To caller: "Your son started to live with his best friend's mother???"

I'm wondering which has shocked you more, the fact that she was related to his best friend (and not as a sister) or the fact that she was undoubtedly a generation older than he was.

I agree, the close-family-and-not-a-sister relationship is somewhat weird. That would leave daughter, mother, or maybe grandmother. All of those are weird.

But I think you're just as weirded out because she's twenty to thirty years his senior. At least it struck me that way from listening to the mother's voice.

I have a friend who is now in her sixties. For the thirty years I've known her, she has consistently dated men in their twenties. I don't see anything wrong with that, I'm sorry you'll all faint over this. She's highly intelligent, well connected, she has a little money, and if any man wanted to benefit from having a mentor with connections and mature wisdom, they would have a tough time finding a better one than my friend. Trust me, if that son were a daughter aged 25 and the older partner were a man aged 52, there might be a few arched eyebrows but no one would be sobbing constantly like that dumb mother.