A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I'm having some issues with my mother right now. She called me tonight to get my opinion on if I would be okay with her sleeping with a man a few years older than me. I told her I didn't care about the age factor. Then I commented that as long as he wasn't married I didn't really care. My mom then told me that he is married. The tone of her voice when she said it was like she thought it was funny. I told her that was wrong to have sex with a married man. Then she told me he 'wasn't really married' because he's so young. That bothered me for two different reasons. One that my mother's attitude towards marriage was that even if you are married it doesn't really count if you're young? And two the fact that I'm six years younger than this man and I AM married. Yet she said it 'didn't count' because he was young.I was very disturbed by this conversation. I'm ashamed of her to even consider it. I knew when my mom was in her early twenties that she had slept with different married men and while I thought badly of her actions I thought that she regretted them and realized the damage she had caused. She's almost sixty years old and thinks this is okay. The fact of his age bothered her much more than his marital status.I'm very embarrassed and ashamed of her and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I've lost a great deal of respect for her as a woman.Sometimes you need someone to turn to for moral guidance. My father isn't in my life and that person's always been my mother. I've realized in the last several years that at some point my maturity level surpassed hers. There are issues in our relationship other than this one instance. I'm just in shock at her cavalier attitude towards having sex with someone's husband. The way she said it, like it was some big joke, I think bothered me the most. Her voice was sing-songy when she said he was married. Like she thought it was funny? I'm disgusted.
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male
reader, Sageoldguy1465 +, writes (27 October 2014):
 I have two suggestions:
1. You write: "....Sometimes you need someone to turn to for moral guidance." Your Mother is, clearly, not that person.... and,
2. If the roles were reversed, would you expect your Mother to sound the alarm, and come on a site like this, and ask us (Aunts and Uncles) to pronounce judgement upon you??????
Good luck....
A
female
reader, chigirl  +, writes (27 October 2014):
 Yeah, I would lose some respect for your mom as well. Then again, she is who she is, and she's family, not a friend, so it doesn't really matter if you respect her or not. She's still your mom and you have only one mom in life.
My mother also took a married lover. Only 5 years younger than her though, and he was physically separated from his wife (she was in a mental institution and didnt want to see him), so not the exact same situation. But I completely understand where you are coming from. Married is married, no matter what age. It's something you respect, not laugh at or ignore. Perhaps especially we, as young women, have high respect for marriage because we a) recently entered one or b) are planning to enter one soon.
I didn't like it one bit that my mother was involved with him, and to top it off she included him in our Christmas celebration that to me is supposed to be for family, and NOT married lovers... She didn't even tell us about it before hand, he just was there in the house when we arrived and never left. No introduction or anything.
I told her straight that I did not approve. Then I didn't bring it up again or discuss it. I just told her he's married, and what she's doing isn't right. But she's a grown woman you know, she does what she wants to and has to make her own choices. We're not here to teach our parents right from wrong, if they don't know that themselves yet then they need to learn on their own.
Eventually my moms lover divorced his wife and my mom and him got together officially. That made it better, because I don't have anything against him as a person, I just couldn't approve of the situation when he was still married. We're a generation that honor principles, after all. Heck, I even quit my last job over a matter of principles.
You mom probably thinks it's funny because it's new and "dangerous". Let her be the one to live with her decisions. You told her how you feel about it, and you should also write to her and tell her how her comment was seen as reflecting on your marriage as well, since you are young, and ask her if she thinks your marriage too does not count? But I would write this to her in a letter, so that you word yourself correctly, because it was about how she worded it, hence why you need to be precise in your own wording when you reply to this comment.
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