Advice needed about partners 15 y/o son

[WorriedMatt]

I'm a man, looking for advice about how to deal with a situation involving my partner's 15 year old son. Background is that me and his mum have been together for about 4 years but we don't live together. I live on my own, she lives with her son. The son and I have always got on reasonably well, but I've never tried to act like a parent.

Earlier he phoned me and asked if I could pick him up from his mate's house. This is unusual, he rarely asks me for a lift unless we're going in the same direction. But he couldn't call his mum as she's at work, and he said he didn't have any money for a bus.

When I picked him up he was in a right state. He said he'd had a massive fight with his mate and now his mate didn't want anything to do with him. This all relates to a party they went to on Saturday (having lied to his mum about where he was going). At the party he'd got drunk and had sex with his mate's girlfriend.

It turns out that this is not the first time him and his mate have been drunk, and it's not the first time he's had casual sex.

He's asked me not to tell his mum any of this. I think I'll have to when she gets home from work. Meanwhile I have a moody 15 year old who seems heartbroken that he's fallen out with his best mate yet cannot see that anything he did was wrong.

His mum will be heartbroken - he' always been a really good kid, well behaved and never really shown an interest in girls. His mum has never known about any girlfriends, and in fact thought he was gay.

If you were the mum, would you want to know? Or should I keep this between me and him?

Since read she was likely drinking as well
Its difficult as i have teens and i hear them talking both boys and girls and its all considered quite normal behaviour by some of them around where we are
A few of my sons friends were in long term relationships at 13 , my 2 seem out of the ordinary as at 16/18 not really had a girlfriend and some of the things they tell me what happens is a bit shocking and the behaviour is from boys and girls

Since read she was likely drinking as well
They were all drinking (him, his mate and mate's girlfriend). They'd had a couple of drinks at his mate's house beforehand, too. They went to the party with the intention of getting drunk and I'm afraid to say my partner's son went intending to find someone to sleep with.

As for the boys vs girls debate, I'd rather not go there again if you don't mind. I do not want to get into the girl's reasons for agreeing to have sex with him. He's still convinced she just enjoys having sex. She's the only person who really knows, if indeed she knows herself.

What I will say is that on the previous pages there have been comments about girls sleeping with boys due to low self esteem etc, and girls being more vulnerable than boys. I would argue that this boy may well have been sleeping around due to his own low self esteem, and in fact he is also vulnerable.

With regard to his attitude to girls and sex, a man he trusts and likes giving him an alternative perspective about consent and trust is likely to be more impactful than his mother telling him he’s disgusting and grounding him. I understand her reaction, I’d be the same, but model decent manhood to him, don’t just shame him.

To be honest I think if he was my kid I'd have reacted like she did. And I am disgusted by what he did (which is not quite the same as saying he's disgusting, is it?). Difference is I was able to resist the urge to rant at him, which is probably why he felt able to tell me some of the other stuff.

I'm taking them both out for lunch today. His mum wasn't keen but I said it would do us all good to try to forget about things for a couple of hours and act like a normal family (yes, I used the F word!). She has agreed, but said we cannot go to Pizza Express because that's his favourite, and he is still supposed to be grounded...

She wasn't sure about him having clothes here - said she didn't want him to start taking advantage of me. I said that ultimately, if there was ever a situation where he didn't want to be at home for any reason, I would rather he knew there was a safe space here. I also said it was really no different to her keeping clothes here, or me keeping clothes at their house, both of which we've done for years.

@WorriedMatt I think they are all quite vunerable at that age on many ways
At 15/16 you think your know it all , we have all been there
Your not quite an adult but often expected to behave like one
At least he is talking now about things and I think you handled it well

Things were going reasonably well today. He's been talking to his mum a little bit which was good. And the three of us went out for lunch. His mum didn't say a huge amount but we did manage to have relatively normal conversations.

Unfortunately, it all went downhill quite quickly when we got back home. He tried to negotiate the return of his phone. He said he wanted to send a message to his friend to apologise. His mum said he should be apologising to the girl. He said he hadn't done anything to apologise to her for. His mum said something horrible (in my view), and he said something equally nasty back to her. She said she was going to take his phone outside and drive over it with the car. He went to his room.

Feels like we're back at square one.