Episode 6: An Age-Gap Breakup Email
January 2026
Dear Daughter (and Bippity-Bopp),
Sometimes I would imagine how the breakup email to your mother would go. Let me read it to you. (Clears throat).
My Dearest Boop-De-Doop,
Two of the biggest surprises of my life were meeting you and learning you were my best friend. I could never have imagined it.
It turns out what makes a friendship for the ages is the love St. Paul talks about at every other wedding of Christians around the world: patient and kind; not arrogant, boastful, arrogant or rude; not insisting on its own way; never irritable or resentful; never rejoicing at wrongdoing but only with the truth; always protecting, trusting, hoping, persevering; never failing; and certainly never speaking like a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Love is also the will to extend oneself for the spiritual growth of another, as Scott Peck defined it in The Road Less Travelled. I have felt your love from the start.
Unlike my dear mother, most of my prior partners, and for that matter me, you are never defensive. It took months for me to manage to cause you to feel criticized, after which it was still rare that you felt it, or complained of it. You’re calmer, and more composed, in difficult conversations, than I am, than any of my partners have been. You’ve never raised your voice. You are disinclined to defeatism or victimhood. You’ve still never expressed criticism toward me, even if I have sometimes reacted as if you had.
What about stonewalling? Do you go into a shell and refuse to communicate? None of that. You are brave, kind, and direct. Nor do you show any hint of contempt, the most dangerous of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse identified by the Gottman Institute. I have studied couples’ relationships there; you could teach there.
You’re the kindest and most thoughtful person I know. I remember that Sunday afternoon when you were terribly upset at the sight of an eyeless and nearly flightless bird lying on the ground, occasionally stirring himself to flap blindly in a low circle before crashing again. Afterward, you cried talking about him, about how he was all alone and had no friends and nobody even cared, including, in this case, other churchgoers in the parking lot whom you had asked to help.
Some might say a friend like you is one you hold on to. Some will say it matters that we have a wonderful, respectful, loving, gentle, playful, even-handed connection. Some will say it matters that I find myself in the best relationship I’ve ever had. Or that you are the warmest listener and one of the most supportive people I have ever had in my life, along with my mother, whose overflowing love it pains me you could never know.
That’s why I regret to inform you that the numbers, well, they aren’t the right numbers. For us to be allowed, there must be numbers bigger than 40, say, for your age, and smaller than 15, for example, for the number of years between us. These precise numbers are knowable, and universally acknowledged. It is triggering for others that the numbers are so large. It detracts from their quality of life and risks keeping them up at night. There is no other way, aside from us saying goodbye, to keep the universe on its axis, and if we refuse we will deserve all the anger and disgust that strangers choose to cast at us.
Remember the stranger, or rather, the ex and stalker of a friend of ours, who messaged me on Facebook, with the snarky comments about us and the vomit emoji? This man took time out of his day, sweetheart.
We can’t have a friendship for the ages, you and I, nor the partnership that naturally flows from such friendships, nor can our love be, as you once said you’d like it to be, an example and inspiration for others (not even if people like my friends Jeanne and Mike, my law partner, have said we are, in fact, an inspiration), nor will we bring into the world a child to be loved and love in turn, because there are numerals that just don’t look right, numbers that don’t add up.
It can’t matter, I’m afraid, that you are in many ways more emotionally mature than I am, than most people are. That you’re more secure, and love yourself more, accept yourself more. You have lived fewer moments than someone of my age but you have somehow more fully showed up for and embraced each and every one, and you seem to have learned more from each moment, each incident or event of your life, than anyone I’ve ever met.
And in spite of my disbelief of it, you appear to love me fiercely, deeply, and with understanding. “I love you,” you are able to say even in the midst of hard conversations, rare arguments, when the going has gotten rough. Who does that? Who pauses all the drama and vigilance of ego to come back to first principles? You do. Even with the crutch of your example, and your gesture toward safety, it’s hard for me to reciprocate.
Still, the numbers don’t lie. They are immutable, like laws of the universe, stronger even than love. Some will say it’s absurd to dam up and walk away from such an unrelenting stream of love and wisdom, humor and positivity. But right-thinking people know what we are doing is too different, too unusual and therefore upsetting to others. “Sorry, you must now fall out of love,” they say, “end your relationship, walk away, delete your child from the world’s future, and let go, so that the world may be right again.”
And so I must throw you back.
