Have you ever seen the Reddit post that goes a little something like this?

«I’m a 25-year-old man who recently started dating a 50-year old lady. Her 30-year-old son refuses to call me «dad» and won’t give me the respect I deserve. How do I get him to change?»

Obviously, this post and all variants are a joke, but they do point to a very real point of tension in age gap relationships where the older partner has kids who are older than their younger partner. This dynamic is explored on Modern Family, where Luke and Manny get into a fight after Luke repeatedly calls Manny his uncle. In real life, no self-respecting 30-year-old would expect their older partner’s 35-year-old child to call them by any sort of parental title. They were never a parent to them, and never could have been. But that doesn’t mean the younger partner can’t desire some basic respect from their older partner’s adult children.