Negative reactions to my date when bringing her to meet others
As of a few weeks ago, I (27M) have been dating a lovely woman (29M). We met on hinge and have been on 5 or 6 dates at this point. The two of us gel together incredibly and just really seem to be on the same wavelength on a lot of big stuff. We’re fairly serious about each other and we are getting to the stage of meeting the people in each other’s lives. These introductions have gone a little rocky sometimes, and I think it has to do with her weight.
The thing is, she’s different than women I’ve dated before because she’s quite large: in a recent conversation, it came up that she is currently around 356 lbs, and it really shows on her (her Hinge says she’s 5’2”). At first when I met her I was really caught off guard and surprised since she didn’t look like her profile pics and was much bigger than who I’d dated in the past, but we connected so well that we completely fell for each other.
Her weight doesn’t bother me, it’s how people react to her that does. When she introduces her friends to me, they are always so nice to me. But at this point I’ve introduced her to some close friends, a couple coworkers, and my parents, and it always goes something like this. They’ll be very polite to her but will not talk to her or ask her anything beyond just greeting her. And they’ll look her over from head to toe and do a weird stare that she definitely picks up on and feels uncomfortable because of. Every introduction has been this awkward thing and we both dread it now. The worst were my parents, they stared at her and made some awkward conversation with us over dinner, and then really grilled us on how we met and what we see in each other like it was on a quiz or something. And after dinner, they kept insisting we go on a walk, and I think intentionally kept going way past a comfortable distance for my date to see her struggle and get sweaty and flustered.
On these occasions, I’m not sure how best to support my date. I think there’s an obvious elephant in the room, but no one is explicitly rude to her so I don’t want to draw attention to it by calling someone out and embarrass her more, but I also don’t want to minimize this silent judgement like it’s nothing because it definitely affects both of us to the point that we dread these kinds of first meeting interactions.