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Dear Eric: My very overprotective daughters are concerned about somebody I met on a website. We would like to hang around other women who have our political beliefs. The area I live in generally does the opposite, politically, of what the two of us want. So, I was very eager to get together maybe for lunch and talk about our families, jobs, health and everything we don't like with politics. That was all it was.

We only communicated online. Both of my two overprotective daughters didn't trust her and didn't like what she wanted to do and thought she was going to harm me in some way. So, one of my daughters had a lawyer look up this person.

In time, different conflicts came up and we never got to meet each other.

Now I'm going to be having surgery. Instead of lunch, I want her to come to the hospital and maybe come over to see me.

My family still thinks she was going to harm me or that she may not exist and that she took somebody else's name and picture. Can I believe my family or just somehow get together with somebody who thinks like me?

– Political Friend

Dear Friend: Give your family the benefit of the doubt here, at least until you’re out of the woods, medically. It’s unclear to me if their concerns are unfounded or not – I’m curious what the lawyer found. But it’s alarming that both of your daughters are so insistent that this person may be trying to deceive or harm you.

Ask them to help you understand what makes them think this way. Do they have concrete evidence about her or about the website itself? This may help you avoid similar situations in the future.

Meeting people online isn’t inherently dangerous, but you do have to be careful and alert. It’s very easy for people to claim to be who they’re not, or to use information about you to manipulate you.

If you are going to meet someone in real life, it’s best to first independently confirm their identity. Find a public place to meet and choose an activity that has a time limit – a coffee, for instance. And I’d encourage you to bring someone, like one of your daughters, along. They might see something that you don’t, or they might find that their fears are assuaged. But there’s more safety in numbers.

Dear Eric: “Love at a Distance” wrote about an early-30s son who kept his parent at a distance. I have a son who kept me at a distance at a similar age and was also like me in many ways. He just turned 40 and things are good now, so our story taught me much that may be useful to the writer and others.

I realized that acting a victim and thinking disparaging thoughts weren't going to get me anywhere. Something certainly needed to be "unpacked", but doing so together would never work. I needed, with help of my spouse, to unpack what I had done and was still doing to cause my son to feel this way.

Once I set my ego aside and realized I shouldn't be trying to control or parent him at this age, I could see how his isolation had grown over time about specific topics and parts of his life where I had been too controlling or opinionated. So, I laid off in those areas and cut the controlling about his life entirely, waiting for him to ask for advice or perspective – which he now does. I'm not the boss anymore – my role now is to help others.

When you and your child are so alike, you have many of the same strengths (and weaknesses), but you have to stop competing about them. By the way, when was the last time the writer said to his son that he was proud of him about something? Love is only good if it's honestly practiced.

– Son Dad

Dear Dad: I’m glad that these tactics worked for you. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of hard, but necessary investigation and made some wonderful changes. Because we only get but a sliver of a person’s life in these letters, I’m not as quick to place blame on the letter writer’s ego or control.

However, I do want to lift up something that can be beneficial in all relationships, particularly those of an adult parent and child. What you described in your letter was a process in which you asked yourself what is on your side of the street. What behaviors or assumptions are yours to own? And what behaviors of others do you need to learn to accept? This kind of self-examination can help us avoid placing blame, which can lead to more productive rebuilding.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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