God! Would you just let me have a LIFE?! According to CNN -- dateline: Opposite World -- this is what some parents are, or need to be, saying to their kids. Specifically, parents (in the story, mothers) who are looking online for a new partner, and kids (mainly adults themselves) who are, true story, hacking into their mothers' email and sending rejections to potential suitors. (Another reportedly drove back and forth yelling at her mom while on an outdoor date with an online beau. Check, please!)
Who knew that the "younger generation" -- those perhaps most likely to be Tweeting/Facebooking/LiveJournaling about how gross it is that mom's on eHarmony-- would (along with CNN, just a bit) be the ones perpetuating the ancient-in-Internet-years canard that online dating is WhereYouMeetLyingWeirdos.com? Why is online so different from real life? Who says that guy/gal in a bar is telling the truth? How often does the person you meet in person come right out and say, "I enjoy snowboarding and film noir, and in about three months I'm going to start to pull away"? (or "Please enjoy my backyard compound?") True, some parents, unseasoned daters and e-flirters, might be a tad fuzzy regarding red flags; fair enough. But at the same time, depending on the circumstances -- and speaking of bars -- their brick-and-mortar options for meeting people might be limited. Online seems ideal for second-timers (if not, like, everyone).
Of course, it's pretty obvious that what's really going on here is not "Yikes, mom's dating online!" but rather, simply, "Yikes, mom's dating!" -- circa 2009. There's no doubt that seeing a marriage end and a parent move on can be challenging, even devastating. But sometimes, I guess, we just have to let them grow up.
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