Need advice...

[In over my head]

Here is a little background:

I have been living with my sweetheart for 5 years. We have been together for 7. He became a father when he was a teen. He quit school, got married and joined the military. His wife was young as well and a couple years into the marriage, she left taking their son. I'm not going to waste your time reading all the ins and outs of their relationship. Let me just say that she blames him for ruining her life because she was a teen mom. (Let me add that right after she left him, she moved in with someone else. Became pregnant with her second child, married him, left a couple years later.... moved in with the next guy... she has a cycle.) She was the custodial parent with my sweetheart having visitation. Any time that he wanted to see his son, she would refuse. He would have to bring the authorities with him to be able to see the child. As his son grew older, his ex would tell him that his father had cheated on her (not true) and that he didn't want to see him. By the time I met my sweetheart, his son was 14. He no longer wanted to visit his father but they would talk occassionally on the phone. A year later, his ex put their son up to calling my sweetheart on speaker phone with her feeding him lines to say. He said all sorts of terrible things, ending with he would have been a better father himself. My sweetheart told him that he would not be disrespected in that fashion and that he would be willing to talk when he would be shown some consideration. They did not speak again until this week... 6 years later.

One last piece of background before I tell you about this week is... a year after the phone call... his son was arrested for assualt. My sweetheart hired a lawyer, went to the station, tried to talk to his son. His son refused. The charges were later dropped.

This week:

Junior (he is named for his father) turned 21 on Sunday. He asked his grandmother, my sweetheart's mom, for contact information on my sweetheart. He called the next day. They did discuss some of the past, things that had happened, how they felt about each other. It was a good conversation. He found out about me. (We weren't serious when they stopped speaking.) They talked for about 3 hours. They discussed and were very clear that they are going to keep the ex out of their relationship.

It turns out that Junior has been living with his maternal grandparents for the last 3 years. He was going to propose to his girlfriend a few months ago, then found out she was cheating on him. He is currently out of work. He does not want to go to college. He has ADD and school was always hard for him. He is considering a trade school, but is not sure what he would like to do.

The day after their first conversation, he called his father 11 times and text messages him at least a dozen times. (We were thinking it was a novelty, he missed his father, just wanted to hear his voice because he could, etc.) The next day ... maybe a few less... but still at least 7 calls... it has been the same all week. Now he is pushing to move up to where we are (5 hours away) and live with us. My sweetheart said that we need to take things slow, that junior needs to look for a job, he needs to make some decisions about a career.

We realize that we need to set some boundaries. This incessant calling is affecting my sweetheart's job. We were hoping that it was because it was all so new that it would slow down. It doesn't appear to be happening. We don't want to hurt their budding relationship. We don't want to hurt his feelings. We both want to be there for Junior. We do have a trust issue. He was a willing tool to hurt his father in the past for his mother. There is a doubt that he could be trying something like that again. We don't want to believe it, but it is still a possiblity. We want to move this along slowly.

We need advice on how to procede. How to we set the needed boundaries without hurting Junior? How do we get him to slow things down?

Thank you in advance for any advice!

[Guest]

I think that if junior sees his dad as a great guy the boundaries aren't going to push him away. Dad shouldn't feel the least bit guilty or bad about setting boundaries.

"you can call me between x - x hours" there's nothing wrong with that. Be firm and consistant and don't let him walk all over you. It's really important here not to be a doormat, especially early on in the relationship of reconnecting. Letting Junior know this now is critical, before he comes back into your lives and possibly takes advantage. You both are the ones who need to set the boundaries and teach him...he may be 21 but sounds like he needs to learn about these things and you both will be a positive influence in his life by teaching him these things. By allowing him to walk all over you is teaching him that he always gets what he wants.