My husband and I were stunned when our 19-year-old daughter casually mentioned that her new boyfriend was 42. That\u2019s a 23-year age gap \u2014 older than she\u2019s ever dated before, though, apparently, not by much. She insists he\u2019s kind, respectful, and makes her feel \u201cunderstood in a way no one else has.\u201d But all we can see is a man well into middle age dating someone barely out of high school. While she assures us it\u2019s a healthy relationship, my instincts scream otherwise. We\u2019ve tried to stay calm, not wanting to push her further away, but the situation makes us deeply uneasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now she wants us to meet him. My husband flat-out refuses, saying he can\u2019t sit across from a man who could\u2019ve been her teacher \u2014 or worse, her father. I\u2019m torn. Part of me wants to understand what she sees in him, maybe even assess whether he\u2019s manipulating her. But another part worries that agreeing to meet him sends the wrong message \u2014 that we accept this as normal. We\u2019re walking a tightrope: wanting to protect her while not damaging our relationship beyond repair. We need to decide soon\u2026 before the distance between us grows too wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My husband and I were stunned when our 19-year-old daughter casually mentioned that her new boyfriend was 42. That\u2019s a 23-year age gap \u2014 older than she\u2019s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":331,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9963,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9960\/revisions\/9963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}