Dear Nikol,
My mother has been single for around seven years now. We’d been trying to get her to start dating a few years back, since she calls us all the time to tell us how lonely she is.
Well, she up and decided to join a dating site she told us was eharmony, but she wouldn’t let us see the profile. I tried to search around for it and didn’t find it. Then I was over at her apartment and using her computer and someone starting to chat at me, so I went ahead and talked back and you just wouldn’t believe the things this man was saying!
I played along just to see how much information I could get. My mom met this person on Adult Friend Finders. That a site for people who are into kinky sex! I know my mom is lonely, but why would she be degrading herself enough to go to sites like that?
It’s gross. My poor mother! Yet another way the Internet is making a mockery of innocence. How do I get her to stop it without letting her know I know?
– Save My Mom!
Dear SMM,
I don’t like this phrase at all, but the first thing that popped into my head as I read this was, “Shame on you!”
Did you consider for a moment that your mother has as much a right to privacy as you do? As a grown, capable woman, she has every right to explore her sexuality in any way she desires. You assume that she accidentally got roped into using Adult Friend Finder and that she is only seeking kinky chat because she’s lonely.
I know she’s your mom and the last thing you want is to think about her talking dirty with strangers online, but we make a big mistake in this society when we start to treat the elderly like they are young children.
Your mom has been around on this planet long enough to figure out what she’s interested in. Maybe she and your father had a kink-tastic life. Maybe they didn’t and she always wanted one. Any way you slice it, she obviously wants one now and the evil Internet is helping her find it.
I’ll stop being hard on you now. What I’d really like for you to understand is that everyone has their own thing. What this online stranger said to your poor, dear mum may seem just awful to you, but I urge you to come to terms with the fact that your mother’s interests don’t make her any less the person you love.
Maybe you wish you could un-see some of the stuff you saw, but really that’s on you. Next time you innocently sit down at mom’s computer and decide to be a huge snoop, you’ll pause for a second and consider that there are some things we just don’t need to know about the people we love.
– Nikol
