Contacting estranged DSS through GF/friends

[Clysoo]

To start, this could be long, sorry in advance.
My DH of 7 years has 2 children from his first marriage, DSS is 26 and DSD 23. He and his ex had a deeply toxic relationship, to the point they ended up in court. This was obviously extremely damaging for their children and DH has acknowledged and apologised about this. I won’t go into extreme detail but in the end the children ended up estranged from their mother at 8 and 11.
While at university, DSS decided to reconcile with his mother, he had our full support in doing so. With this came her telling him all sorts of stories about the past, many half truths. DH never denied anything that was true and corrected/gave his side to anything that was exaggerated/fabricated. DSS seemed to understand, decided in the end to keep his mother at arms length and remained close to his dad.
Right up until Christmas he remained close to us, he spoke to his dad on the phone often, came up to see us often (moved to London for work). Then contact dwindled dramatically over the course of 2 months, phone calls stopped, texts didn’t get replied to. In March he sent a message to his dad and sister saying he would be blocking them both for a bit, he needed space to process everything that happened in the past and was going to go to therapy. Obviously both asked him not to but alas it was to no avail.
Initially we expected weeks, maybe a couple of months but it is now 7 months and no contact. He blocked everyone everywhere. His sister tried to message him on instagram from a different account, no reply and quickly blocked, this was 3 months ago.
Now we are concerned, we don’t plan to force him back into our lives but we would like confirmation he is okay and doing well.
His sister messaged his two friends from high school who said they hadn’t seen him in a while but he seemed fine. He cut contact with his mother as well.
DSD was upset yesterday and decided she needed to know if he was okay. With no way of contacting him now she decided to see if he could find the instagram of a friend who lives in the same city as him and go from there. We didn’t know any of his friends names, but through LinkedIn she found colleagues of his, then their instagram and one of those girls had several posts (public account) with him tagged. One of these posts was captioned “double dates with double trouble”, which led her to the account of a girl who appears to be his girlfriend, she posts pictures with him often (again public account). They seem to have been together since late spring.
Now DSD wants to contact her to see how he is and ask him to contact us.
DH is all for this, I’m more on the fence, we know he is “okay” as this girl posts with him often, in fact she had a story up of them together on holiday. I feel like it was his choice to go no contact, we should respect it. DH feels like if we don’t show that we are thinking about him and miss him, he will never come back.
So WIBU to message her to get to him? AIBU to think it will just push him away further?

Don't do it, respect his wishes and leave him be.

Surely it’s clear she will just block any of you if you try? He needs to make the first step, unfortunately you need to wait, as devastating as that must be for you all.

He says he was going to therapy and asked for space.

You say the relationship was very toxic.

He may not be okay. He may remember things that upset him. Therapy often makes things worse before it makes things better because you have to talk about the things that are hurting you.

Give him the space he has asked for.

Your dh apologizing doesn't fix things.

Sounds like such a toxic childhood he wants to leave it all behind.

I feel for his sister and she must be devastated. I would recommend you all have some counselling to deal with this loss. It’s a bereavement.

You can see he physically well and can always ask for a welfare check from the police.

I would respect his wishes and not contact him. I’d only contact him via that channel if is 100% necessary.

You ask at the end of your post whether YOU would be unreasonable to contact DSS through this person - why would you be the person making contact with him OP? I ask this because your gut is telling you to leave him be, and it’s your DH and DSD that want to make contact with him.

If they want to contact him in this way, there’s little you can do to stop them. But you certainly don’t need to be part of it. You are respecting his wishes by giving him time and space.

I would not contact him but keep an eye on him through this channel occasionally. If someone contacts her she’s very likely to block all of you.

Just leave him be. If you go in like a bull in a china shop he could close the door permanently.

He's asked for space, you need to listen to that and respect his wishes.

He sounds like he's got a lot of trauma to process from his past. Did he have issues with his sister as well?

If you need to get the other side's perspective on going NC then just read the Stately Homes thread. Please don't try to recruit flying monkeys to reel him back in.

As you said, you already know he's okay so your DH and DSD are being disingenuous about why they want contact. They want to force him to respond and they don't respect his opinion. This will reinforce his negative view of them as trampling on his boundaries.