Why must HIS slobby son wreck MY hope of happiness?
DEAR BEL,
AT 63, I met a wonderful man through an online dating site. We fell in love, met each other’s families (we both have two adult children), and share the same values.
Eventually we both sold our homes to buy a house together, and spent much time and money making it lovely.
But then his son, 24, returned from travelling to live with us.
He contributes a pittance and does nothing in the home. His bedroom and bathroom are disgusting, and his habits are unpleasant.
If we go away, we return to his mess: a dishwasher full of mouldy pots, and unflushed toilets throughout the house (even in our en-suite). Boundaries set were not enforced.
I then discovered that a new girlfriend had stayed (I wasn’t asked). My partner knew but decided not to say anything. He then lied to me about knowing. I was devastated.
He seems unable/unwilling to require his son to meet basic standards, saying he feels guilt that both children had to come and live with him following the inadequacies of their mother.
The son is young for his age. He needs to become more independent, but my partner seems to cosset him. He told his son to do his own washing, only to do it all for him when the basket was overflowing.
When I spoke up, he was furious with me and said it wasn’t a big deal. I’m feeling very resentful.
Once I was unwell and suggested I might give his family outing a miss. He was angry, because his daughter was coming that day as they ‘all needed to spend time together’. But she has her own home nearby!
It was a pivotal moment. I saw where his affections lay.
The whole situation was affecting my health and, with no end in sight, I told my partner I could not live with his son any more.
Rather than deal with it, he suggested that we sell the house and part. So he’d dispense with me rather than insist his son behave responsibly.
I cannot believe our entire future is now dust, and we will both be lonely despite loving each other.
Do all his merits outweigh what is likely to be a repeated problem with his children?
DIANA
This is a very sad situation — one that’s complicated on more than one front.
What matters most is your feeling of disappointment and loss that this wonderful second chance at happiness is now on the verge of ruin because of a weak man and his selfish, immature son.
i feel full of sympathy for you — and for your partner, too. For, like many men i have known, he deals with emotional complexity like a rabbit in the headlights.
it must have been very hard for you when the 24-year-old returned from travelling, to disturb your idyll in the lovely home you’d created. Most people would understand that you frowned a little . . . and then more so, as the young man made such a mess.
Of course, your partner, realising how you felt, then withdrew more and more, because he knew himsel f incapable of handling the situation.
Right from the moment the son tipped the contents of his backpack out onto the floor, you were out-numbered in your own home. intolerable.
Your final sentence poses a direct question it’s hard to answer.
Perhaps you want me to say: ‘Yes, stick with the man you love and put up with the fact that he puts
his adult children first’ — but I can’t. Because I don’t see how you could bear to go on living with a man who puts you second, and becomes angry when you try to discuss it.
Your partner should have been firm with his son from the moment he got back, imposing a limit on the amount of time the cuckoo could foul your nest.
Were he 17 or 19 I wouldn’t write that — but 24?
Good God, by the time my Dad was 24 he was working his socks off to build a better life for his wife and two tiny children!
I have no patience with the modern tendency to indulge and cosset ‘kids’ and allow them to get away with murder.
Without such boundaries, they can’t grow.
That’s where your partner’s son ( and perhaps his daughter?) find themselves now — in arrested development because their father has some strange sense of guilt about what happened in his marriage.
Naturally, I would like the two of you to seek couple counselling. I believe he owes that to you. But can he man up? From what you’ve told me, it really doesn’t sound like it.