Man Refuses to Attend Girlfriend’s Family Dinners After 2 Years of Being Treated ‘Like Background Noise’

A man turned to Reddit for support after an emotional standoff with his girlfriend over her family’s chilly behavior toward him. He explains they’ve been together for just over two years, but the lack of connection with her family has left him feeling invisible.

“From the start, they’ve treated me like background noise,” he shares. “Polite but distant, like I’m a stranger passing through.” Despite attending more than a dozen dinners, he says his efforts to be polite, helpful, and engaging have never been met with warmth.

He describes always trying to contribute—bringing wine, complimenting the food, and offering to help clean up. “They smile and nod, then go right back to talking to her like I’m not there,” he writes. Conversations, he says, are always directed at his girlfriend, asking about her work, hobbies, and family memories while he sits on the sidelines.

“I’ll try to jump in and ask a question or make a comment, and I get a short answer then silence,” he explains. “It’s like they don’t even see me.” One particularly hurtful moment came when her father didn’t seem to remember him.

“Once her dad asked if I was still the same guy from last time,” he recalls. “We’d been together a year and a half by then.” He says he smiled through it, feeling both shocked and hurt.

Last week, his girlfriend invited him to another family dinner, and he decided he couldn’t continue. “I told her I didn’t want to go,” he explains. “She asked why, and I finally told her I feel invisible around them.”

He says he was honest about how draining it is to pretend their coldness is normal. “I’m tired of pretending their coldness is normal,” he writes. “She said her family is just slow to warm up and that they’re private, not mean.”

But after more than two years, that explanation no longer satisfies him. “I’m not asking for hugs or to be called son-in-law,” he says. “I just want to feel like they actually see me.”

His girlfriend responded that skipping dinners would make it harder for her to bring their lives together. “She says I’m making it harder to bring her life and mine together,” he explains. “That if I stop showing up, they’ll never know me.”

From his perspective, he has been making the effort all along. “I feel like I’ve been trying this whole time, and they’ve never tried back,” he says. In the end, he turned to Reddit to ask the question weighing on him: “AITA for deciding I’m done showing up for people who never see me?”

The post sparked strong reactions. One commenter suggested the girlfriend, not the family, was the bigger issue. “Your girlfriend is the problem here,” the commenter writes. “She is the one that should be standing up for you, involving you in the conversation, calling them out for being cold.”

They went further, suggesting her inaction may indicate a deeper issue in the relationship. “She’s ok with you being treated like trash,” the commenter adds. “I’m guessing if you REALLY sat down and thought about it, she does the same with her friends and coworkers when you’re around them.”

They suggest that the girlfriend’s lack of defense could mean she’s more in love with the idea of having a boyfriend than with him personally. “She likes the IDEA of you,” they write, “but you’re not enough for her to fight for.”

As he considers his next steps, the question extends beyond just skipping dinner. It’s about whether a relationship can survive when one partner’s family refuses to acknowledge the other—and whether the partner in the middle is willing to bridge that gap. For now, he concludes with a statement as much as a question: “I’m done showing up for people who never see me.”