My girlfriend and her father are too close?

[Anonymous]

She is very hot, and whenever I meet her father I feel like I am not her boyfriend and I am just a bodyguard or a ordinary friend

I talked to her and she said that after her left, he took care of the family. And she helped him as a daughter. But I think it is weird the relationship they have, she is sleeping in his bed, she is making food for him during the week and she has distance with her other brothers. It's like everyone accepting her as the mother in the family. She hugs him a lot and I don't know why but they look like a couple.

Her father is very attractive and in good shape and train a lot and I just can't understand what this relationship.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like mini wife syndrome. Basically when a single dad is raising a daughter and he’s acting more like a friend than a dad or treating her more like an equal growing up.

He may talk to her about stuff you normally wouldn’t talk about or involve your kids in but would more be something you bring up to your spouse (financial issues, things and decisions at work, general decision making, gossip etc) and not really do discipline or give consequences. May have no curfews and no/very few rules (you don’t have them for your wife…). Not pushing or encouraging her to reach new milestones of independance either, like for example sleeping in her own, bed because he sees no reason to - he has no spouse (so no action going on), she wants to stay in his bed for comfort or habit and he’s lonely and like how the presence of his child is distracting him from that (and when she’s way past the age you’d expect she’d be in her own bed it’s a habit for him too at that point).

Yeah so in a way he’s treating her more like a spouse (obviously minus the sexual and romantic stuff!) and she’s taking on a similar role of his wife, because that’s basically what he treats her like.

This is often causing issues in stepfamilies when the dad finds a new partner. The daughter gets extra clingy and very jealous of this ”random” woman suddenly ”taking her dad away from her”. She’s not taking him away from her, but she’s a threat to the wifey-role of her dad’s life. Having grown up being his equal and ”mini wife” she doesn’t like to be downgraded to ”just” his child. The dad’s new partner will be disturbed by their relationship and feel like it’s not normal and might even think the daughter is in love with the dad. The dad gets angry if the partner implies anything because that’s his little girl, he’s defending her, and also may feel questioned and attacked for his parenting and for (in his mind) just having a normal close and strong relationship to his daughter. Most people wouldn’t like to hear that they have an unhealthy or sick relationship to their kids, especially if they raised them themselves and are very close so yeah he’ll take daughters side most or all of the time which in turn will upset the new partner who might not exactly like sharing her and her mans bed with his 13 year old daughter.

There’s also mini husband syndrome for the situation of a single mom with a son raising him this sort of way too. And obviously, this should go without saying but hey here we are, this is not the case for all single dads with daughters (or single moms with sons). Far from it. It only relates to cases where the child was brought up more as an equal adult in the household combined with a close boundary crossing relationship and lack of allowing the child to reach ”growing up”-milestones.

[MementoMori777]

Bruh not gonna lie, my paranoia would be kicking so hard, talk to her about it, mention to her that it's somewhat odd and explain how you feel around it, she either clarifies things and y'all find a solution or she will breakup with you and tbh it seems like that's probably what you were gonna do anyway

[Guy13]

Go with your gut...

[SawerBrown]

It sounds a bit odd.