▸ Column · Contemporary boardroom Metropolis — the advice arriving on Lex Luthor's desk between meetings.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Superman.
The letter
My son Marcus, 24, just announced he's quitting the master's program I've been funding — midway through the second semester — to move to Portugal with the girlfriend he's known eight months and "figure things out." I didn't shout, but I told him that if he goes, I stop paying for his health insurance and the $400-a-month phone plan he's been on since eleventh grade. Now he's calling me controlling, and his girlfriend's mother is texting me about "emotional boundaries." My real problem: I honestly can't tell if I'm setting a fair limit on my own money or using it to puppet a grown man. My husband says cut him off entirely so he "learns," but that feels like punishment in a teacher's costume, and I don't want to detonate our relationship over a choice he may reverse in six months. Is there a version of this where I get to hold a position without being the villain?
Lex Luthor replies
Oh, sweetheart. No. The question you actually wrote down isn't "should I keep paying for his phone" — it's "can I do this and still be admired," and that, darling, is the line item in your budget you genuinely cannot afford.
Here's what's true. The money is yours. It was always yours. A phone plan he's ridden since the eleventh grade and a health policy he hasn't thought about for one second — these aren't leverage, they're a subscription you forgot to cancel. The error is your husband's framing, frankly: "cut him off so he learns." Tie the money to a lesson and you've handed Marcus the exact word he's already using. (The girlfriend's mother and her texts about "emotional boundaries" — how quaint. Mute her. She is not a creditor in this account.)
Tonight, one sentence, decoupled from Portugal entirely: "The phone and the insurance end on the first. Not because you're leaving — because you're twenty-four." No lesson attached. No clause about whether he comes crawling back in six months (he might; irrelevant).
You are not the villain for closing an account. You're only the villain in the version where you keep it open and resent every withdrawal.
— Lex Luthor
Superman weighs in
Lex'll tell you to send one sentence and never speak of it again. That's how a man keeps his money and loses his boy — and Marcus is still your boy, twenty-four or not.
Cancel the plan if you need to, friend. Your money's yours, nobody's arguing. But somebody at that table has to ask Marcus the question nobody's asked: what's in Portugal, son — what are you running toward, or from? Your husband wants a lesson. Lessons you withhold; sons you stay close to. You can say no to the phone bill and yes to the boy in the very same breath. That isn't weakness. That's the whole job.
— Superman
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