I have been with my girlfriend for almost 6 months now, our anniversary is on the 27th. I love her more than anything. She has always struggled with depression. She was the result of a relationship between a 17 year old girl and a 22 year old man. Her father joined the military and she was left with her mother where she was abused, neglected, and raped. When her father returned from a tour in Iraq and discovered that her mother had not been sending her to school, he took her away to live with her mothers parents. Her father was never emotionally supportive, even now she hyperventalates when she crys because she was always told so shut up when she cried. After a couple of years they moved out and 3 years ago her father met a woman. This woman didn’t treat her with any form of respect, her father was planning on leaving this woman because of this, but he got her pregnant, so they got married. So since I have known her, my girlfriend has been living with who is now her stepmother, a step brother, her father, and a half brother. After we had been dating for a while she revealed to me that she absolutely hated living where she did. Her step mother very unfairly favored her biological sons, and gave my girlfriend no respect, often making insulting comments. Both parents always make comments about her ending up like her biological mother, who has since had 7 more children all with different fathers and abandoned all of them. Recently my my girlfriend has started going to therapy, and her and her therapist are discussing having her move in with her grandparents, her biological mothers parents, who treat her well and she is very close with them. Though her parents make a decent living and seem to have no problem spending money on things they want and the other children, they spend little to nothing short of what is necessary on my girlfriend, my family is not rich, but we are middle class, I am an only child, so my parents don’t mind so me and my parents don’t mind spending money on her if we notice she wants something of reasonable value, that she cannot afford herself, because her parents often take what little money she has. But now her parents have decided that she is “making them look bad” and that I am not allowed to see her anymore, she told me this in tears over the phone, my parents are already suspicious of her parents because in the few times that my parents and her parents have been in contact, they are very obviously just giving very shakey excuses as to why, they are unable to spend any money on my girlfriend. We went to their house the other day, and they claimed that they could not afford the electric bill to install AC when my mother hinted about them not providing my girlfriend with a fan during a heatwave, when the step brother had two. But they had just had their driveway expanded and resurfaced, so they obviously have the money to spend. I have discovered that her parents hate explaining themselves, and are even worse at explaining than they hate explaining it. My girlfriend begged me not to tell my mother about this because her parents say “it makes them look bad” and that she is “hiding behind us” so I plan to simply allow my mother to ask her own questions until her parents back themselves into a corner and are forced to allow her to see me to avoid making themselves look bad. Is this the correct way to handle the situation? Is there more I can do? Or perhaps another way?
