He Wants to Know My Location at All Times
Background: My dad has some mental issues. While he has his moments of crazy, they often come from being raised by my horrible grandparents. I know that my dad has good intentions, but he doesn’t have a good concept of normal sometimes.
For reference, I am an adult and have been one for a while. Now, here comes the twisted story. My dad has a club that he attends and is very active in, made up of mostly older men united by a common hobby.
They lost contact unexpectedly with one of their members for a week and were very concerned until he could be located. This club’s solution was for everyone to voluntarily share their location via a location-sharing app. Keyword: voluntarily.
But my dad now wants to make another group with the same app for just my immediate family to share our locations with each other at all times. I do not want to do this, because when I was a young adult I fought very hard to not have to send them a check-in text every night.
I know if I give my location, my dad will check it every night to make sure I got home, and if I am anywhere unusual or out later than he thinks I should be, he will text me about it. I know because that’s exactly what he used to do and why I made this boundary in the first place.
It also bothers me that instead of asking me if I’d be okay with doing that, he said “I am asking you to do this,” which with him really means “I am telling you to do this, but I’m trying to be polite about it.”
I see the point of knowing a family member’s location if they are on a trip somewhere and I voluntarily check in when I am traveling long distances.
But I am an adult and I feel like my parents knowing my location all the time would be infantilizing. They see it as being able to find me quickly if something really bad should happen to me.
Am I being the jerk here by not wanting to install the app? Is there a middle ground where I can maintain my sense of privacy while still soothing my parents, and especially my dad’s fears?
Is there a polite way to maintain my boundary or am I being paranoid? Apparently, he tried to volunteer me to join the group, without my consent, even after my mother told him not to ask as she thought I’d say no.
When I did initially say no, things were rough. He first tried to argue, to which I said I wasn’t changing my mind, to which he claimed he wasn’t trying to change my mind.
If past behavior holds true, that will be the last I hear of it until the next new way of creepily stalking your family arrives on the scene. Thank you all for listening. Y’all are good people. Story credit: Reddit / fluffycockatoo