So I thought I’d make an update thread, just because I’ve had a few people message me over the past few months asking how things are going so thought it would be easier to do one update.
I wanted to say thanks to all the people that have reached out, it does mean a lot, especially after my other thread was deleted, I felt a bit silly, and I’m even a bit wary about posting this!
Things are good! DS has not got back with GF and isn’t going to. There’s been a few little things that have happened but nothing too major and nothing we can’t handle.
Things like her telling people she has a restraining order on DS as he abused her, and that DS offered her dad money to get her to take DS back 
.
She’s tried messaging him a few times and he could see the message preview but never opened the messages and so didn’t respond so she would then start messaging his friends.
There’s a bit more that's happened but this is just an example.
DS says he’s fully over her but he does hear stories about her through mutual friends and I think he still misses her, which I assured him is normal.
He said despite all the bad times, they did still have some fun times and that’s what he misses, and I’m sure they did have fun too, toxic relationships aren’t bad all the time.
He came to us once recently and said now that he’s out of it (the relationship and situation) he can see just how bad it really was.
He said there’s more things that went on than what we know but he wasn’t ready to talk about it. And he may never be and that’s ok.
He gave his old phone to his younger brother and I told him to make sure it was restored before he did, he didn’t 🙄.
I admit I went through it and came across a few screenshots of messages she’d sent him, and she was just plain nasty to DS.
It confirmed some of the things he’d told us had happened but we hadn’t actually seen for ourselves at the time.
Anyway, DS loves his job and sees his mates regularly.
His sport starts up soon and he said he’s excited for this season. He said he couldn’t be excited in the last two years as he knew what the repercussions from her would be.
He’s still a normal teenager and can still get a bit stroppy/moody with us, but a ‘normal’ amount, no way near what his behaviour was like with her.
He will often come out just for a chat and a laugh.
We went on a family holiday over Xmas which he wanted to come and was excited for, we all had a great time.
Life is back to normal and we couldn’t be happier.
She (and DS and his moods) no longer dominate our life.
In hindsight (what a useless thing that is haha), we know we handled certain things badly and obviously regret it. We’ve had chats to DS about these things as he brings them up and he knows we love him and we were just doing our best to protect him, even if we did get it wrong sometimes.
Thank you all for your support. I truly think if I didn't have MN to vent and get out all my thoughts and anxieties and ask for advice, my mental state would have been even worse than what it was during this time.