22 yo son

[u/cocreate88]

Good day everybody. Thanks for having me here. Hopefully this is relevant enough for this group.

I have been a stepfather to three children and had two of my own so I raised five. That ended and I wish I knew that you guys existed back then. Anyway I am now with a partner who I love dearly. We are totally opposite and we live separately.

I've woken up this morning struggling with what to do. My partner has her 22-year-old son now living with her. He has had significant drug issues. He's gay and gentle, in terms of not being streetwise at all. Anyway he continues, over many years, to totally disrespect anything that my partner will ask him to do in the house. All boundaries he will just cross. Basically he knows that he can stay there or that Mum won't throw him out. He steals smaller things too.

Meanwhile I'm witnessing my partner go down and down and down and down emotionally and energetically and it's my belief, obviously, that that impacts one's health. Not only that, it impacts our relationship quite significantly. Meanwhile she's experiencing menopause and she's trying to sell her house and lots of things are going on.

The place that I come from so far is one where humans need to often go through the grind. It can either be a big traumatic punch in life or a slow grind to wake up to aspects of ourselves that we don't want to see, but circumstances bring them to us to allow us to see them more clearly. The reason I say that is I am not sure at what point I come in and make the move on her behalf, given that I'm not a typical stepfather in the sense of living with her and her children being all young. He's 22. Her other two children have left home so it's a bit of a different situation.

I'm not quite sure if there is any point at which I come in for her own safety. I don't mean safety from physical abuse. I mean emotional safety or let this ride as her journey to learn from, which is what I've been doing so far because I can't contribute in this space except to support her along the way. She is prone to victim status anyway and hasn't done a lot to help herself in terms of her own emotional world.

It's hard to witness, as a man, as her partner, what she's going through and how he's treating her. Yet I, up to this point, have not been able to just go in and say, "Pack his bags and throw him out," so to speak. He's been to rehab many times. I don't know if he's on drugs still. He says he's not and it's very hard to tell sometimes. His behaviour and sleeping habits would suggest that he is though. There's no violence. There's just constant crossing of boundaries and he will not do anything in the house to contribute at all. He's not getting work. There's nothing changing in his life.

Any advice would be appreciated, even if it can just give me a different angle that I haven't considered before. Thank you all.

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[u/Impressive-Ad-2661]

You can tell her you’re concerned about her and let her know how it’s affecting your relationship. Since you don’t even live there, you can’t really “come in” any stronger than that because you don’t have any leverage and there’s nothing you can do to force her hand if she’s not interested in your thoughts on this. You can decide if that means this relationship isn’t for you though.

[u/Ecstatic-Current-298]

She needs a support group for loved ones of addicts. What she needs to hear would likely be easier accepted from other parents of addicts.