Ds21 and new “girlfriend”

I think you’re focusing on the wrong issue here.

Does be pay rent?

Stop doing his washing and cooking his food and tell him to grow up and get his ass in gear.

You’ve failed him by doing everything for him and not helping him become a functioning adult.

Privileges like having girlfriends round the house come with ties likes being an active member of the household and contributing to its up keep.

You have zero agency in your ‘relationship’ with your DS.

This seems to be lifelong but what you are grasping at now is trying to have impact by putting down rules about the girls.

They are irrelevant and will be a distraction of you rebuilding your relationship with him in an effort to finishing / turning around the failure of parenting on your behalf that you have admitted.

You need to break down everything that you do for him and stop doing them one by one so that he becomes independent. You don’t have to get him to agree to anything - you just stop doing the things.

Once this is established you engage him in communal chores - which have a deadline and a consequence.

If he doesn’t cooperate he moves out. Which is what should be the short term aim at his age anyway…..but it would be better for his emotional development and your long term relationship if this was achieved in a positive way rather than it ending in conflict.

How are your younger DCs with chores?

Does your relationship with your DH model respect, kindness and reciprocity?

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing. While the thought of him having a one-night stand in his own bedroom in your house isn't particularly nice, it's not really any of your business and you shouldn't take on the role of the morality police.

However it is NOT OK for him to treat your home like a hotel. He needs to instantly start paying rent, contributing to the household, taking turns cooking meals or cooking his own food, doing his own washing, helping with household chores. He needs to be pleasant and interact with the rest of the household. Then he can bring his friends over, as any member of the family can, without you getting a veto. He still needs to show a modicum of respect and not do the deed in communal areas.

But that's on you - sit him down, tell him the new rules, and stick to them.

And it’s gone from two relationships ending in one year and the latest girlfriend

to now “one night stands”

How long does he plan to utilise this free knocking shop? Til he's 40?

Im Not sure if focusing on the girlfriends is the right issue to tackle first. If you don’t like the way he treats women, you need to start with yourself, and require him to treat you better by pulling his weight around the house. Sit down with him, have a proper talk about how things need to be going forward. He should be at a bare minimum doing all his own laundry, cleaning the kitchen a couple of nights a week and cooking a family meal once or twice a week.

I would tell him that the house isn't a) a Hotel, or b) a knocking shop. He can either start to pull his weight in the house, by completing X, Y, Z chores on a weekly basis, contributing X amount financially, and stop bringing every random shag home, or he can move out. His choice. If he wants to shag in the bathroom, it needs to be his own bathroom.
I moved out much younger than your DS but there is no way in hell my mother would have put up with any of that behaviour (the being bone idle or the shagging!) from me.

I’m not at all

My dc are still young so I haven't had to navigate this. But this seems to be one of the may problems that comes with young adults not being able to move out to their own homes, or homes shared with fellow young people. At 21 I went to work, went to the pub with friends and had sex. I had to look after my own house but the upside of that needing to manage my money and wash my own clothes is that I could do what I wanted without bothering my parents.

Op should have stopped doing everything for her son years ago so he learnt to do it himself but he is also being a normal 21 year old.

This. He needs a wake up call on his behaviour.

Your DH may not feel able to speak up so perhaps you need to spell it all out to DS leaving him in no doubt of the new rules.

And please stop doing everything for him - not suggesting you actively separate his clothes if you’re doing a wash but step back and let him start stepping up. Do you buy his toiletries? Pay his phone bill? Change his bed?

<Shakes head>

This is what university is for …

Presumably this young person never moved out and lived semi-independently away from parental approval / disapproval? It does seem uncomfortably weird to have your mother in your face about your sexual relationships at 21.

I have told him I will happily meet this new girl and go out for food together as a family but I want to make sure he isn’t just using this girl before I meet her

This isn't normal. It's not for you to make sure he isn't using this girl,what are you going to do if you decide he is, ban him from dating? Or to force him to go out for dinner as a family with every girl he wants to date, that's way ott. If I was a 21 year old girl who fancied a lad and his mum behaved like that I'd laugh and him and you, and then run.

Shagging in the family bathroom - not ok. You trying to control his dating life - also not ok.

I wouldn't allow my child to bring back different girls every few weeks. If that's what they want to do find a place to go and do it.

