Mums new partner…red flags or is it me?

You sound lovely and clearly want to protect your mum- not at all like a sulky child. Absolutely tryst your gut (and the evidence!) On this...hope your mum is able to extricate herself quickly and without too much aggro 🙏🙏🙏

I have a friend your mums age who got married after a few months of meeting the man who seemed very nice and charming. But he turned out to be horribly jealous and possessive and it was a disaster. And so complicated to extricate herself. So if he's a pain now, goodness knows what he'll be like when he's got his feet under the table.

Good point. Putting a new barrel in the lock is a cheap and easy job. I'm useless at anything DIY and I'm older than your mum, but I did the job in five minutes. So it has to be easy!

I will absolutely make sure that mum knows exactly what is going on and I will make sure I’m here until it’s resolved. Thank you again xx

Good for you @AurumVox . It seems like your mum would be open to an "I really want you to be happy mum, and for you to have a loving relationship, but this isn't it..." conversation, now. Best of luck with it all.

Once she has changed the code to the keysafe she needs to get the lock changed. He has had plenty of time to make a copy without her noticing.

If he hasn't then he will never know, but if he has it will make all the difference.

I agree.

If you can't persuade your DM to say no to that particular wierd outing, and note his response, I'd actually tag along and give him every opportunity to be rude to you in front of your mum. Let her see it for herself and then talk to her about it later.

I also agree with pps saying research him as much as poss... there are too many red flags. What's his current living situation... could he be looking to move in?

If she's determined to go.. and I admit this is a bit sneaky, but its very easy if you've ever done Ancestry to look up people's death certificates which has the birth date on it... and I bet you £10 it won't be the day he says.. You only have his word for it that its his late wife's birthday (I can just imagine him saying Oh but it has to be that day because...) Its very convenient isn't it.

In any case a decent reasonable person wouldn't insist on a trip like that when her DD who lives a long way away is making a short visit. It could easily be moved to the following week or he could go on his own.

I can just imagine the opportunity he'd have for graveside emotional manipulation - and even proposing a development in their relationship or playing on your DM's empathy to encourage her to commit to supporting his emotional fragility ( which he def isn't!!) So that's another reason why you should tag along to spoil his plan. Hopefully he would really resent the fact that you're there so much that more of his true nature would come out with your DM as witness.
Even if I was infatuated with someone, if they were nasty to my DC in front of me, I'd be dumping them. Get the rest of your family on board too.

After thinking on this a bit longer (I have a quiet day!!). I have to be honest OP - as you have asked for honest opinions - and say that I am not sure if the conversations you described were rude in themselves.

If I was waxing lyrical about a lovely walk I'd found and someone basically shut me down by saying, 'I know, I grew up here' I would find that rude and it would seem like they were pulling rank on me. But a lot depends on the tone of his interaction before that - if he was just saying he'd found a lovely place, or if he was mansplaining it to you as if you wouldn't know.

Or maybe he was going on about the exact route of the walk and not picking up on cues that you know where it was. Eg 'You go down this path and turn left and walk for 0.75km and then there is a crossroads..." And you interject: 'Yes I know the place and it's lovely isn't it?" And then he continues 'yes but after the crossroads you go round a bend and then turn left..(you interject 'Yes, I know, there's a bench there) He continues 'theb you need to turn left because if you turned right you'd come back to the village'. That is a conversation I could easily imagine with someone with autism.

It's hard to say from the conversation without more context.

Also, for him to say there is nothing he can say that you or your mum don't already know is putting your mum down as well.

On the trams/buses conversation, it sounds like you were at cross purposes...he was purely focussing on the financial costs of each and you were talking about something different, about each having their place. If he does have a one track mind I can see that would be frustrating to him.

But, along with the other things, that's why I've come down on the side of him being a walking red flag, even though I'm not sure about whether the conversation side of it was rude or a personality clash.

At the end of the day your mum deserves to be happy and if he clashes with everyone that is not going to make her happy, it will lose her the friends she has, and the older we are the more we need our friends!

It sounds like you really do want her to be happy, and if course you will be defensive her and it will take you time to adjust to someone new in her life. But don't let your self-awareness of that blind you to actual issues.

Maybe he does have autistic traits but the fact is he won't change at this point and will he make your mum happy?

I may have been harsh, but I've re-read the OP and this is what I'm referring to

The guy she’s started dating is very intense and was wanting to spend all of his time with her so she was finding it hard to balance all the other commitments. I talked a lot to her about seeing it from his perspective as he has also lost his wife around 18 months ago. So I put a lot into talking things through with mum and encouraging her to communicate with him about how she was feeling etc.
About 3 weeks ago mum travelled up to stay with me and I looked after her dog while she went to her place in Crete, while she was staying he was calling her 4 x a day which I thought was a lot! Didn’t say anything though. She said this was normal for him. That he wanted to spend all of his time with her which she didn’t want. She had also said previously that lots of people disliked him because he often says the wrong thing and could be taken as rude / abrupt etc, that perhaps he was slightly lacked social skills. I again said well you know him in a different way so go with the your gut. They met through a solo group of which some of the members have apparently warned mum off him.

Instead of pointing out that these were red flags, she encouraged her mum to accept them.

I agree, if someone is a controlling arse, it's because they are a controlling arse. ND doesn't increase the likelihood of someone being a controlling arse.

ND are just like NT, variable in personality. It does nothing to aid acceptance to tell people, 'oh well he's a prick but he's ND so what can you do?'

