My BF needs to be taught...a lot...about life.

mrsconn23

Dear Prudence,
I just started dating a great guy. We’ve been out only a couple of times, but the spark is there. The trouble is that he has a bad background. His mom was an addict and his dad is in prison, and he bounced around from various troubled relatives until CPS intervened and put him in foster care. He was bounced from place to place and never bonded with anybody. He had a few brushes with drugs and the law, but nothing serious, and he is now in community college, works at the same place I do, and is trying to do better.

The trouble is he has no clue about life. He’s never had a sit-down family dinner, and he doesn’t know about cleaning or chores. He has a room in a boarding house and eats every meal out. A previous girlfriend taught him how to do laundry, and he joked that I can teach him how to cook. But what if it isn’t a joke? Can somebody with this kind of damage be a real partner?

—Worried About Damage

missJeanLouise

Yes. Being damaged doesn't make someone a bad person. It is up to LW to decide if that is something she wants to deal with or not. I would have a conversation about goals and things he want to learn. Cooking? Cool, make dates out of it. Finances? Take him to talk to a banker. Cleaning. Maybe all he needs is an example.
That's the easy stuff. It will be harder for him to learn what trust is, how to give/receive love, what a healthy relationship with boundries is... shit like that. But it is not just people with rough backgrounds that have trouble with those either.

kimmiinthemitten

It sounds to me like he knows a lot more about life than most people.  So what he's never had to do chores.  If you think chores= life, I feel sorry for you.

However, I think she should tread lightly.  He may or may not be in a place where he is ready to be in a relationship and this may take patience.

Poor guy, he's had it rough for sure.

Heffalump

I've dated people who had family dinners every single night of their lives and were still shitty people.  I really SOs need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and nothing the LW mentions seems like a dealbreaker to me.  Shoot, DH could barely cook until we got together, and it's not because either of his parents were in prison or whatever.  (And now he makes omelets better than I do.)

charlotte989875

Sounds like he's willing to learn, and that's not something you can teach. Just because he doesn't know how to do these things, it's just that he hasn't learned them yet. LW sounds a little judgy to me.