Woman Considers Ending Relationship After Boyfriend Refuses to Spend Holidays with Her Family

A 22-year-old woman turned to Reddit for guidance after a holiday dispute with her boyfriend left her wondering if their relationship had run its course.

In her post, she explained that she was thinking about breaking up because her 24-year-old boyfriend has refused to attend any of her family gatherings ever since a conflict over his beliefs left everyone hurt and confused.

She described coming “from a very religious large family in a small town,” while her boyfriend was raised “in an atheist family in a big city.” Both grew up with divorced parents, and they now live together in a mid-sized town as college seniors.

In the beginning, she admitted she wasn’t sure “how to handle this in a healthy way.” What started as an annoying bit of family drama over the summer had slowly turned into a serious rift between her partner and her relatives.

The tension began in July when “a distant relative of mine (great aunt) was gossiping about my boyfriend and I to my grandmother because she discovered he is an atheist.” The poster said she felt both angry and embarrassed that her great-aunt chose to make her boyfriend the subject of gossip.

“She discovered he is an atheist, and when you’re an old lady from the middle of nowhere that’s the story of the week,” she wrote. The story made its way from her great-aunt to her grandmother and eventually back to her.

When she found out what was being said, she decided to tell her boyfriend because she “was very angry and needed to vent.” They both expressed how upset they were, and she apologized to him “for grown adults not knowing how to act.”

But what she expected to be a moment of mutual frustration turned into something bigger. “Ever since then he has refused to come to any family event regardless of which side it’s on,” she explained.

Her boyfriend’s family lives two flights away on the East Coast, while her family is only a two-hour drive from their college town. Despite that, she said, “I have seen his family more than he has seen mine in the past three months.”

Things escalated when she brought up spending Thanksgiving together. “I told him I want to make happy memories together during the holidays, and he said no,” she recalled.

Hoping his stance might soften over time, she asked whether he could see himself attending family events in the future. “He said he doesn’t know,” she wrote, adding that his uncertainty left her feeling hurt and unsure of where they stood.

She emphasized that her relatives had been making an effort to welcome him despite the earlier incident. “My family has been trying their hardest to include him in all they do,” she wrote, noting that they had apologized for the gossip.

“We are all embarrassed of the family member who was gossiping about him,” she added. Still, her boyfriend insisted that he “does not feel wanted or welcomed.”

This left her torn between empathy for his discomfort and her desire to share the holidays with both her partner and her family. “I feel conflicted because I know he’s uncomfortable being around my family due to the incident in July,” she said, acknowledging that it might be “unfair to expect him to come.”

She also mentioned that her stepdad had previously been “standoffish” toward her boyfriend, which only added to the strain. Even so, she deeply wished he would give her family another chance.

“I really want him to attend Thanksgiving,” she admitted, explaining that she didn’t grow up “in a healthy environment” and sometimes struggles “to recognize when something is unfair.”

On top of that, everyday pressures had been weighing on their relationship. She described their recent dynamic as tense, with “hectic work and school schedules” creating distance between them. It was “regular life stuff,” she said, but the stress seemed to be making everything feel heavier.

She ended her post with a painful question for the Reddit community: “So let me know. Am I the a——?” It wasn’t just about Thanksgiving anymore — it was about whether their relationship could withstand the growing emotional gap.

One commenter captured the general sentiment by saying there were “no a—— here — yet,” but suggested the real issue was whether her boyfriend would ever feel comfortable enough to attend a family event again.