Happiness, that's all?

We were watching this film last night called The Rebound, with the gorgeous Catherine Zeta-Jones in it who's going through a divorce after she catches on tape her husband getting a blowjob during their child's birthday party. She leaves him, brings her two kids along, moves to the city, gets a job, gets a nanny etc. Except that the nanny is a manny (a male nanny), who was born in 1983, hot as hell (Doug, the lost groom, from The Hangover) and is dreamily romantic. Apart from the 15-year age difference between the two, the issue also is that he's a rich kid who went to an Ivy League college and is trained to be a lawyer (I think). So when he tells his parents he wants to first work at a coffee shop, and then that he wants to be Catherine Zeta-Jones' nanny, they're like WTF?

And he says, "But I thought you wanted me to be happy?"

"Within reason," his mum replies.

And here, I come to the point of this post.

I, for one, will never tell my kid "you should be happy, but within reason", even though I might think it. But what if he decides to waste his education, his upbringing, and work in a coffee shop? Or become a nanny? Because that's what makes him happy?

And secondly, if he's getting it on with a woman who's 15 years his senior and has her own children from a previous marriage, would I be happy about that? And I mean, not just getting it on, because that at least would not be as crazy an idea as if he wanted to marry her.

Real-life situation: Our two very good friends who were each other's best friends since long before they knew us, started seeing each other and now have a baby together. Except that the guy is 33, and the girl is 45.

But that's not the least of the issues. She has two daughters from her previous two marriages, so one from each. For some time early in their relationship, she was also cheating on our friend with one of her ex-husbands.

Now, he (our friend) has left his city, his family, taken a transfer on his job etc. to be with this woman. And when they had a baby together recently, she decided to not give her his name. So the little baby now has the mother's surname and not the father's (not even as a middle name), because she said her two older daughters both have their father's surname and nothing of their mum's (and look how that turned out).

But again, the point is, the guy's family is like super educated, relatively wealthy, they're really intelligent, liberal people who have taught (tried to) their son well.

But yes, he's happy. Or so it seems. Is that all that really matters at the end?