When Your Daughter Brings Home Her First Girlfriend

My daughter realized she was bisexual a few years ago when she was about 12 or 13. The feelings weren’t strong or definitive, but she kind of felt she was maybe attracted to both boys and girls. But she was a busy kid — she’s a competitive athlete, has a part-time job, and struggles with school, so has to put a lot of time into that to keep her head above water. So, she made it to 16 years old never having dated.

Fast forward to 16 years old. We are in a string of covid lockdowns, she has all this newfound free time because her sport has been shut down, and she has — as 16-year-old girls do — become obsessed with hanging out with friends. It’s covid, so much of it is either at school or online, but friends are everything.

As a kid who struggled with anxiety, we quickly decided that in order to get through the pandemic, we would allow her to bubble with two friends. Even during the more severe stages of lockdown, she could have two friends who — as long as they also were agreeing to see no one else — could hand out at our home and she could hang out at theirs.

Limited to two friends, they saw each other a lot. One of the two friends, or both, were over most nights for dinner and for much of the weekend. It was good. It made her happy and was a fun dynamic in the house.

Then she started to date one of them. Early in the winter, she shared with my wife and I that she was having feelings for one of the friends. She was — I think wisely — a little worried about what it might do to the dynamics of the 3-way friendship if she started to date one of them. She was also a little concerned about how things might play out in the broader friendship dynamics in their all girls school. So she held off sharing those feeling with this friend she had a crush on. Until she didn’t.

One Saturday, it kind of spilled out that she had feelings for her friend. Her friend, it turns out, did too. Boom … she has her first girlfriend.

Here is the tricky part. Her friend was sleeping over that night. She had slept over many nights. And they normally sleep together in my daughter’s double bed — as teenage girls do.

But is it different if they are girlfriends? Should they still be sleeping together? My wife and I were a little unsure, and it was only 6 hours to bedtime!!

We reached out to good friends. They are good parents with kids of similar age, and they have values that are quite similar to ours. They are also pretty sexually progressive and realists. We figured that if anyone would know how to handle it they would.

The husband responded first. He saw no problem with it whatsoever. He had gone to a private British boarding school growing up and spent weekends alone at his parent’s summer home. He had a crazy level of independence at a young age, so I took his advice with a grain of salt.

It was his wife I really wanted to hear from. She is bisexual as well and is in many ways very similar to our daughter. And she is very, very wise. She started by acknowledging the hypocrisy in her feelings on this and said that, if it was a boy, she would not think they should sleep together. But, she felt, because it seems safer in all regards — no risk of pregnancy and, she thought, less risk of physical coercion — she thought they should be able to sleep together.

That is how we were leaning too, so that was the decision. She and her new girlfriend could sleepover in the same bed.

The sleepover went well. Our daughter later told us that they didn’t even kiss that first night. She said it was exactly like any other sleepover with a friend. They watched movies and fell asleep. Eventually, over the course of the two months they dated, things went a little farther than that. But still quite innocent and PG.

I think we made the right call. We’ll never be 100% sure, and we also don’t know how it sets the stage for future girlfriends. She has just started to date a new girl now, but because we are still in covid lockdowns, that girl’s parents will not allow sleepovers. So we’ll be able to punt a decision on this one for at least a few more weeks.

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Previously Published on medium

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Photo credit: by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash