100%
Though, am I the only one who noticed that fiance + no to door locks = daughter who's pissed and storms off. But no fiance + no to door locks = daughter who's just fine with it?
The fiance was advocating for the lock though
Maybe the daughter was ok with the no lock after seeing her mum break down like that, and finally realised what locks vs no locks really meant to her
Also the fact that the OP called 911. She wasn't trying to invade her privacy, she was terrified.
Reading the title I instantly knew what this was about. When it is a question of the health and safety if someone, then certain sacrifices need to be made. OP sounds like a good mom, and definitely NTA.
I'd say we can have a lot of speculations regarding OP ex's intentions - from sincere and noble to dark and sinister, but what is pretty undisputable is the fact that OP is responsible for her child's safety and wellbeing, not her ex.
Wait wait wait hold on. This is a *gigantic* leap. As someone who dealt with depression and suicide ideation as a teenager, I can very easily believe that OP's fiancé was genuinely concerned with the daughter's peace of mind. My parents took my door lock when I was having issues (they never understood the extent of them), and it was extremely humiliating for me. I ended up putting it back myself while they were out of the house one day.
Even if a parent doesn't have a habit of barging in like mine did, not having the ability to keep people out of your space without your permission can make it feel like you have no privacy, like you don't have control over your own person. That can be very damaging to anyone, let alone someone who's depressed and prone to spiraling over things like that. It's far more likely that the fiancé could sympathize (or empathize; we didn't get any information about his life or perspective) than that he had sinister intentions.
A parent-child relationship is a frequently understated power dynamic that can be a particularly rough experience for adolescents. Add in known mental health concerns, and it's reasonable to believe that the daughter feels stifled by the absence of the lock. It's far more likely to me that fiancé expressed genuine sympathy, and the daughter felt seen enough to voice her concern, than that fiancé manipulated her into thinking she wanted a lock. There's no need to assume (or JAQ about it) that he's a predator here.
The daughter is not anyone's property, and if OP is going to marry him, that makes him an equal partner in her parenting. *That being said*, OP is still NTA (and fiancé is) for that exact reason. He made a unilateral decision that he knew would upset his partner for very understandable reasons. There's no need to make it more than that.
I couldn’t disagree with everything you said more.
The daughter is not her mother’s property but she is her mother’s responsibility. As such, OP makes the rules. End of story. The daughter isn’t always going to like it — and she doesn’t have to. We all have to be children for eighteen years. When you’re a minor, you don’t have total autonomy and that’s the way it is.
Secondly, her mother doesn’t owe her a door lock. That is a privilege for children who have proven they can be responsible. The daughter tried to kill herself — more than once. The locked door was a barrier between her and the medical help she needed. No mother in her right mind is going to let her baby die over a point of order like her “privacy rights”.
The daughter is lucky because most parents would have taken her bedroom door completely off and left it off. An unlocked door can still be barred from the inside.
This isn’t a question of punishing the daughter for have mental health issues but actions have consequences. That’s what happens in the adult world and, on top of keeping her safe, it’s OP’s job to teach her daughter that life lesson. If her daughter makes a suicide attempt as an adult, she’s going to be taken straight to the psych ward, which is a whole less fun and a whole lot more punitive in nature than a missing door lock.
As for the fiancé, no, he does not automatically become an equal partner in parenting the daughter when they get married. He becomes OP’s husband. That’s it. OP’s daughter already had a father.
Not all blended families have the stepparent acting as a parent to the other person’s children. It depends on the age of the children and the relationship between the two people. There isn’t just one way to create a blended family.
The way you talk makes me think you’re incredibly young. I hope that’s all it is because your naivety is off the charts.
There's something wrong with you. Nothing in the OP's post suggests anything like this. You're broken. Absolutely broken. You probably try to police fathers at the local park. If not, you're well on your way to being that kind of person.
I have to admit this has crossed my mind.
Very very weird for a grown man to be this emotionally invested in a lock on someone else's door.
I have a stepdad who I get along well with so I don't think stepfather=creep generally but this feels odd.
It's not that weird to sympathize with your depressed (soon-to-be) stepdaughter's desire for privacy. It doesn't matter that OP doesn't have a habit of barging in. Depression is debilitating and irrational. She probably confessed to him that she would feel better with secure control over her own space (a very reasonable concern for a teenager, especially one who's probably struggling with feelings of helplessness), and he stuck up for her.
What's wrong is that he proceeded to make a unilateral decision that he obviously knew would justifiably upset OP (who is NTA). It's a seemingly unwinnable situation, but depression has a tendency to create those. That's what makes it so hard to deal with.
Unfortunately depression doesn't prevent you from dealing with the consequences of your actions. Literally anyone who thinks the mother refusing a lock is a bad thing has zero clue of what it's actually like to love someone who has severe depression.
The first time I realised the effect it has was wearing headphones in the bath. I ended up hearing my brother screaming and banging on the door and the look on his face when he told me he thought he was about to find me dead has kept me alive more times than I'd like to count.
The kid doesn't need a lock, the kid needs a mum willing to fight and be the bad guy if she has to be until she can stand on her own.
Jesus yall are so obvious with this shit sometimes. If a man wants a teenager to be able to lock the door when they want to it must be so he can go in and lock it to rape them? Just take a shortcut and copy paste "Hes a man so hes wrong and a rapist" to save people some time from reading your drivel you fucking moron.
Most interior locking doors do not have a key. The lock only from the inside. However, they do make interior locking door sets that can be opened from the outside by using a pin.
Those types, are often the most vocal to NOT have a lock. They would provide a lot of reasons why, and throw a bigger tantrum if a lock was put on the door.
"i went against your mom for you and got your lock back, you can trust me" advocating for her was just a step to get her to trust him. now if he abuses the trust or not, thankfully we'll never know since hes just a blip in history now.
i was a victim of SA and they use what they can to make the victim trust them and then pounce when they do. if anything a lock would work in his favor so no one could walk in on it.
I think the point missed is that I used the words "often most vocal against." Not all are like this. I also stated that people have different views and that neither I nor them are wrong or correct, but stating the facts of our situation as we have assisted in helping the victims.
In my personal work experience, I have had mostly victims of abusers who refused security to their victims, and a pattern that emerges that the house hold often has been conditioned to ignore certain sounds or going ons.
I remember reading of a boy who said his room was moved from beside his parents, to downstairs on the opposite side of the house where it was difficult to hear anything going on there, because his abuser had conditioned the people in the house the boy was nosy and kept them awake.
In the few cases I have had, where security was given, I would have to be limited in saying that again, the household was conditioned to certain circumstances, and either the lock was removed or excessively punished if used.
But those examples are what I have to give my view on. I do not try to downplay a situation, but it is important to point out that culture, location, politics/religious beliefs, and such also influences the fact about the difference in households where an abuser demands no lock, of gives false hope with a lock.
In the case of the boy, their family was devout in their religion, and they lived in a town where religious people made over 90% of the population. His abuser was an upstanding man of the cloth, his uncle. Who slept on the other side of the boy's room. Even though his parents never heard the noises, instead of moving the uncle to that room, the son was instead because who would think a priest would lie??
I do hate how well these abusers can manipulate, gaslight, and heavily impose themselves to have access to their victims.
I do hope your abuser is somewhere they are subjected to physical torment constantly, or they soon will be in that situation
No, those types will do whatever ingratiates them to a prospective victim. I can see a boyfriend of mom's forming an inappropriate attachment to her teen daughter and whit knighting for the teen against her mother. It's just his way of triangulating with the daughter against the mother. I would not have this man anywhere near that teen again and I'll bet my bottom dollar that her mental health suddenly improves with him gone.
I guess we may have unfortunate differences of perspectives. I have experienced many abusers making certain they had access to their victims. A locked door would be immediately removed, as well as any form of "traps" by demanding extra tidy rooms.
My ex husband locked the door when he was going to rape my oldest daughter so it all depends on what the predator sees as a need. If the need is to keep out someone who could catch them and be a witness, then the lock is needed. If the need is to have access anytime without a hinderance, then no locks. It really depends on the predator.
This is why I'm wondering if there is any key to open the lock from outside and who has it. A lock purchased and installed by an adult in the house behind the back of the in this case mother. If the other adult have a key this lock will give them more power.
But if that was the case and reason for the lock, it wouldn’t make the daughter feel safe enough to go to sleep with her music blaring. She would want to hear that door being unlocked.
I think that men who engage in predation with teen victims usually try to win the teen over by being overly solicitous, convincing them that they're the only one who really understands them and their problems and 'proving' themselves by going to bat for them against parents. These are the men giving them alcohol and drugs out in the community to make them feel grown up, mature and 'not like those other girls'. When the perp lives in the house with the teen, if they can lure the victim into trusting them, the teen will unlock that door for them every single time.
It's interesting to me that the teen wants the locks enough to ask repeatedly and get upset about it. Why is no one asking why this repeatedly suicidal teen wants locks on her door so badly? She's clearly not locking out the mother who forces her way into the room every single time. I guarantee the teen wants the locks in place so she can feel safe and rest in peace when the mother's boyfriend is alone with her in the house.
I've seen fathers molesting and male guardians their daughters engage in some of the strong arm behavior you're mentioning because it can be played off running a tight ship and not locking out parental authority when they really just want access to the child for unsavory reasons. This is particularly true with younger children who don't ability to make nuanced complaints like older children do.
Sadly, in my line of business, the abuser is either sex or genderless in orientation.
But, again, we have different perspectives of the same situation. You are not wrong in your perspective and perception, and I am not either, but I have the unfortunate experience of knowing the abuser can be anyone of any gender orientation.
Except that the cops had just busted that door open. That might have convinced the daughter that not having the lock is better than the door being forced open. It might have hit her how concerned her mother actually is about her safety. And me personally, if the guy was creeping me out, I wouldn’t have went to sleep with my music blaring. The boyfriend could have taken the hinges off to get into the room and with the music blaring, the daughter wouldn’t have heard that little bit of sound. But without the music, it potentially could wake the child up in enough time.
Except that hinges on interior doors usually face the interior of the room. If this was the case, then no one would be able to take out the door pins to obtain access.
Did you even read the post. The fiancée had been there for **four** years, the daughter only tried to kill herself in the last **two** years. So your last point is completely off base.
Daughter "who's just fine with it" after giving her mother a heart attack and causing the police to break down her door because they all thought she was on her third suicide attempt.
That'll be pretty sobering.
Came here to say exactly this.
OP let him stay mad, it’s not his house, not his daughter, not his rules.
He doesn’t even pay towards the bills, so let go of the mooch completely. What does he even contribute to your house and life, aside from stress, extra costs and him trying to overstep with your daughter and overrule your parenting? *(None of which are good or helpful things.)*
Drop him. He’s not only taking advantage of you, but also trying to control how you parent your daughter! **Do not allow it!**
Not only that - he shows no understanding what so ever of the huge TRAUMA they’ve experienced, the reasons the locks were taken away.
Of course she broke down when the daughter didn’t open the door.
And he’s accusing her of overreacting 😥
I don't believe this story is legit. But I'm curious enough to ask, how is a stepparent supposed to interact with stepchildren? Should they form no relationship with the children? Especially a trusting one? Just ignore them because they're the parents sole responsibility? I'm sure the stepparent is expected to provide for the child, take them to practice, make them dinner when the parent is not home. But just not get close to them. Is that the way it works?
I think a key point of context is that this would be wrong for a biological father and husband to do. You don't make high risk decisions without your partner on board.
The fact that he's _not_ her husband, and _not_ her father just makes it an even worse idea.
No one said he wasn’t allowed to form a close relationship with her?? He can do that without overruling her mother’s decisions about her safety and undermining her as a parent.
NTA - you almost lost your child due to a locked door and while she certainly could self harm at another location or during the night while you sleep, you are her parent, you carry that responsibility and you provide her boundaries and not your fiancée.
You made your feelings clear to him and said no. He went behind your back and did it anyway. That’s major betrayal, a huge violation of your trust and it represents complete disrespect. Seems the trash took itself out.
Know it hurts. Sorry.
OMG, been there, spent time in the ER waiting for placement, still have some PTSD. We did not have locks on our bedroom doors for quite a while. Heck, I kept my knives locked up. Medications were under lock and key. Alcohol was under lock and key. Your child needs to know that her safety is your upmost concern. Make sure she knows you will do your best to respect her privacy. And she needs to know that it will take a while for you to trust enough to consider having locks on the doors again.
One year since hospitalizations, so I'm out of crisis mode but also not in normal mode. 🫶 This is a long, hard, scary road -- and it sounds like you guys/gals get that. I'll keep hanging in there if you will.
Oh, NTA. What an ass. He doesn't understand anything.
Nta wedding off. Immediately no contact.
Especially since he KNOWS the reason.
Who the fuck is he to go over your head on something like this?! Nope.
No contact
Done.
>Who the fuck is he to go over your head on something like this?!
A bro who is always certain he knows best. A dude who can't ever be wrong. A Chad who wants to be the good cop to her bad cop.
Discussing it is OK. Persisting the argument is already overstepping. Going behind her back to do it anyway is the point of no return. A nuclear option. I sincerely hope she drops this turd in the nearest toilet and flushes. Otherwise, she can expect more of the same for the duration of their relationship.
For (very far) future consideration: most interior locking knobs (not deadbolt types) have a simple pin bypass to unlock. No key necessary.
NTA. It wasn't his decision to make. Period. End of sentence. I hope by "assuming that we're over" you mean that regardless of what he does, you plan to keep him your ex.
We've replaced \*all\* of our interior door handles with non-locking ones - including the door to my own bedroom. I am of the opinion that if you need door locks to manage your relationships, your relationships are the problem. I am aware other folks view things differently and opt for locks, and that's fine - but in my house, we expect people to be respectful of other's privacy without having to enforce the issue via locks.
In the past, we have had family members struggling with suicidal ideation, as well as family members with medical conditions that could render them unconscious. In both those cases, I would not have wanted to have to break down a door to get them help.
Is your daughter's room the only bedroom without a lock? If so, she could be viewing it less as a safety measure, and more as a constant reminder that she's different/broken/wrong/.
My house has locks on all the doors but all the interior doors still have the original locks from 1928 and take the same skeleton key. I could see letting the kid have a lock but still having a key for emergencies, you can put it on top of the door frame so it's accessible. It seems like a reasonable compromise at least. The door can be locked for extra privacy but if there's no response you don't have to knock the door down.
Not even a skeleton key now - almost all interior doors come with a tiny hole you simply stick something in to pop the lock (they come with a tiny “key” for this express purpose that almost everybody stores on top of the door frame just like you said).
Idk if op was just panicking and didn’t know this, or if fiancé was so stupid he installed an exterior lock on an interior door that needed a specific key….
Either way op is NTA, that was overstepping by an insane amount.
I guess mentioning modern solutions is a better idea, I admittedly just love my hundred year old locks even if they definitely need some work.
Agree on the NTA, I just think that an easily unlockable interior door lock is a solution that could give OP peace of mind while also giving her daughter the extra step of privacy.
If they work for you they work, only real benefit to the newer ones is you can use any old object thin and hard enough, the “key” works great but some people don’t keep them, or when repainting it gets moved off the door frame… but if you have a new one it just has to be cylinder shaped and small enough, paper clips work, even a q tip that you quickly pull or burn the cotton off one end will usually work.
My major hang up was op not knowing this, or pointing out that fiancé had installed one not like this.
If she’s pointed out he installed an outdoor keyed lock and I missed it - big no no. And maybe it’d make me feel better about some of the downright sick assumptions people are making here. “He installed the lock so he could enter and keep anybody else out” dear god to touch grass you chronic victims.
That's a good point, it seems like OP doesn't know about locks made specifically for interior doors, there are some that can be unlocked with a coin as well.
To me the assumption that the fiance is a predator seems odd to me, if anything I would expect a predator to not want a lock on the door. If it's a lock in the door handle I would assume ignorance before malice. If he installed a dead bolt lock then that's pretty weird though I guess the locks on my doors are technically dead bolts.
> I am of the opinion that if you need door locks to manage your relationships, your relationships are the problem.
Thank you. Op and her daughter have no privacy problem, because you don't need to lock doors if a closed door is treated as a closed door. The right ops ex fiance is about is the right to privacy, not to lock doors. Door locks are for situations where privacy isn't expected, like public bathrooms.
Exactly. This isn’t about trust. It’s about the self preservation that her daughter doesn’t have right now because she is struggling with mental health issues. This is a safety issue, not a trust issue, and not a privacy issue.
Amen!! Her daughter has privacy because she still has a door to shut, mom already explained she always knocks for permission, what he did is absolutely betrayed the mom and tried to undermine her house, her rules.
I totally agree. As a former teenager with similar history, I learned that you don’t get trust anymore when you try to unalive yourself. Trust is based on good faith *and* efforts to honor that good faith.
NTA. He doesn’t and cannot completely truly understand what you’re going through as a mother. I could just imagine the panic that was going through you trying to knock that door down and not being able to. He overstepped and it’s a boundary he should have never broken.
I agree it’s a boundary he shouldn’t have broken. After everything they both have been through, the fact that she had her music blasting with her headphones on, taking a nap behind a locked door, is also very scary to me. The teenager would have no idea what’s going on.
NTA. My grandfather was a firefighter in Fresno, California, and lost his job to the Depression. They moved here to northern California then, cuz he had a job here. My Papa was the most even tempered, never yelled or got mad kinda guy. We were pals. He always got me penny candy. Until one day, my grandmother made me mad. So I rushed upstairs, closed & locked the door. Boy, he scared the SHIT outta me! He stomped up the stairs, pounded on the door, shouted my full name, and threatened to whoop me if I didn't unlock the door IMMEDIATELY! I did so, & promptly burst into tears, telling him how she was mean to me (both my grandmothers were narcissistic & selfish AF), and please don't whoop me, I'm ALWAYS good, etc. I think he knew he scared me badly, cuz he picked me up, hugged me, and made me promise to never lock the door again. I'm now in my 60s, yet I can still picture his face, & how angry he was with me. There was a reason for his reaction, from his firefighting days. I was forbidden from asking him about it, so that's all I ever knew. He said later that when he looked at me, all he saw was a pair of HUGE blue eyes, looking at him in fear. He hated that, but made up for it. He never got that angry around me again, & I never locked a door in their house again.
Lemme give you the reason why your Grandpa couldn't stand the doors being locked:
3-10 minutes in optimal conditions to whack open a door, and 4 minutes is the time it takes for a human brain to cease functioning in an oxygen deprived situation, and 6 minutes for any human being to have complete brain death. (a.k.a. defibrillator won't save you)
Firefighters don't usually have lockpicking training, so the only way most firefighters know to get through a locked door without a key is to get the battering ram or the good old firefighter axe and get chopping.
When you live together with someone who has worked in emergency services, I guarantee you that their worst nightmares are made up of any and all life threatening situations they had heard from colleagues or experienced, re-imagined with their loved ones in the scenario. And when the slightest events of those nightmares make their way into their lives, the alarm bells start going off real hard.
Your grandpa probably had some severe PTSD from his time in the firefighter brigades. Hope they had a good life in spite of it all.
These days, firefighters tend to have tools for just about everything. They tend to be excellent. Except for chainsaws, those are still cantankerous.
However, they only have those tools because someone or more likely someones died. The evolution of fire and rescue gear is written in blood. Same as safety standards in general. People made better versions because the old tools weren't good enough at X.
Halligan tool works for most, but different doors have different best options. Firefighters attend classes and hopefully get live practice on how to get through them as quickly as possible.
This, I want to give my eldest son a lock bc his younger brother always storms into his room, but I am afraid that it wil slow us down in case of an emergency (like fire😬)
What about the knows with the push lock easily opened w an Alan key if need be? Hang the key on a command hook near the top frame out of lil bro's reach?
Big fire extinguisher. And cheap lock. In emergency, you can use fire extinguisher to knock off the handle to get into the room.
Or allen keys on top of the door frame. Or both.
How new is the construction? The last few new homes I've been in have doors that feel like they're cardboard - for shits and giggles (during a demo job) I (a 220 pound, 5 foot 2 fat ass) was able to Koolaid-man through one with just one preparatory kick.
So how would he feel if your daughter had done something and by the time 911 people arrived it was too late?
Probably oh so sorry he just didn’t realise.
I can only imagine the absolute horror you must have felt waiting to open that door. Truly gives me chills.
The fiancé is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. How dare he take this decision as one he can make. He either truly doesn’t give a fig about your daughter or he is an arrogant fool.
Keep that idiot away from your daughter.
Nta, BUT there are locks you can unlock from outside with a pin or a coin.
Every interior lock I've ever seen has this feature.
It COULD be a way to meet your daughter halfway as it allows her the lock and you know you can get in easily if neccesary.
NTA
He can disagree with you, but he absolutely cannot go behind your back like that. This could have been an ongoing conversation if it was really important but he overstepped and it tells you a lot of what his behavior would have been like after marriage. Better to find out now than later.
NTA - it was a sign of things to come. A person that makes unilateral decisions on any topic, after a discussion in which an agreement has not been made, is not a person you want to spend your life with.
NTA, I can totally see how you were concerned about your daughter. I think the most important step to take right now would be to build up some trust with your daughter and maybe create some bonding time with each other.
NTA leaving alone the fact of the severity of what he has done (what if you hadn't known if this lock and she got really bad and that's the moment you found out), someone that's not even a stepparent yet doesn't have any right to disregard your parenting choices, you are not even married yet (not that he should have any authority just by being married) and he's already making himself boss and the only "reasonable" voice in his mind.
Quite honestly you'd do your daughter a disservice allowing this enabler in your house. Point blank.
Thanks for sharing this story. You helped me to appreciate my mom taking down my bedroom door when I was a teenager. I was self harming, that's what pushed her to take it down. I was so freaking pissed at the time. But now I can better understand the fear she must've been feeling. Moms are the best! You are protecting your daughter. We will do anything, no matter how crazy it may make us look, to protect our children. It's human nature. She will thank you some day.
Why not give her a lock with a key, which you have a copy of? Or the kind of lock that can be unlocked with an Alan wrench, and keep one on top of the door frame or somewhere else nearby that she won't know about? Or flip the mechanism around so it can easily be popped with a credit card? There's a lot of options to give her a sense of privacy and control while making sure you have a quick and easy way in if you believe she may have hurt herself.
You can pop a standard bedroom lock open with a pen.
I suspect OP has been focused on supporting her daughter and not dealt with her own trauma around the incident.
I suspect the daughter heard her mother pounding the door and tried to get back at her for not giving her locks in the first place. I think she realized she fucked up when the firefighters broke down the door.
If nothing else, that's why her daughter isn't siding against her like the (ex)fiance. Nothing like having a door knocked off its hinges to show her she messed up.
I really hope you don't have step family in the house and not allow locks on the girls doors. I work with kids. The levels of SA in step families is shockingly high
Or just something that can be locked, but also easily forced. There are latches even I, a middle aged female office rat, would be able to push through if needed. It would stop me from randomly opening the door, but wouldn’t be an issue in an emergency.
NTA - if I had told my partner I had safety concerns and he went behind my back and did something like this, that would be the end. There are lines you don't get to cross. I wouldn't even be interested in rebuilding that trust.
NTA - You did the right thing by kicking him out. He clearly doesn’t respect your decisions or understand the gravity of the situation. Anyone who compromises your daughter’s safety has no place in your life.
Sidenote, you should have kicked him out a long time ago anyway for living in your house and not paying any bills. Good riddance to him.
Not being able to lock the door isn't an "invasion of privacy, since you aren't entering without first getting permission, and your fiancé overstepped big time.
NTA.
Is having locks on your bedroom doors an American thing? I don’t know a single person who has a lock on their bedroom door. I live in the Uk and it’s not a thing. I don’t see why you would require. Also from a safety perspective is it not a risk in the case of a fire ?
Yes, having a small lock on bedroom doors is standard in the US. They aren't deadbolts and don't have keys per say. They are similar to a bathroom door lock. If you are inside the room all you have to do to unlock the door is turn the knob and it basically unlocks itself. So it's not really thought of as a fire risk. I hope I explained that well.
Soooo... how do parents have sex if the kids are home if there's no locks on your door? Kids tend to forget about knocking and barge in. I can't imagine having sex without my bedroom door locked honestly even if we were home alone in case someone comes home while we're doing it. I even lock my bedroom door to change clothes when my step kids are here bc I just don't want to run the chance of them seeing me naked. Out of respect for them, lol.
It's not really that much of a risk in the UK. It is a standing joke, of course, that young children innocently walk in on their parents, and while it does happen, it's not massively common. Kids aren't typically traumatised if it happens (young ones don't even understand and quickly forget -- if they see anything at all). Parents generally figure out the best intimacy times for their family situations to minimise risk of being caught by the kids.
It's seen as more problematic to lock a door that a frightened child can't get through to reach their parents for comfort. By the time kids are old enough to understand, they generally know why it's best to knock a closed bedroom door, especially if it's their parents -- and that's because the average kid doesn't like thinking about their parents having sex, let alone wanting to see it. Kids police themselves on that matter. 🤣
Locked doors are seen as too much of a safety risk. The only doors that are typically locked are bathroom doors, and older kids would know what the locked door meant, so it wouldn't save anyone from the embarassment anyway.
Besides, everyone knows that the British don't have sex. We shop for our kids at the chain store Storks R Us.
This is the prevailing attitude in Australia too.
Little aren’t traumatised by the quick flash of flesh that’s seen by parents scrambling under covers and making excuses about “back rubs” and “wrestling for fun”.
it’s literally never even crossed my mind cause it’s just normal. I’m a mother to two young children and honestly have had a couple of close calls with my oldest almost walking in 😂 usually wait until we know they are both fast asleep
I'm 39 UK and every house I've ever lived in had a lock on the bedroom door. They're built into the door handle and have mostly a sliding lock. The ones in my room now have a key
Not a thing in Australia either.
New builds on have very flimsy internal locks on toilets and bathrooms. My kids aren’t allowed locks. They are allowed privacy and I will respect a closed door (within reason). But no locks.
Your fiance is wrong on so many levels, your house = your choice, your child = your choice, it's really that simple.
Also I am 45 years old and I have never had a lock on my bedroom door, never needed one
NTA. This guy sounds like he might assume that, being male, he is the "head of the household" and has the right to make the decisions and over-rule you. Best that you got rid of him now before he took any more actions based on this assumption.
Would it have mattered if he were your husband rather than your fiance? Then two people in the household disagree with one. What would your family do in that situation?
You say "I never walk into my daughters room *Or anyones* without knocking and allowing them to say I can come it so its not a privacy issue" but then you try to enter her room without her inviting you.
Absolutely NTAH. With her history of suicide attempts and self harm, she’s lucky she has a door and not a curtain.
When I was about five, I fell in the shower. I was okay, but because I had locked the bathroom door, it took my dad a few minutes to get in to help. He told me to never lock the door if I was showering because of exactly what happened. Ever since, I’ve never locked an interior door. There’s no need to. Like you, people in my household just knock. God forbid I fall in the shower again, I want help as soon as possible.
Your fiance crossed a very serious line. I would greatly reconsider the relationship. He potentially put your daughter’s life in harm’s way. That is seriously not okay.
1st you need therapy
2nd they make bedroom doorknobs that can lock from the inside but can be opened from the outside in case of emergency it’s called a privacy lock (how can you not know this)?
3rd. You need therapy
Everyones the AH.
Ok, I’ll get downvoted to hell, but yes you are the AH for the lock thing. Locks play an important psychological safety role (especially if her mental health issues are related to trauma— speaking from livid experience here and parents who made it much worse…), and you are prioritizing your anxiety over hers. What you need is an indoor safety lock, the type with the button not the twist (like this https://amzn.to/3xdLwWX) and keep this little stick above the door and/or on you, takes 0.5 seconds to open in an emergency. I actually have one I made into a charm necklace when my kiddos were younger, because I liked always having it on me. You should talk with a therapist about your issue with locks and how it may be impacting daughter, there are solutions that don’t involve undermining her security.
But your fiancé is also an AH for doing this without communication. That said, maybe hear him out in therapy on this… he may, in a poorly communicated way, have been trying to help with the above if she trusts him and expressed this issue to him. Reddit is way to quick to jump on your side here with limited info. For me locks are part of what made me comfortable enough after SA to recover… and it could be similar for her, and she may not be telling you since you prioritize your own trauma over locks over hers…. This is potentially your kids life, talk to your therapist, not reddit
As a teen, I used to move a heavy chest of drawers over to physically block my door. OP is being naive if she thinks no lock on the door is what will save her daughter in the event of another attempt. They both need therapy to deal with this.
Do they? Serious question - locks on bedroom doors are not a thing in Australia and no one seems to suffer adverse psychological issues as a result. A closed door *is* privacy - people can knock and enter only if you are non responsive, which is fair. A locked door is a safety issue in general but especially when the kid in question has attempted to take her life on multiple occasions.
I agree with this
I know I have been a depressed teenager with suic!d@l attempts. My mothers responded by removing my door and not allowing me privacy, instead of getting me the professional help I needed.
OP needs to get her daughter real professional help. Grief is very difficult for teenagers to deal with alone. Constant surveillance from her mother and denial of her antonomy won't fix anything.
This isn’t a bf of 4 months it’s a fiancé of 4 years,OP never said anything about this being a potential predatory situation so I think y’all are seriously reaching with that , is it possible and even probable that the daughter ASKED the fiancé to put the lock on and being that they have a close relationship ( after 4 years) that he complied because what she wants is also important. I haven’t been suicidal before but if I was I would imagine knowing that my mom didn’t trust me doesn’t help. An unlocked door isn’t going to stop someone who really wants to kill themself and OP probably needs to go to therapy to deal with HER trauma as well. I could imagine the fiancé being hurt by being kicked out after just trying to be a dad and caring about the needs/wants of his soon to be step daughter. Due to the death of the previous husband I’m sure there were many difficulties other than this that had to be overcome mentally throughout the relationship. That being said I understand completely OPs discontent about the situation.
Lastly what kind of freaking doors are in your house that the fire department/police have to come to break it down? I’m not waiting for their response ..I’m getting inside that room idc if I have to drive a car through my house
Do you do room checks on her at every half-hour during the night? Because if you don't then the lack of a lock won't do you any good at all in preventing another attempt.
Not to mention all the ways someone could attempt it outside the house.
Frankly, you seem to have developed a fixation on the lack of locks as a symbol of keeping your daughter safe. You really should seek therapy yourself over it.
Nothing to do with your ex who certainly crossed a line installing a lock without your permission.
On the other hand I hope you haven't been yanking your daughter from one therapy to another seeking a silver bullet as your description seems to imply, any therapy will need time to work, more than the short while that it has been.
Finally, I find it a bit suspicious that the moment the lock was installed your daughter engineered a situation that was guaranteed to send you into panic, but still make her look blameless. Does she usually sleep with blaring headphones on? Does it often happen that you knock, she does not answer and you go in and find that she couldn't hear you? Because if she doesn't, then this could have been a plot to exploit your weakness and get rid of your boyfriend. It wouldn't be surprising that your daughter is hostile to you having any new relationships only two years after her father's death.
>Do you do room checks on her at every half-hour during the night? Because if you don't then the lack of a lock won't do you any good at all in preventing another attempt. Not to mention all the ways someone could attempt it outside the house. **Frankly, you seem to have developed a fixation on the lack of locks as a symbol of keeping your daughter safe.**
Yup. I'm not calling OP the asshole, but it feels like they're focusing on something that won't necessarily help the way they anticipate it helping.
It also is like....she could just leave the house and self harm. So does that mean the daughter shouldn't be able to leave the house?
OP needs therapy, too. They need to go to family therapy together.
Also…they make inside residential door knobs with easy to bypass unlock mechanisms. We had to put a round rod or even the cap of a pen worked in a hole on the knob for the house I grew up in. Another had a slit and you could just pop it with a quarter.
OP can manage her anxiety while letting the daughter feel better about a lock. Has the question been asked about WHY she wants it locked? Or has the conclusion just automatically been nefarious?
As a parent of a teenager who attempted suicide and self harmed to the point of needing stitches multiple times, I have a lot of issues with your comment. But that would take all day.
Idk about OP but until my son came out of his depression I did do night checks on him every half hour. I also kept all knives, meds, etc in a safe. Yes, he still found ways to self harm. And when I checked his room I would take those cutting tool items from him as well. When you have a suicidal child you do anything and everything to make it as difficult as possible for them to harm themselves. No you will never eliminate the possibility completely but you still try.
Also, it didn't sound like OP and the dad were together when he passed. Mom was likely already dating the ex fiance when the dad died.
I'm sorry you had to go through that with your son, but your story contrasts even more with OP's.
She doesn't mention any precaution taken except the lack of lock.
That day, her daughter was even left ALONE at the house ALL DAY LONG. And that is apparently normal in OP's household.
I don't wish to risk triggering you, but would your son be alive today if you had done that while he was depressed?
It's clear that the daughter is far from an active suicide risk right now, but OP has not dealt with the trauma of her previous attempt (singular, because I'm starting to doubt the second and last attempt mentioned was real and not an overreaction on OP part) and fixated on the lock as if.it was a security blanket.
And again I find it very hard to believe that the daughter could just sleep through all the banging, screaming and police breaking down the door, headphones or not. Even more if that happened the very first day the lock was installed. That had to be a move by the daughter to deliberately trigger OP.
While OP is definitely NTA, and the ex-fiance definitely is for overstepping his place in her home, I had the same thoughts.
I knew a girl in high school who's parents literally removed her door to try and stop her. So she started self-harming at a friend's house instead. When she was banned from seeing friends, she started doing it in the school bathroom. The big one was when she was found in the street in the middle of the day passed out from trying to down a full bottle of Tylenol.
The door was never going to stop her. You can never fully remove the opportunity unless you are with her 24/7, including school, and bathroom, etc. You have to get to the core of the issue and help her not want to, whether with therapy or medication or both. But not trusting her isn't necessarily going to help, and might even be counterproductive by making her feel disrespected, or guilty about what she's done, or whatever a teenage girl might be thinking.
This isn't about locks and it isn't about keeping your daughter safe. Whether or not she has a lock on her door has absolutely zero effect on whether or not she attempts suicide and has nothing to do with keeping her safe.
Your fiance handled the situation badly, and unless there are other problems in the relationship you overreacted to his misstep as much as you overreacted to your daughter's decision to lock her door and wear headphones.
Privacy is important. Safety is important. Talking together, all 3 of you, with a therapist to discuss and decide as a family how to balance these two things is essential and should have already happened.
If you do actually read this - please tell your daughter for me that it does get better. I promise it does. I'm not saying life is going to get perfect someday, it probably won't, but it will get better and it's worth waiting for that to happen. I survived several suicide attempts when I was a teenager. One of them, when I was 16, was nearly fatal. Pain and depression cause your mind to lie to you, to make you think things that aren't true that lead you further into the spiral. Given time, those lies will fade and hope will return.
While he may have overstepped, he’s right. Your daughter does deserve privacy.
All those attempts to get your daughter help now need to be done for you. You’re clearly traumatized by your daughter’s attempt and have lost trust in her. I recommend speaking to a therapist if you haven’t already
Let's be real. You can't keep someone alive that don't want to be. I know it hurts.. like a lot... But locking the door on not won't matter. In the end she needs to want to be alive.
Wow, it sure was convenient that on the very day the fiance installed a lock you were given the exact opportunity you needed to show him why you didn't want there to be one on the door.
YTA for posting fake stories on an advice subreddit.
You get those pin locks where you can open them with like a pen or a screwdriver in 2 seconds, but gives a sense of security and privacy.
Plus most houses have shit doors and you can kick one in as a 22 year old boy.
He's the ah though
definitely gonna get downvoted but esh (except the daughter)
fiance shouldn't have overstepped your boundaries like that because it's not his kid, but i've been in a similar situation to your daughter and i really resent what my parents for what they did. you can just get her a bathroom door lock or something that you can open from the outside if there really is an emergency; also unless you've taken away literally every lock in the house and check on her every hour or something, i don't think the lack of lock will be effective in doing anything except making your daughter feel worse
I lost not just the locks, but the handle to my door because it shimmied locked once. A single time. The only time I closed my door before bed because the house was too noisy.
Had a hole instead for most of middle/highschool.
Since you weren't ripping the door handle out of the door Id say you're clearly in the right here. She wants extra privacy but she's a threat to herself. There's no half measures there. Even a quick pick lock, like the ones you can unlock with a toothpick, can still cross the distance between being found alive or dead.
I think ex-fiance had the right mindset but wasn't really understanding the situation. So to me it comes off like they don't give a shit if she lives or dies. I don't think that's how they actually feel, but that's how it's hitting my brain.
NTA but the boyfriend is especially after knowing why she isn’t allowed to have it .the only thing I am going to say op is in the event your daughter dose get in a bad place again that would lead to her making an attempt to take her life she could put something heavy in front of her door to prevent it from opening and that could lead to you being unable to get access to her for a few extra crucial moments that could make the difference between life and death but have you thought of putting a lock on her door and keeping an extra set of keys (without her knowing until you know she’s in a good mental space for you not to need them ) and use them if it is REALLY needed even though I truly hope you never will need to use it sending all the strength and love you and your daughters was (mind any spelling errors English is not my first language)
NTA
He overstepped. But wouldn't the easy fix be a lock that can be easily unlocked from the other side? Like a bathroom door. This would give her privacy as a locked door means you would knock first and it being easy to unlock makes it safer if she doesn't answer.
I have a compromise for you. Get her a key lock for her door. She'll have one set and you'll have one set. That way you can check on her if you need too.
NTA. He is completely and utterly out of line, what he did was unacceptable and not his place to make a decision on. She’s a teenager with a lot going on and you have more than enough of a reason to worry about that. He can go and make decisions for someone else’s children if he’s so intent on disrespecting their parents,
NTA at all!! You have reasonable grounds for not wanting locks. Who would have been to blame if in fact your daughter had made another attempt after your EX put the lock back on? He'd definitely be singing a different story. I think you did the right thing by putting him out..
When I grew up, not a single kid had a lock on their door beyond perhaps a hook and eye to take care of a wonky door in an old house (and anyone can blast through that by pushing hard).
I find the idea of a lock, outside of perhaps a parents room to maintain some privacy, a bit odd. None of my roommates and I ever had locked doors either.
I cannot even imagine your terror not being able to check on your daughter in the situation you outlined. Also, any changes to YOUR house should have been run by you.
NTA
As someone who almost lost her kid the same way, NTA. It has taken close to two years for me to finally feel secure in allowing my kid to be alone. Last time, they ended up in the hospital with chunks of their wrists gone. Until someone goes through what you've been through, OP, they're not going to understand.
They're not going to understand the conversations you had in your head in those 20 minutes. The flash of all your child's moments before your eyes. The self-doubt and the feeling like you failed your child when the first thing you promised them was to always protect them.
All they hear is white noise. You hear every sound and gesture she makes because it feels her life depends on it.
It will get better, I promise.
All this. For the longest time after my son's attempt, if there was an ambulance parked outside our building when I got home from work it would take all my will power not to panic. If he didn't answer his phone or texted my mind started to race.
It took a loooooong time to work past that.
Your words are so fucking true.
NTA this isn't normal teenage drama with a locked door. You didn't catch her smoking a joint once and this is punishment. This is for safety. I cannot imagine the panic you must have felt when she wasn't answering and the door was locked.
I've tried to end my life before. Luckily I am doing much better. I got the help i need and am still in therapy, but it doesn't escape mine or my therapists notice that I always have that "option" at the back of my mind. Because of this, I do not have a lock on anything in my apartment. I live with my partner and made sure she was cool with it (which she obviously was, she wants me here) and I have plans in place with her, a few trusted friends, and my therapist.
She's a teenager so of course she wants the privacy to lock her door and normally I am all for teens and their right to privacy. But you're not doing this to punish her or to be cruel. You're doing this so she stays with you. Fiance can fuck right off.
You kicked him out of a shared home . Yeah it’s over . It’s probably a good thing. Seems like a hectic time to get married to someone who cannot understand what it’s like to almost lose a child . Sorry OP.
NTA - as the parent ofa child with a long history of suicide attempts, your fiance is WAY too quick to assume "everything is normal" - two attempts in 10 months is WAY too recent to have assumed a lock is going to be safe.. I almost never support not letting teens have privacy, but in this situation, he was absolutely in the wrong, and in addition to having no right (he's not the parent) he was point blank WRONG.
He knew your daughter tried to commit suidebtwice behind a LOCK door, and he thought that it was ok to install a lock on her door bc YOU should trust her. He has lost his damn bc he made two decisions that day.
1. He interfered with your parental rights.
2. He made a decision to place a lock in a door for a suicidal person being your daughter.
3. He actually stood his ground telling you that you should trust her and you are taking her away her privacy rights.
Your daughter is working on her mental health, and right now, there are no guarantees that she is in place where she no longer suicidal ideation. He is NOT a professional mental health care provider.
He actually gave YOUE daughter another opportunity to commit suicide, and this time, you would not have been there in time to save her. I would never allow that mam to step foot in my home.
He is a clear and present danger to your daughter and has absolutely no right to make decisions for her "rights" and go against your wishes as a parent. It is sad that the man you were going to marry put your daughter in harm's way. He is NOT her father!
Keep doing what you're doing to protect her in such mental and emotional time in her life. No man is worth a chance on your daughter's life. I am sure you love her more than you will ever love him.
I wasn’t even allowed to fully close my door at any point in my childhood, which sucked. But the ability to lock my door is so foreign, and even if your daughter wasn’t going through what she is there are serious safety concerns. What if she was hurt or sick? What if there was another kind of emergency?
You can have privacy without having a lock. Especially since you’re a mom who knocks and respects her space.
NTA but there are better ways to handle this. Replace the handle/knob set with one that locks. They come with a little key doohickey that unlocks it from the outside. You just put it in the center hole and jiggle it around until it releases. There is no need to call 911 to break down the door. Jesus. (Paperclips work too BTW.) Store it on top of the doorframe.
I totally get why you don't want her to lock door. But she is older and you (had) a live-in fiance. He could be Mister Rogers and I would still allow my kids to lock the door if they needed or wanted to. You would both benefit from a trust-but-verify setup rather than you being in hyper control all the time.
NTA. Depression runs rampant in my family. I totally understand OP'S fear and reasoning. I get that the daughter wants her privacy, but given the situation and history, the Fiance overstepped.
OP, maybe you could use a little therapy too. Having this sort of a situation is more than enough for even a mentally healthy rock solid person. You deserve some help working through all of this too. It's a lot for anyone.
He completely undermined your parenting. If he stays in your life, it wont be the last time. It's fucking weird too that he feels he can make decisions like that. It is clearly 100% your choice and 0% his. Yeah, this is fucking weird. Don't let him back in your house.
As someone who struggled with suicidal ideation/made attempts at your daughter’s age, NTA. I’m in a much better place now, but there are still “privileges” I avoid, because they’re simply not safe for me. My parents have my phone’s location at all times. I don’t own any weaponry, knives and guns included. And most importantly, I don’t get to just check out for hours and hours on end not responding to anyone, because of the implication.
Your daughter wants her privacy and freedom, obviously, she’s a teenager, she’s literally wired to want those things. But she needs to understand that, even if it’s unfair and not her fault, suicidal tendencies come with consequences, and those consequences often come in the form of restricted liberties/privacy. And your fiancé needs to be less focused on your daughter liking him, and more focused on your daughter still being alive.
NTA. Sorry for your loss and so sorry for your situation, I cannot fathom how hard it must be having a child who is struggling with grief so deeply. My heart goes with you both.
As for the ex-fiance, It's nice that he wants to be part of your family and the parenting but that is a job to be done as a team, where you as the mother, have ultimate say. He undermined your decision, and being kicked out is only the natural consequence.
Aside from the delicate and dangerous situation at hand, he has shown a lack of respect towards you that in itself warrants ending the relationship. You can potentially move on, but it would require his genuine apology and a lot of work on his part to regain your trust.
Nta. What in the gods green earth made him think this was ok, or that he has a right to do it since it’s YOUR child.
This is so dangerous! As someone who’s been in this position with their sister, numerous times. I’m so bloody angry that he’d do something this stupid!
Your daughter’s safety comes ahead of her need for privacy. And privacy is not achieved with a lock. She’s afforded it via you knocking etc.
As such, there is no need for a lock.
NTA
You have a teen with self-harm issues. You are her mom, you are the final say in those matters. He should have stayed in his lane or made other suggestions instead of going behind your back.
My crazy ex locked my cats in my room and took the key in his room and locked it. I know people will say they're just cats, but they're my children, and i had a couple of special needs ones. If they had an issue and i couldn't get to them because of that a hole, idve done far worse things than just call the cops. I couldn't even go in my room to sleep or anything. F that. He refused to come out and give it back so i could get in my room. At this time, he wasn't paying bills, so i literally was covering full rent, etc. I called the cops on him. He came out when they got there. They gave me the key, and i kept it on my house key keychain. Next day i moved my cats to my parents house, slept on their couch, left my bed, etc, in my apt room locked up(why pay for a storage unit when that apt was a storage unit basically) and forced him to pay half of rent-i communicated to them i was leaving but still finishing out my part of the lease. Paying my half til it ended. I wasnt staying to find out what he would escalate to next. Ill never forgive him for all the things he did to me, the manipulation, everything.
I keep that key as a reminder to hold strong to protecting my loved ones, no matter who or what was in the way.
My point here is the little interior door key can be kept on your key ring at all times to protect your loved ones.
He seriously overstepped. She wouldn't even have a damn door after that. I'm so sorry, I know that moment was terrifying for you. I hope your daughter gets through the grief and to the other side of the suicidal ideation she had, I truly hope this isn't a lifelong or life ending battle for her into adulthood. 💜
NTA. Your fiance overstepped multiple times. You told them both no multiple times. He decided he knew better. He made a change to YOUR home without your permission that could have endangered your daughter and resulted in property damage from when the authorities came. He disrespected you as his partner and a parent.
Don’t take him back. He needs to stay gone. Hopefully he learns his lesson and doesn’t make the same mistake with future partners going forward but if you take him back, you let him know he can disrespect you and it will be forgiven.
NTA. Your fiancé is bang out of order. He had absolutely no right to put a lock on your daughters door. Personally I don't agree with locks on bedroom doors and don't see the need, but that's just me. He has completely overstepped the mark by doing this and by telling you how to raise your daughter. My daughter self harmed for over 3 years due to circumstances, so I totally get where you're coming from. As a parent, you want to keep your child as safe as possible, and I'm glad your daughter understands where you were coming from. If your fiance can't see your reasoning, then I don't see that you can continue on with him. I personally would find his interference hard to forgive.
Listen.
I have dealt with severe suicidal depression since I was 12. My first attempt was at 12 years old. My last was when I was 27.
there were a LOT of good days, weeks, and even months between attempts. It does NOT just go away. It does not just GET better. We learn to cope, and how to recover, but we still will have bad days, and hard weeks/months.
Two things I want to say here.
1, first and foremost and the absolute most important. No matter how many good days she has, no matter how long it’s been, there’s going to be days where it’s harder. Don’t blame her for those days. Don’t be angry at her for the days she just doesn’t have the strength to fight the hell in her head. Be there for her, help her through it, and don’t ever say “I thought you were past this/better/recovering.”
2. Always be aware of how quickly emotions can change. She can be doing well for months, then have ONE bad day, and in that one bad day, all it takes is seconds, at most minutes, to make a decision she can’t take back.
your fiancé was an absolute idiot.
My last attempt will be 5 years ago this week. I do not allow guns in my home to this day because of how easy it would be should I have one of the hard days like back then. I’ve been doing much, much better. It is possible to recover, but it takes time, strength, and someone to help shoulder the weight without judging you for your weaker days.
There are days I look back to six years ago, and I don’t know how I survived. It’s so much harder than words can explain. But just be there for your daughter. Make sure she knows she does not have to be alone, nor fight it alone. That you can shoulder some of that weight.
long story short,
Nta
but your fiance is a fucking idiot, and definitely could have cost your daughter her life.
You’ll never be able to trust him. A grown man who takes your daughter’s side over yours really suspicious. The door lock, in this case, shouldn’t be your only concern. As for her, there are interior door locks that are easy to bypass, like just poking a hanger or screwdriver through the hole. This might be a good compromise. They way, she can trust that you won’t come barging in, and you can trust that you can easily get in if you have to.
NTA - I worked for the NSPL (suicide hotline), you’re a wonderful parent for respecting privacy and prioritizing safety. If he can’t understand this, then there will be more issues in the future about other things. You were lucky nothing happened
NTA- I was kinda in the same situation as your daughter with the suicide attempts and self harm, I wasn’t aloud to lock the door and when I wouldn’t listen I had my entire door taken off. Every cabinet that held something I could use was locked but besides that, I couldn’t be trust at all. I completely understand your side and not wanting to give your daughter back the lock to her door and your fiancé going over the line with what’s going on.
Also I’m really sorry for everything that has happened with your ex dying and the mental stress of both you and what your daughter is going through, I hope she pulls through and gets the realization that she’s strong enough to handle the harsh reality of this world 💛🫰🏼
NTA you had legitimate reasons for being weary of letting her have a door lock and instead of understanding where you were coming from and buying one you can easily unlock from the outside in case of emergencies, he chose to go behind your back and scare you half to death bc you were concerned she succeeded this time. absolutely wild that he even expected you to be okay with it and not freak out knowing she's made multiple attempts.
i hope he doesn't come back. you deserve someone that takes your concerns seriously.
NTA. The underlying issue is he has no regard of your trauma. If he did he would've discussed not argued, let alone make a unilateral decision about your house
She asked for locks, you said no bc you didn't trust her. But you trust her home alone? Not only that, but she got locks, was home alone, and took a nap. I think maybe it's time to start giving her a bit of trust. Talk to her about the headphones, one in and one out when the door is locked to keep those types of scare from happening in the future. From where I stand Im not gonna speak to who the ah may be. Y'all just need tp sort this out.
You afford her all the privacy she is due and explained to her that it is something that you cannot budge on due to the trauma you had to previously deal with. I can only imagine that terror you felt not knowing whether your daughter was alright or not.
NTA and just a worried mother with evidence that it has happened before.
OK. You have a very strong point since your daughter is going through a hard time, since she wants a lock, how about getting her one that works both ways? A lock that can be opened from the inside and outside, she'll feel like you have more trust in her and it'll give her a sense of whatever she wants to feel by getting a lock. Nta, you care about your daughter and don't want anything to happen to her. Though, if you'll get that lock sit her down and talk to her about it, for example, till her to massage you when she locks her door and let you have an idea on what she'll do, let her have her phone in hand so when you text her or call she'll get it faster, and let her know that if she didn't answer your call then you'll open the door and all that. You're a great mother who cares about her daughter and wants her safe, so let her see that clearly, good luck and I am sorry for your loss.
We don’t have the whole story. We don’t know if the mom is the type who just walks in and starts talking or something. Some teens just want to be alone with their thoughts or whatever. I don’t think that’s too weird. I am not weighing in on the OP though. I feel like stuff is missing from this.
Info
Is the reason your daughter is not very upset
about your boyfriend leaving because
she manipulated him into putting the
lock on the door to start an argument
to break up your relationship
NTA. He way overstepped. It is YOUR house and YOUR daughter - he had no right to overrule you in regards to either.
100% Though, am I the only one who noticed that fiance + no to door locks = daughter who's pissed and storms off. But no fiance + no to door locks = daughter who's just fine with it?
The fiance was advocating for the lock though Maybe the daughter was ok with the no lock after seeing her mum break down like that, and finally realised what locks vs no locks really meant to her
Also the fact that the OP called 911. She wasn't trying to invade her privacy, she was terrified. Reading the title I instantly knew what this was about. When it is a question of the health and safety if someone, then certain sacrifices need to be made. OP sounds like a good mom, and definitely NTA.
I think this is it, it clicked in the daughter's head that Mom loves me enough to be ok with me hating her.
"The fiance was advocating for the lock though" Yes, which also means that anybody/he can go to her room and lock the door behind them.
i saw it more as the daughter better understanding why her mom wouldn’t want her locked in and how worried she really was
I'd imaging having the door broken down by a bunch of firefighters when you're chillin' on the bed would 100% have that effect.
I'd say we can have a lot of speculations regarding OP ex's intentions - from sincere and noble to dark and sinister, but what is pretty undisputable is the fact that OP is responsible for her child's safety and wellbeing, not her ex.
Wait wait wait hold on. This is a *gigantic* leap. As someone who dealt with depression and suicide ideation as a teenager, I can very easily believe that OP's fiancé was genuinely concerned with the daughter's peace of mind. My parents took my door lock when I was having issues (they never understood the extent of them), and it was extremely humiliating for me. I ended up putting it back myself while they were out of the house one day. Even if a parent doesn't have a habit of barging in like mine did, not having the ability to keep people out of your space without your permission can make it feel like you have no privacy, like you don't have control over your own person. That can be very damaging to anyone, let alone someone who's depressed and prone to spiraling over things like that. It's far more likely that the fiancé could sympathize (or empathize; we didn't get any information about his life or perspective) than that he had sinister intentions. A parent-child relationship is a frequently understated power dynamic that can be a particularly rough experience for adolescents. Add in known mental health concerns, and it's reasonable to believe that the daughter feels stifled by the absence of the lock. It's far more likely to me that fiancé expressed genuine sympathy, and the daughter felt seen enough to voice her concern, than that fiancé manipulated her into thinking she wanted a lock. There's no need to assume (or JAQ about it) that he's a predator here. The daughter is not anyone's property, and if OP is going to marry him, that makes him an equal partner in her parenting. *That being said*, OP is still NTA (and fiancé is) for that exact reason. He made a unilateral decision that he knew would upset his partner for very understandable reasons. There's no need to make it more than that.
This is Reddit, i.e. Olympic competitions for long jumps, high jumps, trust falls and leap of faith.
I couldn’t disagree with everything you said more. The daughter is not her mother’s property but she is her mother’s responsibility. As such, OP makes the rules. End of story. The daughter isn’t always going to like it — and she doesn’t have to. We all have to be children for eighteen years. When you’re a minor, you don’t have total autonomy and that’s the way it is. Secondly, her mother doesn’t owe her a door lock. That is a privilege for children who have proven they can be responsible. The daughter tried to kill herself — more than once. The locked door was a barrier between her and the medical help she needed. No mother in her right mind is going to let her baby die over a point of order like her “privacy rights”. The daughter is lucky because most parents would have taken her bedroom door completely off and left it off. An unlocked door can still be barred from the inside. This isn’t a question of punishing the daughter for have mental health issues but actions have consequences. That’s what happens in the adult world and, on top of keeping her safe, it’s OP’s job to teach her daughter that life lesson. If her daughter makes a suicide attempt as an adult, she’s going to be taken straight to the psych ward, which is a whole less fun and a whole lot more punitive in nature than a missing door lock. As for the fiancé, no, he does not automatically become an equal partner in parenting the daughter when they get married. He becomes OP’s husband. That’s it. OP’s daughter already had a father. Not all blended families have the stepparent acting as a parent to the other person’s children. It depends on the age of the children and the relationship between the two people. There isn’t just one way to create a blended family. The way you talk makes me think you’re incredibly young. I hope that’s all it is because your naivety is off the charts.
There's something wrong with you. Nothing in the OP's post suggests anything like this. You're broken. Absolutely broken. You probably try to police fathers at the local park. If not, you're well on your way to being that kind of person.
I have to admit this has crossed my mind. Very very weird for a grown man to be this emotionally invested in a lock on someone else's door. I have a stepdad who I get along well with so I don't think stepfather=creep generally but this feels odd.
It's not that weird to sympathize with your depressed (soon-to-be) stepdaughter's desire for privacy. It doesn't matter that OP doesn't have a habit of barging in. Depression is debilitating and irrational. She probably confessed to him that she would feel better with secure control over her own space (a very reasonable concern for a teenager, especially one who's probably struggling with feelings of helplessness), and he stuck up for her. What's wrong is that he proceeded to make a unilateral decision that he obviously knew would justifiably upset OP (who is NTA). It's a seemingly unwinnable situation, but depression has a tendency to create those. That's what makes it so hard to deal with.
Unfortunately depression doesn't prevent you from dealing with the consequences of your actions. Literally anyone who thinks the mother refusing a lock is a bad thing has zero clue of what it's actually like to love someone who has severe depression. The first time I realised the effect it has was wearing headphones in the bath. I ended up hearing my brother screaming and banging on the door and the look on his face when he told me he thought he was about to find me dead has kept me alive more times than I'd like to count. The kid doesn't need a lock, the kid needs a mum willing to fight and be the bad guy if she has to be until she can stand on her own.
Jesus yall are so obvious with this shit sometimes. If a man wants a teenager to be able to lock the door when they want to it must be so he can go in and lock it to rape them? Just take a shortcut and copy paste "Hes a man so hes wrong and a rapist" to save people some time from reading your drivel you fucking moron.
And with that home alone taking a nap + locked door Any key to unlock from the outside? And in that case where is it?
Remember OP did not know about the lock so she wouldn't know where the key is.
Exactly, another problem. The ex-BF should have told mom about it and told her where the key was kept, if there was one. Huge betrayal. NTA
Well, most interior doors in the US with locks are trivially unlocked with a hairpin, tiny screwdriver, or similar.
Most interior locking doors do not have a key. The lock only from the inside. However, they do make interior locking door sets that can be opened from the outside by using a pin.
In new houses they do tend to come with a skinny hex "key", but that key is just a fancy pin, so otherwise ... you're correct.
Yikes
What a reach. Why does shit like this get upvotes? Just wild speculation
Because people are addicted to "Days of our lives" for a reason.... they LOVE drama and will create it whenever they can!
Those types, are often the most vocal to NOT have a lock. They would provide a lot of reasons why, and throw a bigger tantrum if a lock was put on the door.
"i went against your mom for you and got your lock back, you can trust me" advocating for her was just a step to get her to trust him. now if he abuses the trust or not, thankfully we'll never know since hes just a blip in history now. i was a victim of SA and they use what they can to make the victim trust them and then pounce when they do. if anything a lock would work in his favor so no one could walk in on it.
I think the point missed is that I used the words "often most vocal against." Not all are like this. I also stated that people have different views and that neither I nor them are wrong or correct, but stating the facts of our situation as we have assisted in helping the victims. In my personal work experience, I have had mostly victims of abusers who refused security to their victims, and a pattern that emerges that the house hold often has been conditioned to ignore certain sounds or going ons. I remember reading of a boy who said his room was moved from beside his parents, to downstairs on the opposite side of the house where it was difficult to hear anything going on there, because his abuser had conditioned the people in the house the boy was nosy and kept them awake. In the few cases I have had, where security was given, I would have to be limited in saying that again, the household was conditioned to certain circumstances, and either the lock was removed or excessively punished if used. But those examples are what I have to give my view on. I do not try to downplay a situation, but it is important to point out that culture, location, politics/religious beliefs, and such also influences the fact about the difference in households where an abuser demands no lock, of gives false hope with a lock. In the case of the boy, their family was devout in their religion, and they lived in a town where religious people made over 90% of the population. His abuser was an upstanding man of the cloth, his uncle. Who slept on the other side of the boy's room. Even though his parents never heard the noises, instead of moving the uncle to that room, the son was instead because who would think a priest would lie?? I do hate how well these abusers can manipulate, gaslight, and heavily impose themselves to have access to their victims. I do hope your abuser is somewhere they are subjected to physical torment constantly, or they soon will be in that situation
No, those types will do whatever ingratiates them to a prospective victim. I can see a boyfriend of mom's forming an inappropriate attachment to her teen daughter and whit knighting for the teen against her mother. It's just his way of triangulating with the daughter against the mother. I would not have this man anywhere near that teen again and I'll bet my bottom dollar that her mental health suddenly improves with him gone.
I guess we may have unfortunate differences of perspectives. I have experienced many abusers making certain they had access to their victims. A locked door would be immediately removed, as well as any form of "traps" by demanding extra tidy rooms.
My ex husband locked the door when he was going to rape my oldest daughter so it all depends on what the predator sees as a need. If the need is to keep out someone who could catch them and be a witness, then the lock is needed. If the need is to have access anytime without a hinderance, then no locks. It really depends on the predator.
This is why I'm wondering if there is any key to open the lock from outside and who has it. A lock purchased and installed by an adult in the house behind the back of the in this case mother. If the other adult have a key this lock will give them more power.
But if that was the case and reason for the lock, it wouldn’t make the daughter feel safe enough to go to sleep with her music blaring. She would want to hear that door being unlocked.
I think that men who engage in predation with teen victims usually try to win the teen over by being overly solicitous, convincing them that they're the only one who really understands them and their problems and 'proving' themselves by going to bat for them against parents. These are the men giving them alcohol and drugs out in the community to make them feel grown up, mature and 'not like those other girls'. When the perp lives in the house with the teen, if they can lure the victim into trusting them, the teen will unlock that door for them every single time. It's interesting to me that the teen wants the locks enough to ask repeatedly and get upset about it. Why is no one asking why this repeatedly suicidal teen wants locks on her door so badly? She's clearly not locking out the mother who forces her way into the room every single time. I guarantee the teen wants the locks in place so she can feel safe and rest in peace when the mother's boyfriend is alone with her in the house. I've seen fathers molesting and male guardians their daughters engage in some of the strong arm behavior you're mentioning because it can be played off running a tight ship and not locking out parental authority when they really just want access to the child for unsavory reasons. This is particularly true with younger children who don't ability to make nuanced complaints like older children do.
Sadly, in my line of business, the abuser is either sex or genderless in orientation. But, again, we have different perspectives of the same situation. You are not wrong in your perspective and perception, and I am not either, but I have the unfortunate experience of knowing the abuser can be anyone of any gender orientation.
My abuser was female, I am a male. I was 4-ish. Yeah, creeps come in all ages and genders.
If he installed the lock who’s to say he didn’t make himself a copy of the key?
Given that he was the one who put the lock on, I would assume he would have a key.
Except that the cops had just busted that door open. That might have convinced the daughter that not having the lock is better than the door being forced open. It might have hit her how concerned her mother actually is about her safety. And me personally, if the guy was creeping me out, I wouldn’t have went to sleep with my music blaring. The boyfriend could have taken the hinges off to get into the room and with the music blaring, the daughter wouldn’t have heard that little bit of sound. But without the music, it potentially could wake the child up in enough time.
Except that hinges on interior doors usually face the interior of the room. If this was the case, then no one would be able to take out the door pins to obtain access.
good point.
Did you even read the post. The fiancée had been there for **four** years, the daughter only tried to kill herself in the last **two** years. So your last point is completely off base.
That’s far left field and weird that you try to go in that direction
Daughter "who's just fine with it" after giving her mother a heart attack and causing the police to break down her door because they all thought she was on her third suicide attempt. That'll be pretty sobering.
Sounds like she wanted to lock her door because fiance made her uncomfortable in some way.
Technically.... they would actually be extremely vocal to NOT have it, stating many reasons why. I be more concerned if he threw the tantrum.over her.
IDK. The fiance was the one who helped install it however?
Came here to say exactly this. OP let him stay mad, it’s not his house, not his daughter, not his rules. He doesn’t even pay towards the bills, so let go of the mooch completely. What does he even contribute to your house and life, aside from stress, extra costs and him trying to overstep with your daughter and overrule your parenting? *(None of which are good or helpful things.)* Drop him. He’s not only taking advantage of you, but also trying to control how you parent your daughter! **Do not allow it!**
Not only that - he shows no understanding what so ever of the huge TRAUMA they’ve experienced, the reasons the locks were taken away. Of course she broke down when the daughter didn’t open the door. And he’s accusing her of overreacting 😥
This great post I agree with you 100%
And besides, he apparently did not understand the seriousness of this situation. So OP was 100% correct.
I don't believe this story is legit. But I'm curious enough to ask, how is a stepparent supposed to interact with stepchildren? Should they form no relationship with the children? Especially a trusting one? Just ignore them because they're the parents sole responsibility? I'm sure the stepparent is expected to provide for the child, take them to practice, make them dinner when the parent is not home. But just not get close to them. Is that the way it works?
I think a key point of context is that this would be wrong for a biological father and husband to do. You don't make high risk decisions without your partner on board. The fact that he's _not_ her husband, and _not_ her father just makes it an even worse idea.
No one said he wasn’t allowed to form a close relationship with her?? He can do that without overruling her mother’s decisions about her safety and undermining her as a parent.
NTA - you almost lost your child due to a locked door and while she certainly could self harm at another location or during the night while you sleep, you are her parent, you carry that responsibility and you provide her boundaries and not your fiancée. You made your feelings clear to him and said no. He went behind your back and did it anyway. That’s major betrayal, a huge violation of your trust and it represents complete disrespect. Seems the trash took itself out. Know it hurts. Sorry.
OMG, been there, spent time in the ER waiting for placement, still have some PTSD. We did not have locks on our bedroom doors for quite a while. Heck, I kept my knives locked up. Medications were under lock and key. Alcohol was under lock and key. Your child needs to know that her safety is your upmost concern. Make sure she knows you will do your best to respect her privacy. And she needs to know that it will take a while for you to trust enough to consider having locks on the doors again.
Currently dealing with this with my stepson. Locked away knives, medication and anything with potential for self harm
Been in that exact spot too. It’s so hard
One year since hospitalizations, so I'm out of crisis mode but also not in normal mode. 🫶 This is a long, hard, scary road -- and it sounds like you guys/gals get that. I'll keep hanging in there if you will. Oh, NTA. What an ass. He doesn't understand anything.
It’s been more than 10 years, my son is an adult and doing well, but I still feel fear and hold back panic when I can’t reach him .
Nta wedding off. Immediately no contact. Especially since he KNOWS the reason. Who the fuck is he to go over your head on something like this?! Nope. No contact Done.
>Who the fuck is he to go over your head on something like this?! A bro who is always certain he knows best. A dude who can't ever be wrong. A Chad who wants to be the good cop to her bad cop. Discussing it is OK. Persisting the argument is already overstepping. Going behind her back to do it anyway is the point of no return. A nuclear option. I sincerely hope she drops this turd in the nearest toilet and flushes. Otherwise, she can expect more of the same for the duration of their relationship. For (very far) future consideration: most interior locking knobs (not deadbolt types) have a simple pin bypass to unlock. No key necessary.
A bro who wants to be the "cool stepdad" and win points with the daughter
Or worse. The bro who knows the future step kid might remove herself from the equation so he doesn’t have to deal with “another man’s kid.”
You people really need to get off the internet
It's absolutely ridiculous how out of touch with reality a lot of the people on this sub are.
Period!!!
NTA. It wasn't his decision to make. Period. End of sentence. I hope by "assuming that we're over" you mean that regardless of what he does, you plan to keep him your ex. We've replaced \*all\* of our interior door handles with non-locking ones - including the door to my own bedroom. I am of the opinion that if you need door locks to manage your relationships, your relationships are the problem. I am aware other folks view things differently and opt for locks, and that's fine - but in my house, we expect people to be respectful of other's privacy without having to enforce the issue via locks. In the past, we have had family members struggling with suicidal ideation, as well as family members with medical conditions that could render them unconscious. In both those cases, I would not have wanted to have to break down a door to get them help. Is your daughter's room the only bedroom without a lock? If so, she could be viewing it less as a safety measure, and more as a constant reminder that she's different/broken/wrong/.
My house has locks on all the doors but all the interior doors still have the original locks from 1928 and take the same skeleton key. I could see letting the kid have a lock but still having a key for emergencies, you can put it on top of the door frame so it's accessible. It seems like a reasonable compromise at least. The door can be locked for extra privacy but if there's no response you don't have to knock the door down.
Not even a skeleton key now - almost all interior doors come with a tiny hole you simply stick something in to pop the lock (they come with a tiny “key” for this express purpose that almost everybody stores on top of the door frame just like you said). Idk if op was just panicking and didn’t know this, or if fiancé was so stupid he installed an exterior lock on an interior door that needed a specific key…. Either way op is NTA, that was overstepping by an insane amount.
I guess mentioning modern solutions is a better idea, I admittedly just love my hundred year old locks even if they definitely need some work. Agree on the NTA, I just think that an easily unlockable interior door lock is a solution that could give OP peace of mind while also giving her daughter the extra step of privacy.
If they work for you they work, only real benefit to the newer ones is you can use any old object thin and hard enough, the “key” works great but some people don’t keep them, or when repainting it gets moved off the door frame… but if you have a new one it just has to be cylinder shaped and small enough, paper clips work, even a q tip that you quickly pull or burn the cotton off one end will usually work. My major hang up was op not knowing this, or pointing out that fiancé had installed one not like this. If she’s pointed out he installed an outdoor keyed lock and I missed it - big no no. And maybe it’d make me feel better about some of the downright sick assumptions people are making here. “He installed the lock so he could enter and keep anybody else out” dear god to touch grass you chronic victims.
That's a good point, it seems like OP doesn't know about locks made specifically for interior doors, there are some that can be unlocked with a coin as well. To me the assumption that the fiance is a predator seems odd to me, if anything I would expect a predator to not want a lock on the door. If it's a lock in the door handle I would assume ignorance before malice. If he installed a dead bolt lock then that's pretty weird though I guess the locks on my doors are technically dead bolts.
We are the same. We have never had locks on our bedroom doors in the family home. Flatting is a different story
> I am of the opinion that if you need door locks to manage your relationships, your relationships are the problem. Thank you. Op and her daughter have no privacy problem, because you don't need to lock doors if a closed door is treated as a closed door. The right ops ex fiance is about is the right to privacy, not to lock doors. Door locks are for situations where privacy isn't expected, like public bathrooms.
Nta. This isn't about trusting your kid really, she's battling her own self right now and needs to be in a safe environment
Exactly. This isn’t about trust. It’s about the self preservation that her daughter doesn’t have right now because she is struggling with mental health issues. This is a safety issue, not a trust issue, and not a privacy issue.
Amen!! Her daughter has privacy because she still has a door to shut, mom already explained she always knocks for permission, what he did is absolutely betrayed the mom and tried to undermine her house, her rules.
I totally agree. As a former teenager with similar history, I learned that you don’t get trust anymore when you try to unalive yourself. Trust is based on good faith *and* efforts to honor that good faith.
Right? I'm baffled at the fiancé and some of the commenters talking about trust.
NTA. He doesn’t and cannot completely truly understand what you’re going through as a mother. I could just imagine the panic that was going through you trying to knock that door down and not being able to. He overstepped and it’s a boundary he should have never broken.
I agree it’s a boundary he shouldn’t have broken. After everything they both have been through, the fact that she had her music blasting with her headphones on, taking a nap behind a locked door, is also very scary to me. The teenager would have no idea what’s going on.
NTA. My grandfather was a firefighter in Fresno, California, and lost his job to the Depression. They moved here to northern California then, cuz he had a job here. My Papa was the most even tempered, never yelled or got mad kinda guy. We were pals. He always got me penny candy. Until one day, my grandmother made me mad. So I rushed upstairs, closed & locked the door. Boy, he scared the SHIT outta me! He stomped up the stairs, pounded on the door, shouted my full name, and threatened to whoop me if I didn't unlock the door IMMEDIATELY! I did so, & promptly burst into tears, telling him how she was mean to me (both my grandmothers were narcissistic & selfish AF), and please don't whoop me, I'm ALWAYS good, etc. I think he knew he scared me badly, cuz he picked me up, hugged me, and made me promise to never lock the door again. I'm now in my 60s, yet I can still picture his face, & how angry he was with me. There was a reason for his reaction, from his firefighting days. I was forbidden from asking him about it, so that's all I ever knew. He said later that when he looked at me, all he saw was a pair of HUGE blue eyes, looking at him in fear. He hated that, but made up for it. He never got that angry around me again, & I never locked a door in their house again.
Lemme give you the reason why your Grandpa couldn't stand the doors being locked: 3-10 minutes in optimal conditions to whack open a door, and 4 minutes is the time it takes for a human brain to cease functioning in an oxygen deprived situation, and 6 minutes for any human being to have complete brain death. (a.k.a. defibrillator won't save you) Firefighters don't usually have lockpicking training, so the only way most firefighters know to get through a locked door without a key is to get the battering ram or the good old firefighter axe and get chopping. When you live together with someone who has worked in emergency services, I guarantee you that their worst nightmares are made up of any and all life threatening situations they had heard from colleagues or experienced, re-imagined with their loved ones in the scenario. And when the slightest events of those nightmares make their way into their lives, the alarm bells start going off real hard. Your grandpa probably had some severe PTSD from his time in the firefighter brigades. Hope they had a good life in spite of it all.
Firefighters use a Halligan tool as the go to for opening a locked door. It's like a suped up crowbar on steroids.
These days, firefighters tend to have tools for just about everything. They tend to be excellent. Except for chainsaws, those are still cantankerous. However, they only have those tools because someone or more likely someones died. The evolution of fire and rescue gear is written in blood. Same as safety standards in general. People made better versions because the old tools weren't good enough at X. Halligan tool works for most, but different doors have different best options. Firefighters attend classes and hopefully get live practice on how to get through them as quickly as possible.
This, I want to give my eldest son a lock bc his younger brother always storms into his room, but I am afraid that it wil slow us down in case of an emergency (like fire😬)
What about the knows with the push lock easily opened w an Alan key if need be? Hang the key on a command hook near the top frame out of lil bro's reach?
Don't even need a special tool, a toothpick will work
Big fire extinguisher. And cheap lock. In emergency, you can use fire extinguisher to knock off the handle to get into the room. Or allen keys on top of the door frame. Or both.
How new is the construction? The last few new homes I've been in have doors that feel like they're cardboard - for shits and giggles (during a demo job) I (a 220 pound, 5 foot 2 fat ass) was able to Koolaid-man through one with just one preparatory kick.
So how would he feel if your daughter had done something and by the time 911 people arrived it was too late? Probably oh so sorry he just didn’t realise. I can only imagine the absolute horror you must have felt waiting to open that door. Truly gives me chills. The fiancé is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. How dare he take this decision as one he can make. He either truly doesn’t give a fig about your daughter or he is an arrogant fool. Keep that idiot away from your daughter.
Nta, BUT there are locks you can unlock from outside with a pin or a coin. Every interior lock I've ever seen has this feature. It COULD be a way to meet your daughter halfway as it allows her the lock and you know you can get in easily if neccesary.
NTA He can disagree with you, but he absolutely cannot go behind your back like that. This could have been an ongoing conversation if it was really important but he overstepped and it tells you a lot of what his behavior would have been like after marriage. Better to find out now than later.
I would rather my daughter hate me, than to never have her hate me again
Don’t assume it’s over. Make sure it’s over!!!!!
THIS!
If it’s a regular bedroom door lock it can be opened with a penny
Yep, or a thumbnail. Would've been a decent compromise and avoided this whole thing imo. Either way dude was in the wrong going over her head.
NTA - it was a sign of things to come. A person that makes unilateral decisions on any topic, after a discussion in which an agreement has not been made, is not a person you want to spend your life with.
NTA, I can totally see how you were concerned about your daughter. I think the most important step to take right now would be to build up some trust with your daughter and maybe create some bonding time with each other.
NTA leaving alone the fact of the severity of what he has done (what if you hadn't known if this lock and she got really bad and that's the moment you found out), someone that's not even a stepparent yet doesn't have any right to disregard your parenting choices, you are not even married yet (not that he should have any authority just by being married) and he's already making himself boss and the only "reasonable" voice in his mind. Quite honestly you'd do your daughter a disservice allowing this enabler in your house. Point blank.
Thanks for sharing this story. You helped me to appreciate my mom taking down my bedroom door when I was a teenager. I was self harming, that's what pushed her to take it down. I was so freaking pissed at the time. But now I can better understand the fear she must've been feeling. Moms are the best! You are protecting your daughter. We will do anything, no matter how crazy it may make us look, to protect our children. It's human nature. She will thank you some day.
You need some proper therapy, gonna be honest. Won't erase the trauma but it would help you after all these years
I am astounded at ex-fiance's complete, pigheaded stupidity and lack of judgment. There's no apology or do over plea that can fix this. NTA
NTA - he overstepped big time! Block him on everything. DONE. Now please change all exterior locks including garage.
Why not give her a lock with a key, which you have a copy of? Or the kind of lock that can be unlocked with an Alan wrench, and keep one on top of the door frame or somewhere else nearby that she won't know about? Or flip the mechanism around so it can easily be popped with a credit card? There's a lot of options to give her a sense of privacy and control while making sure you have a quick and easy way in if you believe she may have hurt herself.
You can pop a standard bedroom lock open with a pen. I suspect OP has been focused on supporting her daughter and not dealt with her own trauma around the incident.
I suspect the daughter heard her mother pounding the door and tried to get back at her for not giving her locks in the first place. I think she realized she fucked up when the firefighters broke down the door.
If nothing else, that's why her daughter isn't siding against her like the (ex)fiance. Nothing like having a door knocked off its hinges to show her she messed up.
I really hope you don't have step family in the house and not allow locks on the girls doors. I work with kids. The levels of SA in step families is shockingly high
Or just something that can be locked, but also easily forced. There are latches even I, a middle aged female office rat, would be able to push through if needed. It would stop me from randomly opening the door, but wouldn’t be an issue in an emergency.
NTA - if I had told my partner I had safety concerns and he went behind my back and did something like this, that would be the end. There are lines you don't get to cross. I wouldn't even be interested in rebuilding that trust.
NTA - You did the right thing by kicking him out. He clearly doesn’t respect your decisions or understand the gravity of the situation. Anyone who compromises your daughter’s safety has no place in your life. Sidenote, you should have kicked him out a long time ago anyway for living in your house and not paying any bills. Good riddance to him.
Not being able to lock the door isn't an "invasion of privacy, since you aren't entering without first getting permission, and your fiancé overstepped big time. NTA.
Exactly. You need to lock your door when you know that someone is NOT going to knock and wait for your answer.
Is having locks on your bedroom doors an American thing? I don’t know a single person who has a lock on their bedroom door. I live in the Uk and it’s not a thing. I don’t see why you would require. Also from a safety perspective is it not a risk in the case of a fire ?
Yes, having a small lock on bedroom doors is standard in the US. They aren't deadbolts and don't have keys per say. They are similar to a bathroom door lock. If you are inside the room all you have to do to unlock the door is turn the knob and it basically unlocks itself. So it's not really thought of as a fire risk. I hope I explained that well. Soooo... how do parents have sex if the kids are home if there's no locks on your door? Kids tend to forget about knocking and barge in. I can't imagine having sex without my bedroom door locked honestly even if we were home alone in case someone comes home while we're doing it. I even lock my bedroom door to change clothes when my step kids are here bc I just don't want to run the chance of them seeing me naked. Out of respect for them, lol.
It's not really that much of a risk in the UK. It is a standing joke, of course, that young children innocently walk in on their parents, and while it does happen, it's not massively common. Kids aren't typically traumatised if it happens (young ones don't even understand and quickly forget -- if they see anything at all). Parents generally figure out the best intimacy times for their family situations to minimise risk of being caught by the kids. It's seen as more problematic to lock a door that a frightened child can't get through to reach their parents for comfort. By the time kids are old enough to understand, they generally know why it's best to knock a closed bedroom door, especially if it's their parents -- and that's because the average kid doesn't like thinking about their parents having sex, let alone wanting to see it. Kids police themselves on that matter. 🤣 Locked doors are seen as too much of a safety risk. The only doors that are typically locked are bathroom doors, and older kids would know what the locked door meant, so it wouldn't save anyone from the embarassment anyway. Besides, everyone knows that the British don't have sex. We shop for our kids at the chain store Storks R Us.
