Our children will always be our children, no matter how old they get. And when we sense they are in danger, or even mildly uncomfortable, we aren't afraid to step in.
That's exactly how one father felt when his wife's friend kept making inappropriate remarks toward his 19-year-old son while over their house.
At a small get-together at their house, a dad said that his wife's friend, a single woman in her 40s, was over and began complimenting his son.
It evidently started out innocent enough, but then began crossing the line.
"When we were out on my deck she starts telling my son to take his shirt off, 'whats the point of going to the gym if no one will see it,'" the dad claimed she said. "My son is visibly uncomfortable and tries to shut her down. She repeatedly is asking and is getting more aggressive with it. I interject and I am like 'Hey Kathy, I think you are a bit too old and ugly for my son.'"
His comment apparently upset her, because she excused herself to the bathroom, cried for a bit, and left.
"At the end of it my wife is super angry with me for saying that, that I should have said 'hey Kathy looks like you had too much to drink' or something else," he wrote. "I told my wife, that Kathy works a corporate job she has had training on this and that she knows better. And our son was uncomfortable. He is 18+ but he doesn't know how to deal with an adult-adult let alone someone saying that in our house."
But the dad maintains that he did the right thing.
"I told my wife flat out that if I was to invite a guy friend and he was to ask to see our daughter in a bikini my wife would have called the police," he pointed out. "She says it's different. I tell her that I was way kinder to Kathy than I would have been had a guy said something like that to our daughter. And I told my wife that Kathy needs to apologize to my son before she can ever come into our house again."
He does still want to know, though: Was he wrong for what he said?
The general consensus: It's not what he said but how he said it.
"It would probably have been better to say sternly 'Kathy, that's enough. Stop it or leave my house' and leaving her appearance out of it," wrote one user. "However, your comments were in the context of her sexually harassing your barely legal child who is less than half her age, and I'm having a hard time sustaining any outrage because you were a little snarky slapping down her exploitive and inappropriate behavior. Your wife is wrong. It is not better because she is a woman and your son is a man."
Though all agree that what Kathy did was wrong, they think that the dad's approach sends the wrong message.
"I don't think that saying 'hey Kathy, you're old and ugly lol' is the best way to [go] about this. What would you have said if she was 30 years old and beautiful?" one person wrote.
"A better way of handling it would be to say something like: 'Kathy, your behavior is crossing a line and needs to stop immediately. If you don't stop then you will need to leave,' the person continued. "A firm statement like that will get the point across just as well, without hurting anyone, and shows your son how to handle conflict like an adult."
At the end of the day, this dad did right by his son — people just think he went about it the wrong way.
