Did Your SO Ask Your Parents For Their Blessing??

My fiancé asked my dad, in fact he took my dad with him when he purchased the ring, and called them the moment he proposed.


We all are so close knit, and if it were any other way I do think it may have been a deal breaker for me.

No, he did not.

If he had asked permission, I'm fairly sure my father would have yeeted him into the next galaxy, as my father hates the very concept of that. DH knew this, and also found the idea creepy.

I told DH that asking for a *blessing* was up to him, and in the end, he didn't. Which I'm also totally cool with, as he and my dad get along like a house on fire.

FIL, however, was somehow shocked that DH wanted to propose... but FIL had willfully had his head in the sand for about 6 years, and MIL told him so. (MIL and I are two peas in a pod, honestly.)

I'm not my father's property. I'm his daughter, and I had him walk me down the aisle because he has guided me through life, but... he doesn't own me or my decisions.

Would you have had any reservations if your SO hadn’t asked your parents for their blessing to marry you?


No. My fiance had barely met my parents. They are divorced. My mom is in a nursing home with dementia and has no idea what's going on. My dad and I have the type of relationship that I immediately bristle at the thought of him needing to be asked. I'm a grown woman, not someone's property. He did ask my daughter, which I thought was cute.
How important to you is a relationship between your SO and your parents?
It is important to the extent that we are all family and will occasionally spend time together. However, my little family in my home is my top priority. I don't travel on holidays, we stay at our house. Everyone is welcome to come and no hard feelings if they don't. It would be very difficult if they hated each other, but my fiance and my dad get along fine and that's good enough. He's not marrying my parents. He's marrying me. My family is important to me, it's not that, but my priorities have shifted since being married before and now engaged again.
Do you consider your MIL/FIL/BIL/SIL to be your own?
No. They're perfectly fine people, my future mother in law just spent 10 days with us and I only got annoyed with her twice, but I don't think we are destined to be best friends, and I don't think I'll ever call her Mom, or my future FIL Dad. I think we are all comfortable with each other and that suits us all fine. We don't have to best friends. As long as we can take a picture without looks of murderous intent, I'm satisfied.

My husband DID NOT ask my father for his blessing and that was perfectly fine with me. I feel like that's such an outdated "tradition" lol so I, him, nor my father cared about that.

My husband has an AMAZING relationship with my parents and they both love him (including both sets of step parents). I love that they have an amazing relationship, he's actually closer with my family now than he is with his own family.

I definitely don't consider my MIL and FIL to be my own, the relationship is just not there. I am okay with my husbands mother but I really don't like his father for a number of reasons. Until her learns to mind his business and stay out of our household business, I will continue to feel that way about him. As for my SIL's and BIL's I have a good relationship with all of them!

I am fiercely independent. I would have been so mad at my fiancé if he had asked my parents for their blessing. The only person that I belong to is myself, and I have a great relationship with my parents. I always knew that I wanted to walk myself down the isle. My fiancé has a great relationship with my family, its just about what it means to ask for a blessing for me. Honestly if my fiancé would have asked my family for a blessing he would be dis respecting me and my views and wishes. My family adores my fiancé. It was never something that was emphasized by my parents to get a blessing. my sister was adamant with her fiancé that she wanted my family's blessing first.

I have a decent relationship with my in laws. It's not as great as my fiancé's relationship with my family, but I am working on it. We live a lot closer to my my family then his. I don't have a lot in common at all with his sister, which is where we need the most work. My best relationship is with his mom, I always go bake Christmas cookies with her every year and I try to take her out to lunch every time I come up with them, and I have included her in the early wedding planning.

FH asked my parents' permission--he's 19 years older than me, and while I didn't care either way if he asked, it was important to him.

