11 Dads Meeting Their Daughters’ Partners: a Surprise “Son-in-Law” at the Marina and 2 Hours Under a Car

I’d say my GF father likes me, the first time I met him I was driving over to pick up my GF to go to the movies. I roll into the driveway and the garage door was open and inside was a [classic car], parts strewn everywhere and a oil covered, greasy man underneath said car.

He was trying to get something unbolted but was struggling to hold the part and operate the ratchet at the same time. I made note of said struggle and jumped underneath to help him. I figured I would give him a hand, then get up and meet my girlfriend and head out. But, we ended up getting along pretty well and I had lost track of time and before I knew it 2hrs had past. During this time, my girlfriend came out to find me working with her dad underneath this car and she just let it be and brought us some sandwiches and sweet tea. She was more than happy to skip the movie date because she saw I was enjoying myself and her dad was enjoying the help. Im gonna marry this girl and hopefully one day that car will become ours!

I know the exact moment I won my wife’s family over. I could see it in her father’s eyes.

It was high school, before we started dating. The first time I went over to her house, actually. Her father and two brothers are all pretty tall, and I’m average height. It’s a very alpha-male household, and they had this thing they liked to do to potential boyfriends. So when my wife left the room to go to the bathroom or whatever, all three of them stood, lined up shoulder to shoulder, and loomed over me. Blank-faced, glaring down, no words, no motion. Just staring, and looming.

I found out later that her last boyfriend almost cried when they did this to him.

I’ve always been really socially awkward. I slowly stood up, looking them all in the eye, and then poked her dad right in the tummy. I said, “Boop.”

He stared for a second, and then a giant grin split his face. It turns out that he’s a massive goofball. From that moment on, I was a member of the family. The whole dating-and-marriage thing was just a formality to them.

I remember my daughter’s would bring some guy over for shock value. Ear gauges, tats and the such. I would always be sure to call the young man by his first name involve him in all conversations. I could see my daughters realize they wouldn’t get the reaction they wanted. Couple days later i would ask when so and so is coming over again. They would shake thier head and laugh. Both wound up with excellent partners that treat them great. One of them had ear gauges and tats so i guess the jokes on me.

I’ll tell you the story of how my husband won over my dad.

My dad has a sailboat, which he is kind of crazy about. My husband has a background in naval architecture. We went to visit my dad, and while we were on his boat in the marina, the guy in the slip next to us runs over. “My boat is taking on water!” He says. “Come help me bail it out!”

“Don’t worry!” responds my father. “My son-in-law is a naval architect!” Something to note at this point in the story — my now-husband and I had only been dating for like 8 months. We weren’t even close to getting engaged, let alone married. But now all of a sudden boyfriend is his son-in-law.

So now-husband just goes with it. “Sure. I, the son-in-law, will see if I can help.” He gets on the guy’s boat and sees that there’s water seeping through the floorboards. He thinks this is weird, given that the pump is going and the boat isn’t listing or anything. So he gets down, sticks his finger in the water, and licks it. “It’s fresh water,” now-husband says. “Your bilge is leaking. Did you remember to turn off the hose after you finished filling up your fresh water tank?”

And that, my friends, is how my husband became a legend in dad’s marina, and my dad’s favorite person of all time.

Girlfriend in question here: the two of them climbed Mount Doom together.

As an only child, my parents have always been cool with me bringing friends on holiday with me. We were going to New Zealand for a week when I was 19, so my SO came with us, even though it wasn’t long after we started dating.

My dad is the really athletic type. My mother and I really aren’t, so normally on family holidays, dad would be off mountain climbing and bike riding and stuff like that on his own. He always encouraged me to go with him, but it wasn’t really my thing.

But my SO is really athletic — so on this occasion, they went climbing up one of the local mountains, which some of the Mount Doom scenes were filmed on. They got on really well together and my dad really liked having the company of someone who enjoyed it as much as he did.

I won over my now wife’s parents by being able to socialise with them even though we didn’t share a common language. We ended up doing some sort of pseudo-charades in order to get things ready for her birthday celebrations. Then I ate some particularly spicy food which was apparently made just for me. When I ate it and didn’t keel over on fire, they thought I was brave enough for their daughter.

When I expressed how delicious it was and picked up 3 more, they knew I was part of the family!

I’m the SO of the daughter in this story- my girlfriend’s dad basically hated me until the time we drove together down to Monterrey from Austin and had to make conversation for 7 hours and pretend it wasn’t awkward. He’s an engineer, so I went with that and casually mentioned my desire to get a small CNC lathe for metal fabrication, or possibly build a basic XY controller to attach to a traditional lathe. Turns out his final project for graduation at college was to build a CNC lathe. We nerded out and started discussing the pros and cons of stepper motors vs. servos, then the conversation moved to [microcontrollers], and the rest is history. Now we get along handsomely, and it makes my girlfriend very uncomfortable.

My dad is a very large, bearded and slightly scary looking man to the untrained eye (of course, he is a big cuddly bear to us kids...)

Well, my wonderful boyfriend would have been forgiven for being nervous; until he mentioned the computers he had to deal with in work. My dad’s eyes lit up, they began chatting and debating about the best to use etc, then the topic got onto [sci-fi movies]...also, on how I leave my hair in the shower drain, and leave dishes to soak and sometimes forget about them...

Yup. They bonded over their mutual love of all that is nerdy, as well as my ditziness.

After my boyfriend met my dad for the first time, we drove him home and on the way there we stopped at [a fast-food place]. Both my dad and I are coffee drinkers, and my dad likes his exceptionally sweet. I always get a bit embarrassed when others see him pouring literally 15 sachets into a small cappucino cup, so I apologised to my boyfriend out of habit. My boyfriend responds with “he needs all that sugar because he’s a sweet man!”. Needless to say, my dad is very fond of him!

I very tentatively asked my dad the other day if he liked my boyfriend. My dad is one sarcastic man. And it’s hard to tell when he’s serious.

Anyway, he eventually admitted that yes, he does like my boyfriend “even if he is a bit scatterbrained”.

I said I don’t care about scatterbrained, I care that he treats me right, listens to me, takes an interest in my hobbies, loves me, appreciates the things I do for him, never puts me down, cares for my family, cares for my pets, encourages me, believes in me and picks me up when I’m feeling down.

My dad just said, “yeah he’s fine I guess.”

“My wife’s family made fun of me for wanting green bean casserole at Thanksgiving because they all hate it. My father-in-law felt bad and secretly made some for me anyway.”

Usually hard to tell either way but I guess I really am on his good side.