Dear Emily,

I got widowed five years ago, and my husband left me with two sons and a small business that gave us a simple but comfortable life. On my third year of being a widow, I met this young guy, 19 years my junior, in Starbucks when we shared a table.

He was a supervisor in an information technology company in our city, and single. He had just broken up with his girlfriend from college. We hit it off really well, and my kids thought he was cool.

My problem started when his father visited from Manila. He has barely seen his parents (who are separated) and has kept in touch with them only by phone. He introduced us over dinner and we all got along fine.

Surprisingly, his father showed interest in me. He is 26 years my senior but I found him vibrantly young and funny, and seemed interested in everything. He was fascinated with history, music, politics and the arts. Soon after he left, we were texting and calling each other up every day.

I told my young man about my feelings for his father, and, initially, he felt hurt—even betrayed, he said. But after seeing how seamlessly our conversations went and how we treated each other, he agreed that I must have found my soulmate.

He conceded that he sometimes felt silly and inadequate toward me because of our age difference.

My kids, though, prefer the son to the father. They find him too old to talk to, unlike the son who is more like a friend. Should I be embarrassed to fall—first for the son, and now for the father?

PERPLEXED

Your life, with all its twists and turns, is like watching a Mexican telenovela—truth, indeed, being stranger than fiction.

You already got your blessing obliquely from the son when he confessed how “silly and inadequate” your age difference was making him feel. Surely, it was not your intention to make him feel uncomfortable. It’s already his inner self tugging at his possible immaturity in this relationship.

After all, you had a headway of two decades to learn more about life than he. And there is no shame in shifting your feelings to the father. He is actually suited to your liking and temperament, more like an equal than you to the son. He just became the bridge to you discovering unexpectedly the soulmate in his father.

All’s well that ends well. You didn’t have to go far to find the next chapter in your life. It was all in the family, it turns out.

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