This man's actions as described by OP are rude, controlling, and potentially isolating too. That's nothing to be dismissed as just ND because it just isn't.

He sounds quite sinister to me, moving in on a very amenable nice widow. I know someone that this has happened to very recently, similar ages. She had been with him for about a year and suddenly he has moved in with her 'while his house is being finished off' and he seems to show no sign of moving on and his house hasn't been mentioned again.

This is really interesting, because my mum’s partner is also ‘autistic’ and it’s apparently why he’s so rude to people and why he abused his daughter. Because apparently, he could function perfectly well in a high powered finance role, but lacked sufficient ability to read social cues such that he sexually assaulted his own child repeatedly. 🙄

It’s bollocks. And even if someone is autistic, if their autism is the reason why they are obnoxious and abusive, still no one has to tolerate that crap. Being neurodiverse is not a get out of jail free card. No one has to tolerate someone making them feel controlled and miserable in a relationship. You can end a relationship anytime you want if someone behaves like a manipulative little knob, whether they are autistic or not.

I don't see the conversation OP described as rude. Depending on the tone (and that's important) all he said was he couldn't tell them anything about the areas as they already knew it. This could be said in a jokey way or a petulant way

I couldn't disagree more. What he actually said was
his response was. “There really isn’t anything I can tell you or your mother that you don’t already know is there?”
That is very obviously petulant and cross. It's 'how dare you think you know more than me!'

Posters who are making excuses for this, or speculating about neurodiversity as being behind it, should really consider whether they want to justify rude, aggressive and controlling behaviours. That's what those posts are doing. I don't think equating it with neurodiversity is helpful, or fair to people who are neurodivergent.

Twat I mean. He was a bully and misogynist he made terrible comments towards my mother.

My grandad was absolute nightmare in his 70, after my grandma died he was going on drinking binges with a much younger he supposed to drink due to do diabetes. My dad got a call that he’d gone into a diabetic coma in her bed. His behaviour became extreme and he was a teat when he younger too.

The fact other people have warned her is a big thing, because it validates what you are thinking and seeing.

I'm another who thinks his manner screams ND, social awkwardness and 'having' to be right all the time. I dated a man like this for years, who was a lovely lovely man but just couldn't deal with other people in any meaningful way. He wasn't a bad person, but the lack of ability with nuance and social politeness was utterly dreadful. He also wouldn't have seen anything wrong in taking me to a past wife's grave as a day out; he literally would not have been able to grasp how this was so wrong.

I wonder if your mum is seizing on him almost as 'best of a bad bunch' because she's lonely and he's company, although it sounds as though he's already annoying her and she won't take much persuading to dump him. I'd just be honest with her. She's already been told that people don't like him, and i wonder if he's just her 'interim relationship' having been with your stepdad for so long, rather than the love of her life.

It's a mix of personality and experiences that shape behaviour not simply age.
If you read the rest of my post I said he may have always been in control because his wife was ill / disabled for years.

My partner is 71 and he wouldn't behave like that but I know a man ( husband of extended family) who is 66 and is even worse than this man!

This sounds so much like my mum’s partner. Down to the lovebombing and the knowing everything about everything to no one liking him.

I’ve discovered over the years that no one likes him. No one liked him to start. He has no friends. His children were NC with him. He’s very unpleasant and will disagree with anything anyone says just to be a jerk to them. They have a very intense relationship that comes before everything else. My gut very early on said something is wrong with this guy, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt so instinctually that he was not right, other than him simply being so unenjoyable and annoying.

I actually searched for years trying to find out more about his background because I wanted an explanation for why my gut said no so strongly. I was always googling him. It took about 10 years oddly for old court records to come up. I ended up needing to hire a PI to do the rest of the digging. He had been convicted of sexually abusing his child. Finally explained why his family was NC with him. And went a way towards explaining my gut reaction to him.

Now not to say that is the case with this guy. He may simply be an abusive mansplaining jerk. But your gut is telling you something and I would listen to it. It sounds like your mum’s gut is also telling her something too. I would absolutely raise your concerns and have her friends do the same.

I wish I had been able to save my mum before she got sucked in. We are now NC with her. Between them, they have no relationship with any of their children or grandchildren, which is very sad and all because of him.

OP please, please do not wait until next month’s 70th birthday trip ffs don’t sit back and allow this abusive man to continue abusing your poor mother until then! My god. She’s vulnerable.
You need to do do a Clare’s Law request and maybe even a Sarah’s Law request if they’ll allow it, especially if you have your own kids or anyone else in the family does? Personally even if there were no kids at all, if the police allowed it I would do one anyway. I truly believe women have the absolute right to know if they’re dating any kind of predator, not just one ‘type’ dependant on the woman’s circumstances, but that’s a whole other discussion.

Please defend your mother. I understand and respect your desire to not interfere and to be respectful etc but none of that comes before your mother’s safety and wellbeing.

The rudeness is not ideal but could perhaps be forgiven, however, if he’s stopping her from spending time with family and friends, even if only through subtle tactics like making her feel guilty for not being with him, that’s a red flag for isolation. The “banter” could also be a red flag for emotionally abusive behaviour depending on the content of it, as he may be putting her down, which will be reducing her self-esteem and therefore the chances of her leaving him. I’d therefore be looking to consider if you feel you could speak to your mum about your concerns. if you do you could explain that people who have previously been in abusive relationships are more vulnerable to having further abusive relationships, but that they often go on to be in relationships that feature more subtle overt abuse. You could tell her you’re worried about him potentially cutting her off from family and friends and about him treating her unkindly.