room, and I immediately met my boyfriend on the balcony.

I hissed his name as I walked up behind him. “Do I put my suitcase in your room or the third room?”

He threw a hand around my shoulder and laughed. “In my room,” he said. “She doesn’t care.”

I sure hope she doesn’t, I thought as I rolled my suitcase next to his. I stepped into the bathroom and glanced in the mirror, immediately regretting my decision as I looked in horror at my dark circles and frizzy hair. 

The first time I’m meeting his mom, and I look like a raccoon with a perm, I thought. I took a deep breath and forced a small smile that screamed, “You’re doing great, sweetie.”

In the days leading up to the trip, I pushed away any expectations of how the vacation would go, refusing to concoct in my mind an Instagram-like montage of walking on the beach with my boyfriend, hand-in-hand, sun setting, eyes glowing, the sweet smell of the ocean. Instead, I lulled myself to sleep with the terrifying fantasy of his mother hating my guts.

“Maybe you should come back to see me,” my therapist would most certainly say.

I’ve become a much happier person by being able to release expectations, but the unfortunate reality of this go-with-the-flow mindset is that it does not necessarily prevent surprises (and I instead opt to catastrophize). No matter how much I’d like to think I’m in control, I’m not. Nothing will ever go exactly how I think it will — and that creates a challenging task for anyone who wants to move through life perfectly.

A few days before the trip, I voiced my insecurities to my mom.

“It’ll be just fine,” she told me over the phone, probably sitting in the same place she sat when she first called my therapist. “You’ll be in a beautiful place. Whatever happens, you can always focus on the nature surrounding you.”

And so I did, looking out at the horizon while the three of us walked on the beach. I inhaled, expecting to take in the salty ripeness of the ocean and feel some small sense of peace, but instead, I smelled a pungent, rotten stench.

Dead fish were sprawled out everywhere, frothy waves kicking them against the shore.

Surely, I thought, this is not a good omen. 

I coughed, feeling as though I swallowed a piece of sand.

“Oh no, red tide,” my boyfriend’s mother said. She turned to me. “That’s why you’re coughing.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Well, that’s okay.” It was all I could think to say. Perhaps I was approaching — or already was in — one of Dante’s circles of hell.

The next day, we sat on the beach as I attempted to suppress my coughs and embrace the warmth of the sun on my skin. 

I pulled out my phone and texted my mom, who was wondering how the trip was going so far. 

“Hopefully she likes me okay?” I typed. “I’m not getting any bad vibes at least.”

She replied back: “You are perfect the way you are. If you try too hard she will notice so just be you.”

I looked up from my phone and squinted at the dead fish. Where does the line draw between trying and trying too hard?

A few hours later, I popped into the bathroom to gawk at the mirror reflecting something scarier than a raccoon.

Oh, I am now a lobster, I thought. 

Lips red, legs red, stomach red. Despite applying sunscreen, it clearly was not enough for my pale, winter-fied New England skin.

What will she think of me now? I wondered in exasperation. 

Later, I showed the tan lines to my boyfriend with embarrassment. Weeks before, he had told me we were staying near the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

“Just take me to clown college already,” I said as I buried my face in his shoulder. We laughed, him laughing with me, me laughing at myself, in spite of myself.

On the drive to the restaurant that night, he and his mom continued to catch up on news from his hometown, Washington D.C. As they bantered back and forth, I gazed queasily out the window, thinking about my unclear future with him. 

He’s applying to medical schools with a small likelihood of staying in Boston. For months, I’ve grappled with the question of staying or following him. And if I do follow him, when? Where? 

“I just want to be with you,” he told me. 

“I’m open to all possibilities,” I told him.

But sitting in the car behind him and his mom, I was the outsider, and I felt unmoored. I know nothing about anything, I thought to myself over and over again.

We arrived at the restaurant, where I met his grandpa. After a few jokes and a couple drinks and some sharing of French fries, he pointed to me and said, “I like her.”

