Family Feuds·
LOVE IN A WHEELCHAIR
An overprotective father clashes with a mother after their son starts dating a wheelchair-using girl, exposing fear, bias, and a family divided over a teenage romance.
Should the mom back her son or her husband?
Be one of the first to vote.
James seemed fine when their 13-year-old son showed him a girl's Facebook page. Then, later, he suddenly decided the girl's wheelchair was a problem.
The poster is a 39-year-old mother with a 37-year-old husband, James, and their son, Lucas, a freshman in high school. After Christmas break, a new girl named Yuki joined Lucas's class. Lucas and his friends did not stop talking about her. According to the poster, they kept calling Yuki "the prettiest girl in school." From those conversations, the poster only picked up a few details: Yuki was from another country, she was "super cool," and she was "super pretty." She did not know yet that Yuki used a wheelchair.
That changed when Lucas said he had started dating Yuki.
The poster learned the rest when she picked Lucas up from school and saw Yuki in a wheelchair. By then, the relationship was already underway, and Lucas had even shown James her Facebook page. At first, James seemed okay with it.
But later, when it was just the poster and James, the mood shifted.
James voiced concerns about their son dating a girl in a wheelchair. He said their son "doesn't know what he's getting himself into and bla bla bla." The poster thought that was ridiculous and told him he was being "silly."
That comment did not land well. James got mad at her.
The poster's question is simple: is she the asshole for calling her husband silly after he freaked out about their teenage son dating a girl in a wheelchair?
What makes the moment sting is the whiplash. James had already seen Yuki's Facebook and initially appeared fine. Then, in a private conversation, he turned uneasy once the wheelchair came up. The poster, meanwhile, was still focused on the fact that Lucas was a teenager with a first girlfriend, and that Yuki was the girl everyone in his class had been talking about.
Now the family is split over the same relationship: Lucas is dating Yuki, the poster sees no reason for alarm, and James thinks their son is stepping into something he does not understand.