I would've had reservations if he HAD! Imo totally gross, inappropriate, & outdated but that's just me 🤷‍♀️

He did not ask them. I would have found it unnerving if he had, tbh. It's a tradition that makes no sense to me, there's just no logical reason why the man needs to ask for the woman's parents permission or blessing or whatever to get married...any argument I hear for it begs the question why the woman doesn't also have to ask for the man's parents blessing as well. It all comes down to infantilizing the woman as if she is still under her parents' protection/guardianship/care. And I'm being generous even saying parents, let's be honest 90% of the time the proponents of this really mean "father", not "parents".

All that said. Family is very important to me, and I do see marriage as the blending of two families. I will be part of his family and he will be part of mine. Asking permission beforehand has nothing to do with that, IMO.

Based on everyone’s answers, you can see that it’s a very personal topic on whether permission is needed or not. If your parents care about that, or you care about that, then you should have told your fiancé that he needed to ask permission first.
Personally, my parents would have felt very awkward and I would have been quite annoyed if my FH had asked permission. My parents don’t control my love life.

It is important for me that my SO have a good relationship with my parents. This doesn’t mean they have to speak every day, but that they enjoy being with each other when we meet up.
I absolutely love my MIL/FIL/SIL but I don’t have much of a relationship with his sister yet because we live far away.

My husband only told two people he was planning to propose before he did, and neither were my mom. I feel like "asking for a blessing" is a bit outdated and not really different from "asking for permission" which basically stems from women being property of their fathers before being transferred over to their husbands. I think I probably would have been more offended if my mom knew about our engagement before I did, so I'm perfectly fine with the fact that he didn't ask. I'll also note that my mom doesn't live anywhere near us and we see her maybe 1-2x a year so I don't expect them to be close or for them to reach out to one another on their own.

In terms of family, I think it's important that everyone generally gets along and "likes" each other enough to be civil, but I don't think its necessary for your SO to be "close" with your family and vise versa. I really like my husband's parents, but I wouldn't call us close although I'll call him mom and talk with her without my husband sometimes. His sister, on the other hand, is someone I feel like I have trouble relating to and over the years my opinion of her hasn't improved. She's not a horrible person, but she's a bit selfish and needy, and I feel she takes advantage of their parents and also said some hurtful things to us once and then paid zero respect to our engagement. It's kind of difficult to build a relationship with someone who makes everything about themselves.

He asked in 2017, but we went through a whole emotional relationship roller coaster after that, and didn’t end up getting properly engaged until May 2019. I had to ask his dad this time around xD.

FH asked my dad and I'm glad he did. My ex-husband never asked or even acknowledged my parents who have always been in my life and who I am close with. My FH asking my dad showed my dad that FH knows how close I am to my parents and that asking my dad was important to not only me but also my family as a sign of respect my ex never showed.

I am not close with my future in-laws but we get along and I respect them as my FH's parents. I do not consider them my own parents but I could view them as extended family at this point. We are both only children so I could see me becoming closer to his parents as we age together,

My SO did not ask permission. Seeing these comments I honestly didn't realize this was still a big thing or important to some people. Which is fine, to each their own! But, no. We have been together 9 years and living together for 7. We are waaaay past that point. lol I actually would be a little weirded out if he did ask my parents because although I do care if we all get along (which we do) I love him and whether my parents or siblings liked him or not I would still be marrying him.

No and I would be very upset if he did since I have no relationship with them. Even if I did have one, it's not their decision to make.

I did not agee to marry the only guy who did go to my parents. My dad told him straight out, "You don't know my daughter well enough to marry her, if you are here asking us." Then a little speech on how little respect he was showing me, an intelligent and independent woman, by acting as though I need parental permission to get married, or do anything I want to do. 🙂 My parents know me well. I find this asking the parents blessing abominable, always have.

My SO did ask my fathers permission to ask me to marry him. This both our third marriage and he had never done that prior. At 42 it does not bother me one way or another but I found it extremely sweet and endearing he went to that extent when he never had before. He is a very different person than he was in his first two marriages (as am I) so it makes complete sense really. We each get along well with the others families but being 800 miles apart our families probably will not meet till we get married October 2021. I have no siblings and his sister has (as has the rest of his family) welcomed me with open arms. It’s been a wonderful experience for both of us. My oldest daughter (20) has strong reservations about us but knowing her the way I do I can only show her how much we love one another and she will come around.