I wouldn't be doing anything for an adult child. If they are an adult they can do what they need to do by themselves.

If i heard my child having sex in the toilet in the middle of the night i would have went and chapped the door. IMO that's not on. In their room might be different but in the toilet that eveyone uses just no.

What should he have done, stay in a relationship where he’s unhappy in case a break up would upset the other person?

What evidence do you have that he is using this woman? Pretty nasty thing to accuse him of if it’s baseless.

Where did the OP say or even suggest that she despises her son?!

This!
You wonder why he, by all surface level appearances, has no respect for women, when you, the key woman his entire life, has allowed him to act like a little precious emporer in the home and treat you as a servant?

How do you know he really hurt them?

Reading your comments it does look like you are projecting. He is not his father. It is quite normal for young men and women to have more casual sex than when they are older. He is only 21. At this age you are fully entitled to set rules about what he does around the house- he should be doing a share of tidying washing etc. As for the sex, I would work on him being discrete and not disrupting the rest of the house.

I think you’ve had a bit of a hard time on here OP. Also people don’t need to be criticising your parenting, as they don’t know you. You have a son who you want to be a man who treats women with respect and not objects to dispose of when they get bored. That’s not the sign of a bad parent. I would stop with the comparisons with his dad though as he’s his own person and his actions are his own. It’s not healthy or you to view him in this way and I hope you don’t say it to him.

Regarding the doing stuff around the house part, you know he needs to step up with that, but many people don’t make the transition from the lazy teen stage to young adult stage seamlessly - parents and children alike. I think you have to have a think about how to change the dynamics from having a teen son to a 21 year old. Communication is key here and you need to get him on board with this and not present a load of rules as he’s just going to get defensive. Agree together how to move forward. If he’s not prepared to have this conversation then it’s time for him to get a flat share and live how he chooses.

I think it’s up to you whether you feel he should contribute financially, not every family asks this of young adult children living at home. The doing nothing around the house needs to change. Bringing girls home again is something you need to discuss and have some ground rules about.

I think communication is the way forward and if he’s mature enough to want to have women stay over, then he needs to be mature enough to do this while respecting his family, pulling his weight around the house and not sitting in his room acting like a moody teen and actually be part of the family like the adult he is.

Huh? How is he "treating women as commodities"? He is a 21 year old having sex with (I'm guessing) similar aged females who are clearly up for it too!

I had plenty of sex at that age - one night stands, flings, relationships... I never once thought I was being treated as a "commodity"! Just fairly normal 20-something behaviour!

With regards to the housework and not pulling his weight, that's a separate issue entirely and probably one of the OPs own making.

Harsh responses, 21 year olds can be selfish and obnoxious, I don’t think that it’s that unusual. You do need to stop treating him like a prince though, stop doing everything for him otherwise you’re doing him a disservice. He can come and go as he pleases but he should be cooking, cleaning, and doing his own laundry.

But I don’t care in he’s an adult, if he wants the freedom to do as he pleases he needs to move out. I wouldn’t have girls in and out of my house.

I mean it's not really a hard issue to solve is it... He starts paying rent, he starts doing his own laundry or he moves out. As for the girls would you rather he was shagg!ng them in bus stops or against a wall down an alley. If your going to be all NIMBY about him having sex in your house where do u think he's gonna have it. Maybe as you are both supposed to be adults you could sit down and talk and maybe come to an agreement. As for never seeing him when I was 21 I worked a full time 40hr job and a worked 16hrs as a support worker I ate, slept and sexed at home and maybe saw my parents for a total 2 hrs a week in 2min increments as we passed in the hallway.

So after 6 months he decides they're not right for each other so he ends things? That sounds perfectly normal to me at that age tbh.
Why would you want him to stay with someone he isn't happy with just so he doesn't hurt her feelings?
I did that and ended up married to him, 10 years later we had 3 kids and a divorce under our belts!

His behaviour in the house is entirely unconnected to having a girlfriend?

You can address his behaviour as a member of the household - he needs to pull his weight - but I fail to see why you would not welcome his friends/girlfriends due to that. Though there needs to be appropriate considerate behaviour from him and any guest, especially regarding sex but also tidying kitchen after using not dominating living room etc.

Is this a joke thread? “This is not a sex house” It sounds like something Alan Partridge would say “They’re sex people Lynn” 😂😂