“I do too,” his mom replied.

“Me too,” my boyfriend added.

“Well, thank goodness,” I said.

We all laughed. The good girl in me inflated. And yet my relief sprouted from something deeper: I was being myself, with all of my imperfections on display between my frizzy hair and cherry lips and burnt skin.

On the last night of the trip, the four of us had dinner at an upscale restaurant where the cheapest entree I could identify on the menu cost $42. I tried to swallow the discomfort of being treated so well throughout the trip, wondering how many additional total dollars his family spent on me and whether they felt it was actually worth it. I paid for parking and one lunch, but that was the most his mom would accept.

Try, but not too hard, I reminded myself.

We sat at the table, my boyfriend’s hand on my back, his grandpa squeezing lemon juice into his red wine, his mom sipping her second glass of Sauvignon Blanc, me sitting across from her agreeing to a second glass of Vermentino. 

I couldn’t help but wonder what she would think of me ordering Vermentino over Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio, whether my choice in wine would at all influence what she thought of me, or if that decision was already locked in, irrevocable.

When the food arrived, the spread of plates against the linen tablecloth screamed steakhouse luxury. Filet mignon, ribeye, potatoes au gratin, French onion soup, creamed spinach. On my plate, $42 worth of roasted chicken, vegetables, and mushroom bread pudding.  

I ate about half of it, relieved that my boyfriend’s grandpa would take home our leftovers and spare me the guilt for not finishing my plate.

“Do you want the bread pudding?” his mom asked. 

“That thing? No!” his grandpa exclaimed.

“I’ll try some,” said my boyfriend, my beloved vacuum cleaner who could help me finish any leftovers. “You can put it on my plate.”

“Awesome,” I replied, staring at the block of pudding and strategizing the best way to transfer it from my plate to his.

On almost any occasion, I would probably use my fork and one of my fingers to pick it up and move it, but with the audience of his mom and grandpa in an upscale coastal restaurant, I figured touching it with my hands would attract potential judgement.

Thus, I grabbed my fork and knife with a sense of assurance unlocked by my second glass of wine and balanced the beige block between my two utensils. Far too aware of the three pairs of eyes following the bread pudding’s trajectory, my hands must have shifted, because the dense mass suddenly fell to the ground with a determined splat. 

I am living in a sitcom, I thought to myself while processing the slow-motion playback of the bread pudding falling to the floor.

I looked up at my boyfriend with bewildered eyes, and we immediately started laughing.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” I said, still grasping my fork and knife. “Five second rule?”

“It’s okay,” he chuckled.

I turned to his mom and grandpa, who were laughing too.

Gingerly placing my utensils back down, I brushed my hair back in mild embarrassment and took a small sip of wine. I realized a decision like ordering Vermentino was at this point irrelevant; surely, my fate was set.

~

So, here I am on my flight back to Boston, reflecting on the weekend and wondering if meeting my boyfriend’s mom was a success or a failure. 

My immediate reaction is the same as when I sat down for my therapy appointments. “It was horrible — I sounded so stupid when his mom asked me about Michigan politics, there were dead fish everywhere, the red tide triggered my asthma, and…[insert pause to choke back tears]...I dropped the fucking bread pudding.”

I left Florida one day earlier than my boyfriend, partially because I didn’t want to take an extra day off work, and partially because I wanted him to get some one-on-one time with his mom. I’m trying not to think about whether they’re talking about me now, if she’s telling him all the things she liked or didn’t like about me.

Instead, I’m choosing to holistically look back on the trip and consider the good things that happened, too: our conversations about books and Boston, his mom giving me aloe vera for my sunburn, his grandpa high-fiving me after dinner, my boyfriend holding my hand on the beach, the dolphins we saw from the shore.

Perhaps I’m not any better off than the dead fish, only in so much control of my conditions and odds of survival as them. But at least I’m better off than I was as a shy sixteen-year-old, because now I know that whatever I am – despite anyone else’s opinion – is probably good enough.