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.
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 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.
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.