1. Would you have had any reservations if your SO hadn’t asked your parents for their blessing to marry you? --

Yes. There exists some deep seated family trauma in my family, caused by my half-sister and the way she handled her wedding. Essentially she didn't give my dad, her dad too, the opportunity to do the father of the bride thing. When we decided not to elope at Burning Man because my parents told me that if we were getting married, literally anywhere, they were going to be there.... even Burning Man.... we decided then that we were going to do the entire proposal/engagement/wedding thing more traditionally, and give my dad the opportunity she robbed him of because it was clearly very important to him.

Also–for me, and for us, family is a huge part of both of our lives. It was really important to me that he be comfortable enough with my family to ask them for their blessing to marry me. He even took it a step further and proposed to me when we were visiting my parents. This meant a lot to my entire family because we live 3,000 miles away and they often miss out on bigger events with us.

2. How important to you is a relationship between your SO and your parents? --

So important. My parents and I are very close. We may have our differences, but at the end of the day they are the most important people to me. They've always supported me and wanted what was best for me, even if it meant me moving across the country. If they didn't like him, or they couldn't create a meaningful relationship with him, it would've been a big red flag for me and probably even a deal breaker.

3. Do you consider your MIL/FIL/BIL/SIL to be your own? --

100% – I have been calling my fiancé's parents "Mom" and "Dad" since well before we got engaged actually. When they saw the effect I had on their son, they welcomed me into their family without hesitation and have continued to do so. It's the same deal with his closest Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin too. I actually referred to her as "our Aunt Lisa" not too long ago by mistake. His sister and I are actually the EXACT same age, same month, day, year, and she is more of a sister to me then my own half-sister is (see above for that mess) and has been since the first time I met her.... on her own wedding day actually. Except for his parents, I actually met ALL of his other family on his sister's wedding day and there were a LOT of them. It was overwhelming to say the least but I think even then I knew I was meeting my future family.

1. Would you have had any reservations if your SO hadn’t asked your parents for their blessing to marry you? I would have been LIVID if my FH asked either of my parents for their "blessing". One has never been married, one has been married 3 times and did not raise me and they both know I would not have appreciated them being asked anything about my personal relationship.

2. How important to you is a relationship between your SO and your parents? Ehh, it depends. He and my mother bumped heads in the beginning but that was more on her part than his. My parents are somewhat toxic and as their child I've learned to tolerate them but because I know it isn't easy, I wouldn't make a big deal if he wasn't close with them. He honestly doesn't even like my dad for how he has done me in the past.

3. Do you consider your MIL/FIL/BIL/SIL to be your own? I adore my FIL so I've called him my "new daddy" and my siblings and his siblings all love each other so yes, sometimes. My MIL and I had issues before but we're good now. We are family.

*My family hasn't been the best and I've grown to be a very independent person because of this. Needing their blessing for anything was out of the question. They're lucky they were told, tbh.

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I love everything about this. I believe my parents would have done the same.

Would you have had any reservations if your SO hadn’t asked your parents for their blessing to marry you? --> Yes

How important to you is a relationship between your SO and your parents? --> There's a language barrier so it's understandable that they don't talk a lot and wouldn't form a strong relationship. It isn't that important to me that he doesn't have a relationship with my mom as long as they're cordial and kind and respectful to one another.

Do you consider your MIL/FIL/BIL/SIL to be your own? --> I'm getting around to it. My brother and sister are pretty independent and even as the oldest, I didn't feel the need to look after them because I trusted that they had a good head on their shoulders (granted, was my brother's DD for underage drinking with his friends LOL). My FH is the middle between 2 brothers and they could use a push to be more self-motivated about everything in life, and I, as a concerned sister figure, could give them a pep talk, but I'm not sure how to do it in a non-awkward way.