My wife & I have an 18-year-old son. He started university in September, studying medicine. There he met this 41-year-old man - a classmate, and they became really good friends. This man has just started university now at this age because apparently he was born poor and in the first half of his life was focused on making money, but medicine is a dream of his. Son has always been an introverted, shy, socially awkward kid with little friends, but now goes out often. Honestly my wife & I are uncomfortable, and we can’t help but side eye the dude.
It doesn’t have to be creepy or problematic, but your son would have to know what worrying things to look out for. Nothing wrong with having a chat saying “hey just because large age gap friendships are rarer, i wanted to make sure you’re on your guard…but your friend might be awesome, just have your eyes open”.
What specifically worries you?
Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings but being basically this guy’s age I can’t imagine hanging out with someone so young. It just gives off bad vibes.
Of course you can’t.
But picture putting your life on hold for 30 years. Would you not then feel extremely out of place with your own “peers” who didn’t do that?
Age isn’t really what defines where you’re at as a person, that’s stuff like culture, hobbies, career, education. People don’t connect over being the same age. They connect over stuff like video games, philosophy, books, nerding out about their industry, how that one class at school sucks, etc.
You had it right with the maybe. You’re projecting your own feelings. That’s not bad vibes but your concerns as a parent.
So, what exactly are your concerns and worries? The worst I can see happening is a romantic relationship developing that ends up in heart break or a power imbalance. The school has the man’s information. It’s not like he can whisk your kid off to a sex cult.
More likely they’re both nerds and nerding out about medicine and DnD.
What would you do if you were the 40 year old hanging out with an 18 year old? Really dive into your fantasy and let us know what you are thinking. I bet you can come up with some really wild imagery that the IRL 40 year old would never dream of.
I don’t quite get what you’re implying but as I’ve said I wouldn’t be hanging out with an 18 year old in the first place.
I’m a shy, awkward soul that never felt ‘in sync’ w/ my generation. Old people rock, life would be a lot more empty without them.
If you go to uni, hanging out with people aroind your son’s age is implied. I bet the guy might feel out of place as well - but consider he is now living his dream of studying in university. He is surrounded by 18 year olds and he has two options - be isolated for nothing but his age or make friends and experience life he couldn’t experience when his age was appropriate for it.
It is likely your son and this guy just clicked. When I was around 16 I had a great virtual friendship (played World of Warcraft together, only met once) with a guy in his 30s. We also just clicked. I’d say he was my best friend in that guild. We are not in contact anymore but I still remember that friendship fondly.
I understand your concerns as a father and I’d recommend discussing it with your son with open mind. Friendship is just friendship, I don’t think there is an age limit on it.
At age 17 I made friends with a coworker in their 40s. I found out he was into D&D and he invited me to sit in on a game. Now I’m 30 and I been playing with this group of now 50-60 year old dudes every Sunday since. Age gap isn’t strange but if your getting weird vibes maybe have a chat with your son about your concerns, but he is an adult in college now. He will likely have many connections of all ages.
When I was 21 I joined a big band that had people from their late teens to their mid 70s. I think of everyone in that band as something like family, and it was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. Like all friendships, it’s case by case. There are shitty people and there are cool people. Your son is an adult and has to learn to distinguish between those. We do live in a world where inter-generational friendships are rare, and maybe that means that there’s a higher chance that this guy is odd, but to foreclose on inter-generational friendships seems pretty impoverishing. This guy’s background and life experience is probably really different from that of your son. Developing close friendships with people like that is important. Had I not, especially at a young age, I’d be a very different person.
Or he could be a weirdo 🤷
I’ve had friends 20 or 30 years older for well over a decade.
… your son is an adult. I think you’re being the weird ones about this personally.
I see why your son has no friends, not his issue tho, it’s the side eyeing
Depends entirely on the person. I have friends that are a similar age gap to the one you mentioned, it just never occurred to me to think of it as weird.
We’re all into the same hobby and that’s how we met, but we also like similar video games, music, TV, etc, so there’s plenty to talk about and have a friendship around. I don’t think about their age really at all, it just doesn’t come up.
But yeah, it entirely depends on the individual, on both ends. You can have a weirdo older person, you can have a weirdo 18 year old. Just got to weigh up a person and try to figure out what their deal is :-)
So I have two things to say about this. First, you should know that this is very much a thing. I’m in kind of an opposite situation as a younger expat in a country where people from my country tend to be older, and people can and will get along regardless of age when they’re put in the same place; it just doesn’t happen often because the way modern society works ends up with people being basically sorted by age.
Second, as someone who grew up with overprotective parents trying to control how your son acts will never end up. Seriously it can be infuriating to be on the receiving end of that, so if you care about your relationship with your son know that there are very few situations where it’s okay to control who your adult son associates with, and just being “uncomfortable” is not one of them.
I literally never stated I’m trying to control anything.
I mean that’s true but then what kind of response were you expecting? Any way of channeling that discomfort you mentioned into productive action will end up as control.
I think their point was: even if you’re uncomfortable, what are you going to do about it? Interfering in any way - even just suggesting that this relationship is a problem - is controlling.
As another reply said, if you want to say something like “I’m not implying anything about this guy, but it does remind me to make certain you know the signs of predatory relationships”, that’s probably a good thing.
Just know that your son may react defensively at the perceived threat to his first meaningful friendship outside his home town (even if you’re not actually a threat), and you have to let that be okay.
For the record, I’m 40 and have had friendships that started in my early 20s with people much older than me, and am currently friends with some kids in their 20s. Especially for introverts and people with niche hobbies, there’s a lot more care for shared interests than social norms like age gap.
I wasn’t necessarily looking for ways to “do something about it”, the question was more about my own thoughts. And I don’t see having an open conversation about potential dangers / concerns and worries as “controlling”, we already had a good talk about it, went very well. This isn’t his first meaningful friendship outside his hometown, he never left his hometown - we live in our country s largest city & all the good schools are here; he still lives at home like most of the students raised in the city.
As a 40 something man, I’ve found that my friend groups tend to shift by life stage more than age.
We have friends that are 10-15 years older than us because our kids are the same age, and we have friends that are 10-15 years younger than us because we have overlapping hobbies or work together.
At this point in my life, I don’t even bother finding out someone’s age until I’d consider them friends, because it doesn’t matter if we’ve found something we connect over.
Right you are.
Try to get some advice from people (real people in real life, not internet strangers) outside of your own family.
If anything it seems your experiences are narrow if you think friendship across large age gaps is impossible or a cause for worry.
There were some older people at my university and they always sadly had a lot of trouble making friends and fitting in. Be glad your son is a good guy who doesnt judge people by their age.
Not quite the same gap but I grew to be good friends with a work buddy in his 40s when I was 25.
Throughout my life I tended to connect better with people older than me.
One of my best friends is nearly 70, I’m 27. We met when I was 17 or something, and we’re both very autistic. (like a lot of my friends)
I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Everyone’s an adult, nothing’s weird until things get weird.
I had a friend with that same age gap in university, he was actually a great influence because he had life experience.
He was basically retired from his first career and taking classes for fun, awesome dude.
I went to community college for my first two years and only had adult friends. It was exactly what I needed at the time because they shared their life experience with me and it was immensely helpful in making my own good decisions. Now in my 40s my husband and I are the older friends in our game group who do the same for our 20-something friends. We even convinced one of them to get his GED and had a big celebration for him once he got it when his own family blew him off over it. You have to make your own community where you can and older people outside of family have value too.
I work at a college and I used to have some great conversations with one of our student workers about board games, math and other dorky stuff. He graduated earlier this year, and I miss talking to him. I learned a lot from that kid.
