Dear Meghan: My fiancé and I have been together for six years. He has a 24-year-old son. The wife/mom passed away about eight years ago. I believe it sent the son into depression (completely understandable). He doesn’t work, sleeps all day, plays video games all night, helps around the house on a very limited basis and rarely leaves the basement.
I am very concerned for (1) the son’s mental health and failure to launch and (2) my future with my fiancé as a couple. We live separately, and he has no intention of “abandoning his son” for us to live together. He also enables his son to live like this. Any attempts by him or anyone else to encourage, empower or provide opportunities are met by his son with an “I’m good.” I want to help his son launch and be with my fiancé, but I feel like it’s futile.
— Worried
Worried: Thank you for your letter; this is really hard. I am very glad you wrote to me, because we can really clarify what is yours to do here … and what isn’t.
This is a difficult place to begin a marriage. In terms of what you can control, you have only yourself to manage. You are probably not going to “help this son launch,” and you are not going to ask your fiancé to “abandon” his son so you can begin your married life together. Not to be brusque, but it is clear what the pecking order is here and, sadly, you are not at the top of the list. And I am not passing judgment on this; I am just stating the facts that are staring us all in the face as you wrote them.
You do have options: You can marry and move in with both of them, live apart and keep the status quo or break up. Before you discuss these options with your partner, decide on your own desires and boundaries. While painful — six years is a long time — you need to decide what you want to do if the son never launches. What if your partner never succeeds in helping his son? What if he never moves away from his son? What if the son becomes more depressed? You need to sit with a good book (like “The Book of Boundaries” by Melissa Urban), a trusted friend or a therapist and place yourself in the driver’s seat of your own life.
If you don’t land on breaking up, you can decide how far you want to go in helping your fiancé help his son. It sounds like numerous people have attempted to talk to your fiancé’s depressed son, to no avail. And I sense your frustration; many people want to […]
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