Me (27M) and my long distance boyfriend (21M) ran into a problem regarding some plans for summer. He is a FTM and had his gender affirming procedure scheduled in the beginning of next month (August). There are multiple causes that keep us apart on that specific day but I’ll try to capture the heart of them all.
I want to clear some things before hand.
I’m a single parent to a 5yo child. I have full custody and things around it are taken care of. The relationship between my boyfriend and my kid is in my opinion building up quite okay and I’m quite happy and comfortable with him around us and I also see him filling the “other person” role in my kid’s life. He is the best person that could happen to me after the train wreck relationship I got out of. A part of my “new life” would also be changing my environment where he also fits into the equation quite nicely and I also see it as finally closing the gap between us.
The relevant thing to the issue is that my parents (especially my mom) really helped me during and after my divorce and are still very helpful with taking care of the child while I’m at work.
The problem that arose is a consequence of my relationship to my mom. My kid turns 6 in the beginning of the month and it happens to be in the middle of the week so the birthday party is supposed to be on the weekend but it just so happens that my boyfriend’s surgery is scheduled on Monday right after the weekend. I don’t see a solution to it and right now I wish I could clone myself.
I’m torn between the traditional must-have birthday party for the kid that my mom is admittedly overly involved in already (thinking about the invitations, the cake, the place to celebrate etc.) and just taking the kid for the 1000km road trip and thus skipping the whole family party thing.
I would prefer the latter actually but I’m scared to even bring up the idea to my mom to the point where the days are just passing by and I’m just going to disappoint my boyfriend in the end. I obviously want to keep everyone happy because I kinda depend on my parents and it could go really wrong. And I obviously don’t want to lose that one person that helped me so much with getting to know myself and really opened up my eyes to alot of things. but it’s proving to be really difficult. He expressed that it would be a deal breaker if I wasn’ there for the most important surgery of his life until now.
He got his date for the surgery approximately 6 months ago. My initial idea was to visit him a few days after the surgery alone and keep everyone happy that way but the fact that it doesn’t work for him and the fact that I can’t find a way to break my plan to my mom brought me in a really sh**y place right now. Why don’t I just go alone? Because it also happens that my brother needs my mom babysitting my two nephews and when she found that out she asked me not to leave her alone with three kids because she knew I was planning to visit my boyfriend just not when and why. She also doesn’t know how important his surgery is and I don’t know how I would explain that because she doesn’t know that he’s transsexual because I don’t tell that to anyone on his request.
My boyfriend expressed interest in celebrating my kid’s birthday together which would actually mean alot to me. And if I would figure out how to deal with my mom I would just go with that scenario.
I don’t think my mom is a helicopter parent. She loves my kid and is helping us alot. She doesn’t mean bad but I think she is also taking up the role of her mom which I disagree with but I am worried about confronting her. We never really talked and we got connected through my divorce so I’m not used to talking about my feelings to her honestly but from some experience I have she gets easily dissapointed and it happens whenever it’s about something more important. I have some organising issues in general but this is not one of them. This just won’t work all together
Alot of questions are popping up in my head. To many to write down. I hope to get some opinions about it and I would appreciate serious ones. I just need advice.
TLDR: My boyfriend has an upcoming operation and I don’t know how to tell my mum about it. How can I make everyone happy?