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How to convince my mom to let me visit my boyfriend in his home country?
Sorry for the big wall of text. However, I think all of the context is needed for proper advice to be given.
So funny enough, my boyfriend and I met on reddit some months ago, and so far things have been going great. I'm 17 and he's 18. The reason we started talking was that we were both kinda lonely and in search of someone to be close to, however not necessarily in a romantic way. The reason we decided to keep talking was because he informed me that he and his family had plans to visit not only my country, but coincidentally my CITY with his parents over the holidays. Obviously we couldn't let an opportunity like that go to waste, and we kept talking, letting the chemistry build up. Long story short, we ended up meeting while he was here and we got along extremely well. We had liked each other for a couple of months by that point, and we both knew it. But that was the night we decided to make it official and he asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course I said yes. The distance is temporarily an issue, but it won't be for long as I have planned for about two years now to study abroad and get my bachelor's done in Europe (not his country, but about an hour's plane ride away) so it's not like we're just blindly walking into this without thinking everything through. In my eyes, we are being realistic about our relationship, and the whole long-distance thing hasn't even been as hard as I thought.
Anyway, to the point. After he left, we obviously both missed each other a ton, and since I'm going to be graduated by the end of this month and since he's already been to my country, we decided that we wanted to plan for me to come to him (he's still in school but he has a one week break at some point in February). Anyway, he's already mentioned this to both of his parents and they are both very supportive about it and on board with letting me stay in their home for a week. My mother however, is very overprotective. Unlike his parents, she doesn't even know I'm dating someone, nevermind someone who lives on the other side of the world. The thing is though, the problem to my mom isn't that I have a boyfriend- She's actually super excited about that. It's the fact that I met him over the internet, and so obviously he's gonna kidnap and murder me, right? I was talking to him on the phone some months ago at 1am (stupid timezones) and of course she flips the fuck out asking "who are you talking to" "why are you talking to strangers on the internet at 1am" "how do you know it's not a 40 year old neckbeard in his mom's basement" and so on. I get it, I'm her kid, she loves me, and sometimes teenagers can be naive, especially when the opposite sex is involved. However, we had been talking for quite a long time before doing our first call, loooong reddit PM's which then turned into emails about our lives, interests, past histories and so on. I was pretty confident about who I was messaging, and hearing his voice for the first time confirmed it. We of course got along great. Showed me how to play some videogames, showed me some memes his friends and he made, just talking about anything and everything etc. Just dumb harmless stuff until my mother busted in and embarrassed me with the interrogation. Anyway, we continued to call and communicate, snapchatted each other, we had multiple photos of each other at this point and know we're who each other say we are. I just make sure to be super quiet when we call now and do it later when everyone is sleeping.
This is how it goes until we meet. (We met twice, both times I told her I was out with a friend) Went great, we slap a label on it, my mom doesn't contact me once. We met once more while he was in my country, and this time my mom was blowing up my phone because she didn't believe me that I was out with a friend this time. I come clean, tell her I'm on a date, and to please, please just leave me alone as she's embarrassing me. She apologizes, leaves me alone for about half an hour, then starts FREAKING out because for some reason she got it into her head that I'd be unable to find my way home. She's yelling at me over text, calling and calling over and over again, threatening to drive out herself and get me etc. I seriously have no idea what I did to provoke this (other than not telling her I was on a date) but oh well, that's my mom, nothing new. I get home, she's calm until she tells me to sit at the table and I do. She asks how it went, if he's my boyfriend, how I know him etc. and obviously I'm not going to say I went and met up with the same boy she had such a problem with me talking to before online, as I know she'd freak. She even said herself "the reason I hate you talking to people on the internet so much is because my biggest fear is that you'll go and meet them in real life" which is exactly what I did, BUT I made sure I knew him enough and trusted him enough BEFORE doing that and we also met up in a very public place. So I told her it was an exchange student from my school, we walked around together in the evening to which she reacted poorly to as well, telling me as a girl I could have been raped and murdered and so on. Honestly, I get it's a threat and a possibility, but come on. Walking around in a public place with a boy? Possible? Sure. Likely? I don't think so. And ever since then she's been off my back, because whenever I'm on a call with my boyfriend, I tell her it's the same "exchange student" I went on a date with. I get that it's bad to lie and for most people, just telling the truth would have been a lot easier in the long run, but with my mom and the way she is, I feel as if I just didn't have another choice. She pretty much forbade me from talking to my boyfriend (before he was my boyfriend) because I just happened to meet him on the internet and nor irl. I told her everything she wanted to know about him, too. His name, his age, where he was from, why we talked to each other, etc. and she still wouldn't leave me alone. But as soon as I told her that it was the exchange student I was talking to, he literally had zero problem with me talking to him and even encouraged it. Now, however, I HAVE met him in real life.
I'll be 18 this year, and I genuinely think she's being overbearing. I find myself feeling suffocated a lot of the time, and I'm just so tired of it. Please help me out. His parents know I exist. They're on board with me coming to visit. He's a year older than me. I've met him in real life. But I just DON'T know how to tell this to my mom. I want to go and see him like you wouldn't believe, he makes me so happy and I just want to be with him. I don't want to wait until I'm a "legal adult" to go and do that. He's already getting a bit anxious about booking tickets and stuff. The problem here is I've sort of weaved myself into this lie with the exchange student and I don't know how to tell my mom the truth. I really just want her to let me go. Anyone else have overprotective parents, and if so, how do you deal with them? How do I get my mom on board with this?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Families?
The law is the law hon. Until you are 18 you are not an adult, even if its two days before your birthday. Then there is the law depending on which state you live in as to the age of consent which in many states is 18. If someone were to say something to authorities that your parents allowed you to go meet a boy when you were not yet 18, then they would have to answer to the law. I am sorry but I have no advice on how to go around the law as this is the real issue, not convincinng parents to allow you to go. Once you turn 18, if they still say no, you can ignore them and do what you want and neither they nor you would get in trouble.
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