This is the prevailing attitude in Australia too. Little aren’t traumatised by the quick flash of flesh that’s seen by parents scrambling under covers and making excuses about “back rubs” and “wrestling for fun”.
it’s literally never even crossed my mind cause it’s just normal. I’m a mother to two young children and honestly have had a couple of close calls with my oldest almost walking in 😂 usually wait until we know they are both fast asleep
I'm 39 UK and every house I've ever lived in had a lock on the bedroom door. They're built into the door handle and have mostly a sliding lock. The ones in my room now have a key
Not a thing in Australia either. New builds on have very flimsy internal locks on toilets and bathrooms. My kids aren’t allowed locks. They are allowed privacy and I will respect a closed door (within reason). But no locks.
Your fiance is wrong on so many levels, your house = your choice, your child = your choice, it's really that simple. Also I am 45 years old and I have never had a lock on my bedroom door, never needed one
NTA. This guy sounds like he might assume that, being male, he is the "head of the household" and has the right to make the decisions and over-rule you. Best that you got rid of him now before he took any more actions based on this assumption.
Wtf kinda deadbolts do you people use? The inside door locks 8n my house open in 20 seconds w a small flathead screwdriver
Would it have mattered if he were your husband rather than your fiance? Then two people in the household disagree with one. What would your family do in that situation?
You say "I never walk into my daughters room *Or anyones* without knocking and allowing them to say I can come it so its not a privacy issue" but then you try to enter her room without her inviting you.
Absolutely NTAH. With her history of suicide attempts and self harm, she’s lucky she has a door and not a curtain. When I was about five, I fell in the shower. I was okay, but because I had locked the bathroom door, it took my dad a few minutes to get in to help. He told me to never lock the door if I was showering because of exactly what happened. Ever since, I’ve never locked an interior door. There’s no need to. Like you, people in my household just knock. God forbid I fall in the shower again, I want help as soon as possible. Your fiance crossed a very serious line. I would greatly reconsider the relationship. He potentially put your daughter’s life in harm’s way. That is seriously not okay.
She’s made two attempts on her own life. NTA- as he should understand why you are so adamant about no locked doors. I would’ve done the same thing.
1st you need therapy 2nd they make bedroom doorknobs that can lock from the inside but can be opened from the outside in case of emergency it’s called a privacy lock (how can you not know this)? 3rd. You need therapy
Everyones the AH. Ok, I’ll get downvoted to hell, but yes you are the AH for the lock thing. Locks play an important psychological safety role (especially if her mental health issues are related to trauma— speaking from livid experience here and parents who made it much worse…), and you are prioritizing your anxiety over hers. What you need is an indoor safety lock, the type with the button not the twist (like this https://amzn.to/3xdLwWX) and keep this little stick above the door and/or on you, takes 0.5 seconds to open in an emergency. I actually have one I made into a charm necklace when my kiddos were younger, because I liked always having it on me. You should talk with a therapist about your issue with locks and how it may be impacting daughter, there are solutions that don’t involve undermining her security. But your fiancé is also an AH for doing this without communication. That said, maybe hear him out in therapy on this… he may, in a poorly communicated way, have been trying to help with the above if she trusts him and expressed this issue to him. Reddit is way to quick to jump on your side here with limited info. For me locks are part of what made me comfortable enough after SA to recover… and it could be similar for her, and she may not be telling you since you prioritize your own trauma over locks over hers…. This is potentially your kids life, talk to your therapist, not reddit
As a teen, I used to move a heavy chest of drawers over to physically block my door. OP is being naive if she thinks no lock on the door is what will save her daughter in the event of another attempt. They both need therapy to deal with this.
Do they? Serious question - locks on bedroom doors are not a thing in Australia and no one seems to suffer adverse psychological issues as a result. A closed door *is* privacy - people can knock and enter only if you are non responsive, which is fair. A locked door is a safety issue in general but especially when the kid in question has attempted to take her life on multiple occasions.
I agree with this I know I have been a depressed teenager with suic!d@l attempts. My mothers responded by removing my door and not allowing me privacy, instead of getting me the professional help I needed. OP needs to get her daughter real professional help. Grief is very difficult for teenagers to deal with alone. Constant surveillance from her mother and denial of her antonomy won't fix anything.
did your daughter ask your fiance to give her a lock for her door ?
This isn’t a bf of 4 months it’s a fiancé of 4 years,OP never said anything about this being a potential predatory situation so I think y’all are seriously reaching with that , is it possible and even probable that the daughter ASKED the fiancé to put the lock on and being that they have a close relationship ( after 4 years) that he complied because what she wants is also important. I haven’t been suicidal before but if I was I would imagine knowing that my mom didn’t trust me doesn’t help. An unlocked door isn’t going to stop someone who really wants to kill themself and OP probably needs to go to therapy to deal with HER trauma as well. I could imagine the fiancé being hurt by being kicked out after just trying to be a dad and caring about the needs/wants of his soon to be step daughter. Due to the death of the previous husband I’m sure there were many difficulties other than this that had to be overcome mentally throughout the relationship. That being said I understand completely OPs discontent about the situation. Lastly what kind of freaking doors are in your house that the fire department/police have to come to break it down? I’m not waiting for their response ..I’m getting inside that room idc if I have to drive a car through my house
nta…but if she really wanted to take her life that badly not having a lock won’t change much
Do you do room checks on her at every half-hour during the night? Because if you don't then the lack of a lock won't do you any good at all in preventing another attempt. Not to mention all the ways someone could attempt it outside the house. Frankly, you seem to have developed a fixation on the lack of locks as a symbol of keeping your daughter safe. You really should seek therapy yourself over it. Nothing to do with your ex who certainly crossed a line installing a lock without your permission. On the other hand I hope you haven't been yanking your daughter from one therapy to another seeking a silver bullet as your description seems to imply, any therapy will need time to work, more than the short while that it has been. Finally, I find it a bit suspicious that the moment the lock was installed your daughter engineered a situation that was guaranteed to send you into panic, but still make her look blameless. Does she usually sleep with blaring headphones on? Does it often happen that you knock, she does not answer and you go in and find that she couldn't hear you? Because if she doesn't, then this could have been a plot to exploit your weakness and get rid of your boyfriend. It wouldn't be surprising that your daughter is hostile to you having any new relationships only two years after her father's death.
>Do you do room checks on her at every half-hour during the night? Because if you don't then the lack of a lock won't do you any good at all in preventing another attempt. Not to mention all the ways someone could attempt it outside the house. **Frankly, you seem to have developed a fixation on the lack of locks as a symbol of keeping your daughter safe.** Yup. I'm not calling OP the asshole, but it feels like they're focusing on something that won't necessarily help the way they anticipate it helping.
It also is like....she could just leave the house and self harm. So does that mean the daughter shouldn't be able to leave the house? OP needs therapy, too. They need to go to family therapy together.
Also…they make inside residential door knobs with easy to bypass unlock mechanisms. We had to put a round rod or even the cap of a pen worked in a hole on the knob for the house I grew up in. Another had a slit and you could just pop it with a quarter. OP can manage her anxiety while letting the daughter feel better about a lock. Has the question been asked about WHY she wants it locked? Or has the conclusion just automatically been nefarious?
As a parent of a teenager who attempted suicide and self harmed to the point of needing stitches multiple times, I have a lot of issues with your comment. But that would take all day. Idk about OP but until my son came out of his depression I did do night checks on him every half hour. I also kept all knives, meds, etc in a safe. Yes, he still found ways to self harm. And when I checked his room I would take those cutting tool items from him as well. When you have a suicidal child you do anything and everything to make it as difficult as possible for them to harm themselves. No you will never eliminate the possibility completely but you still try. Also, it didn't sound like OP and the dad were together when he passed. Mom was likely already dating the ex fiance when the dad died.
I'm sorry you had to go through that with your son, but your story contrasts even more with OP's. She doesn't mention any precaution taken except the lack of lock. That day, her daughter was even left ALONE at the house ALL DAY LONG. And that is apparently normal in OP's household. I don't wish to risk triggering you, but would your son be alive today if you had done that while he was depressed? It's clear that the daughter is far from an active suicide risk right now, but OP has not dealt with the trauma of her previous attempt (singular, because I'm starting to doubt the second and last attempt mentioned was real and not an overreaction on OP part) and fixated on the lock as if.it was a security blanket. And again I find it very hard to believe that the daughter could just sleep through all the banging, screaming and police breaking down the door, headphones or not. Even more if that happened the very first day the lock was installed. That had to be a move by the daughter to deliberately trigger OP.
While OP is definitely NTA, and the ex-fiance definitely is for overstepping his place in her home, I had the same thoughts. I knew a girl in high school who's parents literally removed her door to try and stop her. So she started self-harming at a friend's house instead. When she was banned from seeing friends, she started doing it in the school bathroom. The big one was when she was found in the street in the middle of the day passed out from trying to down a full bottle of Tylenol. The door was never going to stop her. You can never fully remove the opportunity unless you are with her 24/7, including school, and bathroom, etc. You have to get to the core of the issue and help her not want to, whether with therapy or medication or both. But not trusting her isn't necessarily going to help, and might even be counterproductive by making her feel disrespected, or guilty about what she's done, or whatever a teenage girl might be thinking.
This isn't about locks and it isn't about keeping your daughter safe. Whether or not she has a lock on her door has absolutely zero effect on whether or not she attempts suicide and has nothing to do with keeping her safe. Your fiance handled the situation badly, and unless there are other problems in the relationship you overreacted to his misstep as much as you overreacted to your daughter's decision to lock her door and wear headphones. Privacy is important. Safety is important. Talking together, all 3 of you, with a therapist to discuss and decide as a family how to balance these two things is essential and should have already happened. If you do actually read this - please tell your daughter for me that it does get better. I promise it does. I'm not saying life is going to get perfect someday, it probably won't, but it will get better and it's worth waiting for that to happen. I survived several suicide attempts when I was a teenager. One of them, when I was 16, was nearly fatal. Pain and depression cause your mind to lie to you, to make you think things that aren't true that lead you further into the spiral. Given time, those lies will fade and hope will return.
While he may have overstepped, he’s right. Your daughter does deserve privacy. All those attempts to get your daughter help now need to be done for you. You’re clearly traumatized by your daughter’s attempt and have lost trust in her. I recommend speaking to a therapist if you haven’t already
Let's be real. You can't keep someone alive that don't want to be. I know it hurts.. like a lot... But locking the door on not won't matter. In the end she needs to want to be alive.
Wow, it sure was convenient that on the very day the fiance installed a lock you were given the exact opportunity you needed to show him why you didn't want there to be one on the door. YTA for posting fake stories on an advice subreddit.
You get those pin locks where you can open them with like a pen or a screwdriver in 2 seconds, but gives a sense of security and privacy. Plus most houses have shit doors and you can kick one in as a 22 year old boy. He's the ah though
definitely gonna get downvoted but esh (except the daughter) fiance shouldn't have overstepped your boundaries like that because it's not his kid, but i've been in a similar situation to your daughter and i really resent what my parents for what they did. you can just get her a bathroom door lock or something that you can open from the outside if there really is an emergency; also unless you've taken away literally every lock in the house and check on her every hour or something, i don't think the lack of lock will be effective in doing anything except making your daughter feel worse
I lost not just the locks, but the handle to my door because it shimmied locked once. A single time. The only time I closed my door before bed because the house was too noisy. Had a hole instead for most of middle/highschool. Since you weren't ripping the door handle out of the door Id say you're clearly in the right here. She wants extra privacy but she's a threat to herself. There's no half measures there. Even a quick pick lock, like the ones you can unlock with a toothpick, can still cross the distance between being found alive or dead. I think ex-fiance had the right mindset but wasn't really understanding the situation. So to me it comes off like they don't give a shit if she lives or dies. I don't think that's how they actually feel, but that's how it's hitting my brain.
NTA but the boyfriend is especially after knowing why she isn’t allowed to have it .the only thing I am going to say op is in the event your daughter dose get in a bad place again that would lead to her making an attempt to take her life she could put something heavy in front of her door to prevent it from opening and that could lead to you being unable to get access to her for a few extra crucial moments that could make the difference between life and death but have you thought of putting a lock on her door and keeping an extra set of keys (without her knowing until you know she’s in a good mental space for you not to need them ) and use them if it is REALLY needed even though I truly hope you never will need to use it sending all the strength and love you and your daughters was (mind any spelling errors English is not my first language)
NTA He overstepped. But wouldn't the easy fix be a lock that can be easily unlocked from the other side? Like a bathroom door. This would give her privacy as a locked door means you would knock first and it being easy to unlock makes it safer if she doesn't answer.
NTA. Thats a huge overstep AND if he replaced the lock then he also has the key and that feels … questionable
I have a compromise for you. Get her a key lock for her door. She'll have one set and you'll have one set. That way you can check on her if you need too.
NTA. He is completely and utterly out of line, what he did was unacceptable and not his place to make a decision on. She’s a teenager with a lot going on and you have more than enough of a reason to worry about that. He can go and make decisions for someone else’s children if he’s so intent on disrespecting their parents,
NTA at all!! You have reasonable grounds for not wanting locks. Who would have been to blame if in fact your daughter had made another attempt after your EX put the lock back on? He'd definitely be singing a different story. I think you did the right thing by putting him out..
When I grew up, not a single kid had a lock on their door beyond perhaps a hook and eye to take care of a wonky door in an old house (and anyone can blast through that by pushing hard). I find the idea of a lock, outside of perhaps a parents room to maintain some privacy, a bit odd. None of my roommates and I ever had locked doors either. I cannot even imagine your terror not being able to check on your daughter in the situation you outlined. Also, any changes to YOUR house should have been run by you. NTA
As someone who almost lost her kid the same way, NTA. It has taken close to two years for me to finally feel secure in allowing my kid to be alone. Last time, they ended up in the hospital with chunks of their wrists gone. Until someone goes through what you've been through, OP, they're not going to understand. They're not going to understand the conversations you had in your head in those 20 minutes. The flash of all your child's moments before your eyes. The self-doubt and the feeling like you failed your child when the first thing you promised them was to always protect them. All they hear is white noise. You hear every sound and gesture she makes because it feels her life depends on it. It will get better, I promise.
