My girlfriend’s parents make her self harm

My girlfriend's strict parents hate me and our relationship. I think the stress is making her self-harm. What should I do?

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Me and my girlfriend are in love. We have been going out officially for 3 months, but basically more like 6. The only problem is her parents are religious and also overly obsessive about school work. They don’t approve of relationships and don’t have a good one themselves. They found out about us dating recently when reading her texts whilst she was asleep.

Banned from seeing her friends

My girlfriend is generally happy with life. She enjoys socialising, drinking and sex. However her parents feel appalled by even the idea if any of these. I think they are jealous myself – they found out everything (about us dating and the fact we’d had sex) when they read her messages when she was asleep (this is unfair in my opinion). Today when she got in her car, her mother shouted at her for twenty minutes about her friends being a bad influence; her mum also blamed her for her parents marriage being ‘shit’. She described our friends as ‘arseholes’ and said she hated me (despite barely knowing me).

After finding her messages, my girlfriend is only allowed to see me and my friends for an hour a fortnight, after today she can ‘never see us again’. Even though she did nothing wrong today, just met up with us all as planned for her fortnightly hour.

That’s when she started cutting herself

I’m used to her strict parents by now, but there is a line. After blaming her for their bad marriage, she ran upstairs crying. Then she cut herself. She has a history of severe self harm and has deep scars on her arms and legs. Despite her parents being aware of this they are still insensitive. What can I do to help her and our situation?

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel either. I feel guilty and upset but also a little angry towards her parents. How should I deal with all this?

This post was written by Mick and originally appeared on The Mix’s sister website Madly In Love.

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