i want the new boyfriend gone

i know i am going to get all the "leave her alone, don't go there, she's a big girl and can make up here own mind, STOP!!! but here goes........ I am the mother of a teenage (18) daughter. she has recently started dating a new boy. i want to break them up asap. there is an ex who is madly in love with her and they have a lot of history. he is currently living with us. (to much to try to explain why but bottom line he has no where else to go) she is the one who brought him here and kept him here. he is not the greatest but i know without a doubt that he loves my daughter and would do anything to make her happy. they dated for three years and had the kind of relationship any mother would want for her child. of course there were lots of fights but the closeness they had was very touching. they were best friends and so in love and now she treats him like he has some kind of disease. it's almost like she scared to be friendly because she doesn't want to fall back in love with him. I have tried sitting back and waiting for things to work itself out but i am tried of waiting and have decided to take things into my own hands. so as crazy as i must sound, how can i get between her and the new boyfriend without it coming back to me. and how can i presaude her to give the ex another chance without her thinking it was my idea because i understand that if she knows it's coming from me... she will do the exact opposite. uugh please help

Blair, a couple of things stand out for me here.

First of all, at 18 your daughter is likely to have many more boyfriends yet. She'll most likely move past the ex and the current guy. Give her the freedom to explore what she wants and needs in a relationship.

Second, the relationship she used to have is NOT what any mother would want for their child. Heaven knows, I wouldn't want that for my daughter. You say he's not the greatest, that there were lots of fights, he's got an unstable background. Why would you want her to go back to that??? Sure, they may have been cute and in love together - but I'd like to think that a girl would look past the puppy love and take a more critical look at the relationship. For starters, she needs to learn to avoid someone who she has 'lots of fights' with. The fact she treats him horribly also makes me suspect that he's hurt her and therefore she no longer likes or respects him.

Keep your nose out of it. Let her grow and learn and experience dating different types of boys. And reconsider having someone in the house who your daughter doesn't like. This is her house more than his.

I see your daughter left the ex BF like a pet she lost interest in for you to take care of while she's off with a new toy. Your daughter has some responsibility to deal with this boy living in your house. Them getting back together is not the answer. You need tell your daughter to have a talk with him about getting a job and finding a friend to go live with. She needs to help him move out.

My mom let me have my ex BF live with with us for a summer because he had nowhere to go and he was recovering from a back injury from a car accident. Me and my BF fought like cats and dogs...I wanted to go out with friends and he would have fits. I felt trapped. So I can see why things fell apart with your daughter and her ex.

ex living with you needs to move out, maybe she sees him like a brother now, that you love him and he's in the house and you mommy him too? what's wrong with her current bf?

Honestly, you're on a fast track to having a very difficult time of things if you even try to follow through with your plan. Do you even remember being a teenager and how well you would have responded to parental interference?! I was actually in a pretty similar situation to your daughter once upon a time, in the sense that my boyfriend (future husband) moved into my family home when we were 15/16 because of issues within his 'family'... we broke up twice during that time, and the chance that we would figure things out would have been greatly diminished had my parents chosen to get involved in things. Your plan to meddle is misguided, in fact I'd go so far as at say that your subterfuge mind-set is going to cause untold problems in your relationship with your daughter going forward - I suspect you're going to end up alienated from her life completely if you don't step back and let her make her own decisions. I mean really, read over your post... does it really come as any surprise that she's already pushing against you just on principle? As her parent of course you should give her advice if you think she's making a mistake, but that's really all you can do, beyond that you really have to stay out of things, if it's meant to be they will find a way back to each other, if it's not then they won't, simple as that.

Assuming for a moment that you're right, that your daugther's ex is the best type of relationship for her, I don't see how your plan will help in the long term. Let's say you manage to break things up with her new boyfriend and she goes back to her ex. Your daughter is only 18. It's only matter of time before some other guy comes along and sweeps her off her feet. If she's broken up with her boyfriend for another guy once, she'll just do it again. If he's really the perfect guy for her, the best thing that can happen right now is for her to be without him for a while. Then she might come to see how good she had it. She would have a chance to see what could go wrong in other relationships and to start missing her ex. Either she would take him back for good, or if it was too late and he'd moved on, she'd search until she found somebody else with the same good qualities. If she's only going back to him because she feels her other options were cut-off, then she won't appreciate him anyway. You're being very short sighted to think that breaking up your daughter and her new boyfriend will get you what you want.

I'll also give you a little warning story. My sister broke up with her first love after being together for a few years and got together right away with a new guy. My mom heard my sister's ex's side of the story after the break-up. Her heart got really caught up in feeling bad for the guy. She became obsessed with the idea that he was the sweetest guy, and that he and my sister should really have stayed together. Even though my sister recalls my mom complaining about the guy before, after the break-up he suddenly became the perfect guy for one of my mom's daugthers. My mom tried to get between my sister and her new boyfriend like you want to do. You know what happened as a result? My sister just moved out of my mom's house and into the same house where the new boyfriend was living. She also stopped talking to my mom for two years after this. For two full years, I had to watch my mom cry about how much she missed her other daughter. So be very careful with this one.

In my sister's case, the new boyfriend turned out to be a better guy for her. They are now married over twenty years later. The reason my sister had left the previous guy wasn't just because she'd fallen for somebody new but because there were real problems and she'd wanted to leave for a while. Even my mom no longer says my sister should have stayed with the ex now that she's seen how things turned out. My mom just wishes my sister had been kinder been to the ex during the break-up. The reason my sister was so cold to him, though, was because all her friends who'd been dumped warned her about leading him on. Their experience was that the dumpee always wants to interpret everything as a sign that the dumper will come back, and it only keeps the dumpee from moving on. So my sister was trying to do the ex a favor by keeping some distance from him.

In short, only time will tell who's right or wrong for your daughter. In the meantime, though, you need to try to keep your distance from this. I realize it's tough to do when they're both living with you. But it can only make things worse if you get involved.

It is important to treat her like an adult. Give some respect and show her you respect her opinions.