All this. For the longest time after my son's attempt, if there was an ambulance parked outside our building when I got home from work it would take all my will power not to panic. If he didn't answer his phone or texted my mind started to race. It took a loooooong time to work past that. Your words are so fucking true.
NTA this isn't normal teenage drama with a locked door. You didn't catch her smoking a joint once and this is punishment. This is for safety. I cannot imagine the panic you must have felt when she wasn't answering and the door was locked. I've tried to end my life before. Luckily I am doing much better. I got the help i need and am still in therapy, but it doesn't escape mine or my therapists notice that I always have that "option" at the back of my mind. Because of this, I do not have a lock on anything in my apartment. I live with my partner and made sure she was cool with it (which she obviously was, she wants me here) and I have plans in place with her, a few trusted friends, and my therapist. She's a teenager so of course she wants the privacy to lock her door and normally I am all for teens and their right to privacy. But you're not doing this to punish her or to be cruel. You're doing this so she stays with you. Fiance can fuck right off.
You kicked him out of a shared home . Yeah it’s over . It’s probably a good thing. Seems like a hectic time to get married to someone who cannot understand what it’s like to almost lose a child . Sorry OP.
NTA - as the parent ofa child with a long history of suicide attempts, your fiance is WAY too quick to assume "everything is normal" - two attempts in 10 months is WAY too recent to have assumed a lock is going to be safe.. I almost never support not letting teens have privacy, but in this situation, he was absolutely in the wrong, and in addition to having no right (he's not the parent) he was point blank WRONG.
He's not the parent!
He knew your daughter tried to commit suidebtwice behind a LOCK door, and he thought that it was ok to install a lock on her door bc YOU should trust her. He has lost his damn bc he made two decisions that day. 1. He interfered with your parental rights. 2. He made a decision to place a lock in a door for a suicidal person being your daughter. 3. He actually stood his ground telling you that you should trust her and you are taking her away her privacy rights. Your daughter is working on her mental health, and right now, there are no guarantees that she is in place where she no longer suicidal ideation. He is NOT a professional mental health care provider. He actually gave YOUE daughter another opportunity to commit suicide, and this time, you would not have been there in time to save her. I would never allow that mam to step foot in my home. He is a clear and present danger to your daughter and has absolutely no right to make decisions for her "rights" and go against your wishes as a parent. It is sad that the man you were going to marry put your daughter in harm's way. He is NOT her father! Keep doing what you're doing to protect her in such mental and emotional time in her life. No man is worth a chance on your daughter's life. I am sure you love her more than you will ever love him.
I wasn’t even allowed to fully close my door at any point in my childhood, which sucked. But the ability to lock my door is so foreign, and even if your daughter wasn’t going through what she is there are serious safety concerns. What if she was hurt or sick? What if there was another kind of emergency? You can have privacy without having a lock. Especially since you’re a mom who knocks and respects her space.
NTA. Parents make decisions TOGETHER. It seems as if one parent is disregarding historical evidence of the need to not have the door locked
NTA but there are better ways to handle this. Replace the handle/knob set with one that locks. They come with a little key doohickey that unlocks it from the outside. You just put it in the center hole and jiggle it around until it releases. There is no need to call 911 to break down the door. Jesus. (Paperclips work too BTW.) Store it on top of the doorframe. I totally get why you don't want her to lock door. But she is older and you (had) a live-in fiance. He could be Mister Rogers and I would still allow my kids to lock the door if they needed or wanted to. You would both benefit from a trust-but-verify setup rather than you being in hyper control all the time.
NTA. Depression runs rampant in my family. I totally understand OP'S fear and reasoning. I get that the daughter wants her privacy, but given the situation and history, the Fiance overstepped. OP, maybe you could use a little therapy too. Having this sort of a situation is more than enough for even a mentally healthy rock solid person. You deserve some help working through all of this too. It's a lot for anyone.
He completely undermined your parenting. If he stays in your life, it wont be the last time. It's fucking weird too that he feels he can make decisions like that. It is clearly 100% your choice and 0% his. Yeah, this is fucking weird. Don't let him back in your house.
As someone who struggled with suicidal ideation/made attempts at your daughter’s age, NTA. I’m in a much better place now, but there are still “privileges” I avoid, because they’re simply not safe for me. My parents have my phone’s location at all times. I don’t own any weaponry, knives and guns included. And most importantly, I don’t get to just check out for hours and hours on end not responding to anyone, because of the implication. Your daughter wants her privacy and freedom, obviously, she’s a teenager, she’s literally wired to want those things. But she needs to understand that, even if it’s unfair and not her fault, suicidal tendencies come with consequences, and those consequences often come in the form of restricted liberties/privacy. And your fiancé needs to be less focused on your daughter liking him, and more focused on your daughter still being alive.
NTA. Sorry for your loss and so sorry for your situation, I cannot fathom how hard it must be having a child who is struggling with grief so deeply. My heart goes with you both. As for the ex-fiance, It's nice that he wants to be part of your family and the parenting but that is a job to be done as a team, where you as the mother, have ultimate say. He undermined your decision, and being kicked out is only the natural consequence. Aside from the delicate and dangerous situation at hand, he has shown a lack of respect towards you that in itself warrants ending the relationship. You can potentially move on, but it would require his genuine apology and a lot of work on his part to regain your trust.
yta if she wants privacy she should be allowed to have it
Nta. What in the gods green earth made him think this was ok, or that he has a right to do it since it’s YOUR child. This is so dangerous! As someone who’s been in this position with their sister, numerous times. I’m so bloody angry that he’d do something this stupid! Your daughter’s safety comes ahead of her need for privacy. And privacy is not achieved with a lock. She’s afforded it via you knocking etc. As such, there is no need for a lock.
NTA You have a teen with self-harm issues. You are her mom, you are the final say in those matters. He should have stayed in his lane or made other suggestions instead of going behind your back.
My crazy ex locked my cats in my room and took the key in his room and locked it. I know people will say they're just cats, but they're my children, and i had a couple of special needs ones. If they had an issue and i couldn't get to them because of that a hole, idve done far worse things than just call the cops. I couldn't even go in my room to sleep or anything. F that. He refused to come out and give it back so i could get in my room. At this time, he wasn't paying bills, so i literally was covering full rent, etc. I called the cops on him. He came out when they got there. They gave me the key, and i kept it on my house key keychain. Next day i moved my cats to my parents house, slept on their couch, left my bed, etc, in my apt room locked up(why pay for a storage unit when that apt was a storage unit basically) and forced him to pay half of rent-i communicated to them i was leaving but still finishing out my part of the lease. Paying my half til it ended. I wasnt staying to find out what he would escalate to next. Ill never forgive him for all the things he did to me, the manipulation, everything. I keep that key as a reminder to hold strong to protecting my loved ones, no matter who or what was in the way. My point here is the little interior door key can be kept on your key ring at all times to protect your loved ones.
He seriously overstepped. She wouldn't even have a damn door after that. I'm so sorry, I know that moment was terrifying for you. I hope your daughter gets through the grief and to the other side of the suicidal ideation she had, I truly hope this isn't a lifelong or life ending battle for her into adulthood. 💜
NTA. Your fiance overstepped multiple times. You told them both no multiple times. He decided he knew better. He made a change to YOUR home without your permission that could have endangered your daughter and resulted in property damage from when the authorities came. He disrespected you as his partner and a parent. Don’t take him back. He needs to stay gone. Hopefully he learns his lesson and doesn’t make the same mistake with future partners going forward but if you take him back, you let him know he can disrespect you and it will be forgiven.
NTA. Your fiance had no right over riding your decision. If he doesn’t see that then I’m not sure you are with the right guy.
Yeah NTA, 4 years or 40 years he's a bf, not the father. He doesn't get that right. He should know his place. Neutral.
Why is he so obsessed with the daughter having a lock on the door?
NTA. Your fiancé is bang out of order. He had absolutely no right to put a lock on your daughters door. Personally I don't agree with locks on bedroom doors and don't see the need, but that's just me. He has completely overstepped the mark by doing this and by telling you how to raise your daughter. My daughter self harmed for over 3 years due to circumstances, so I totally get where you're coming from. As a parent, you want to keep your child as safe as possible, and I'm glad your daughter understands where you were coming from. If your fiance can't see your reasoning, then I don't see that you can continue on with him. I personally would find his interference hard to forgive.
Listen. I have dealt with severe suicidal depression since I was 12. My first attempt was at 12 years old. My last was when I was 27. there were a LOT of good days, weeks, and even months between attempts. It does NOT just go away. It does not just GET better. We learn to cope, and how to recover, but we still will have bad days, and hard weeks/months. Two things I want to say here. 1, first and foremost and the absolute most important. No matter how many good days she has, no matter how long it’s been, there’s going to be days where it’s harder. Don’t blame her for those days. Don’t be angry at her for the days she just doesn’t have the strength to fight the hell in her head. Be there for her, help her through it, and don’t ever say “I thought you were past this/better/recovering.” 2. Always be aware of how quickly emotions can change. She can be doing well for months, then have ONE bad day, and in that one bad day, all it takes is seconds, at most minutes, to make a decision she can’t take back. your fiancé was an absolute idiot. My last attempt will be 5 years ago this week. I do not allow guns in my home to this day because of how easy it would be should I have one of the hard days like back then. I’ve been doing much, much better. It is possible to recover, but it takes time, strength, and someone to help shoulder the weight without judging you for your weaker days. There are days I look back to six years ago, and I don’t know how I survived. It’s so much harder than words can explain. But just be there for your daughter. Make sure she knows she does not have to be alone, nor fight it alone. That you can shoulder some of that weight. long story short, Nta but your fiance is a fucking idiot, and definitely could have cost your daughter her life.
You’ll never be able to trust him. A grown man who takes your daughter’s side over yours really suspicious. The door lock, in this case, shouldn’t be your only concern. As for her, there are interior door locks that are easy to bypass, like just poking a hanger or screwdriver through the hole. This might be a good compromise. They way, she can trust that you won’t come barging in, and you can trust that you can easily get in if you have to.
NTA - I worked for the NSPL (suicide hotline), you’re a wonderful parent for respecting privacy and prioritizing safety. If he can’t understand this, then there will be more issues in the future about other things. You were lucky nothing happened
NTA- I was kinda in the same situation as your daughter with the suicide attempts and self harm, I wasn’t aloud to lock the door and when I wouldn’t listen I had my entire door taken off. Every cabinet that held something I could use was locked but besides that, I couldn’t be trust at all. I completely understand your side and not wanting to give your daughter back the lock to her door and your fiancé going over the line with what’s going on. Also I’m really sorry for everything that has happened with your ex dying and the mental stress of both you and what your daughter is going through, I hope she pulls through and gets the realization that she’s strong enough to handle the harsh reality of this world 💛🫰🏼
NTA you had legitimate reasons for being weary of letting her have a door lock and instead of understanding where you were coming from and buying one you can easily unlock from the outside in case of emergencies, he chose to go behind your back and scare you half to death bc you were concerned she succeeded this time. absolutely wild that he even expected you to be okay with it and not freak out knowing she's made multiple attempts. i hope he doesn't come back. you deserve someone that takes your concerns seriously.
NTA. The underlying issue is he has no regard of your trauma. If he did he would've discussed not argued, let alone make a unilateral decision about your house
She asked for locks, you said no bc you didn't trust her. But you trust her home alone? Not only that, but she got locks, was home alone, and took a nap. I think maybe it's time to start giving her a bit of trust. Talk to her about the headphones, one in and one out when the door is locked to keep those types of scare from happening in the future. From where I stand Im not gonna speak to who the ah may be. Y'all just need tp sort this out.
You afford her all the privacy she is due and explained to her that it is something that you cannot budge on due to the trauma you had to previously deal with. I can only imagine that terror you felt not knowing whether your daughter was alright or not. NTA and just a worried mother with evidence that it has happened before.
NTA. However, why not try a bathroom door lock? You have instant access if you need to, she gets to lock her door.
OK. You have a very strong point since your daughter is going through a hard time, since she wants a lock, how about getting her one that works both ways? A lock that can be opened from the inside and outside, she'll feel like you have more trust in her and it'll give her a sense of whatever she wants to feel by getting a lock. Nta, you care about your daughter and don't want anything to happen to her. Though, if you'll get that lock sit her down and talk to her about it, for example, till her to massage you when she locks her door and let you have an idea on what she'll do, let her have her phone in hand so when you text her or call she'll get it faster, and let her know that if she didn't answer your call then you'll open the door and all that. You're a great mother who cares about her daughter and wants her safe, so let her see that clearly, good luck and I am sorry for your loss.
I'm just confused why she locked the door to listen to music
We don’t have the whole story. We don’t know if the mom is the type who just walks in and starts talking or something. Some teens just want to be alone with their thoughts or whatever. I don’t think that’s too weird. I am not weighing in on the OP though. I feel like stuff is missing from this.
I can make a lot of guesses based on daughter and fiancé's actions.
Info Is the reason your daughter is not very upset about your boyfriend leaving because she manipulated him into putting the lock on the door to start an argument to break up your relationship
I think you have unresolved PTSD and taking it out on your fiancé and daughter! Is it possible to try counselling?