NO. He has not reached out to you. You are no longer married to his father. Maybe he doesn't miss you. Maybe he prefers the past to stay in the past. Maybe he would feel disloyal to his father. 

Also, contact with former stepson opens you up to contact with the exh. Why would you want to risk that when you're afraid of him? It could put former SS at risk. And SS might be like his father or even worse. 

If you are having issues moving on or closing the door on your past, ask yourself why that is. Counseling might be helpful. 

Absolutely not.  You are not even remotely close to being through the grief process after your divorce.  That process is 2yrs to 4yrs at minimum.  Do not re-expose yourself to anything about that failed shallow and polluted gene pool.  People like them have powers to suck victims back in. Even the younger ones.  Do not risk it. At all.

I have landed on the Rags 3day rule in my own history of breakups and working through the grief cycle.  That rule is that it only hurts the worst for 3 days. Every day after day 3 hurts just a tiny bit less until at some point, in the futuire, when the grief cycle has been completed and all of the recycling of various parts of that process has been completed, it will only be a rare unpleasant memory.

A hugely important element of the Rags 3day rule is that it takes complete end of contact.  Any contact resets the entire process back to instant one, with all of the same pain, emotion, and self torture.  

Be kind to yourself.  Commit to your future and leave the baggage, drama, and emotion about it all fading into your history rather than recycling through it all.

Use the Rags 3day rule.  It saves a ton of pain and heartache and accelerates moving on to your new life.  At least it does for me.

This XSKid is Dx'd as F'd up.  I get the feelings of love that you have for your former SS, however, that is not love. That is something far less than love. Love is earned. He has not earned it so do not continue to sunbathe and moon bathe on the altar of SParental martyrdom to your X and his baggage.  You are the one who has earned his love though though he is beyond recognizing that.  So, do not waste your happiness on any of them including the SKidult.

My guess would be that you are fishing for some way to assuage voluntary unearned guilt over the whole thing.  Not your fault. Stop blaming yourself.  While some introspection and assumption of accountability for a failed relationship is not unusual, I am fully on team not out fault, not our problem, and F'em all.  When we filter out the feelings, logic is clear as to who blew up the relationship.

As we attempt to salvage a failing relationship, we take various actions of forlorn hope to try to fix it, us, and them.  The problem with that is that we cannot fix them, and we cannot fix a relationship that those types have any place in.  So, not our fault at an level.  We do not gain any repentance by blaming ourselves, wallowing in naive guilt, and worrying about them. Any of them.

What we owe ourselves is to analyze it all with intelect rather than feelings.  Mose importantly, we owe ourselves to never, under any circumstances, let any of them slither a probosces of their parasitic succubus or incubus existence back into our lives.

So, commit to yourself to live well and to live your best life. Which is also .... the best revenge.  Any feelings they have about any of that is on them. Not you.

"Do you think that I should resume contact with my former stepson?  I know this is long.  Thank you for reading."

NO! Not even a little bit. Ever.  

Leave the losers in the past. Regardless of what feelings may be surfacing in your progression through the grief cycle.



Take care of you.

Last edited by Rags (9/07/2025 8:00 pm)

Thank you everyone for your insightful comments to my post.  I really appreciate it.  This has been a tough time, but I'm trying my best to grow from all of this.  I will not reach out to my former stepson.  You guys are right.  Thank you.  

DO NOT KEEP IN CONTACT. You may not know if the stepson has inherited any of the father's traits. Be glad that you got away alive.....

To be quite honest if my partner and I split I would go no contact with his adult kids in the UK due to their past behaviour ......

Last edited by Oldfool (9/08/2025 2:28 pm)

Oppositional defiant disorder, where these behaviours persist,  becomes antisocial personality disorder after 18 due to ODD being a childhood diagnosis.
Looks like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. ASPD is characterised by complete absence of empathy, persistent trouble with the law, seeing other humans as means to an end and all relationships as transactional. Why would you invite that into your life?

Thank you for the additional comments.  I really tried my best to be a good stepmom, but I just feel all of this guilt.  Like I said before, I became this very angry and sad woman.  My ex made me feel like I was just mean, a terrible stepmom and that I was just crazy.  After finding out about the horrible things that he was doing, I finally realized that I was dealing with a very manipulative and terrible man.  I have just wanted to believe that his son is not like him.  But the reality is that my former stepson does have a lot of his traits.  I feel guilty that I didn't leave his dad sooner, and I feel bad for contributing to the angry environment.  I just hope that I didn't cause my stepson to have the issues that he has.  

CountryStepmom501

Crazy making is in the playbook of Narc asshat should be Xs.  Never let anyone paint you with their noxious crap.  It is IMHO an amplified evolution of gaslighting.  Their crap is not your fault.

Take care of you.

Last edited by Rags (9/10/2025 6:53 pm)

It's going to probably take a long time for me to process all of this mess and become whole again.  I'm working with a great therapist.  I'm so thankful for this forum.  

CountryStepmom501 wrote:

Thank you for the additional comments.  I really tried my best to be a good stepmom, but I just feel all of this guilt.  Like I said before, I became this very angry and sad woman.  My ex made me feel like I was just mean, a terrible stepmom and that I was just crazy.  After finding out about the horrible things that he was doing, I finally realized that I was dealing with a very manipulative and terrible man.  I have just wanted to believe that his son is not like him.  But the reality is that my former stepson does have a lot of his traits.  I feel guilty that I didn't leave his dad sooner, and I feel bad for contributing to the angry environment.  I just hope that I didn't cause my stepson to have the issues that he has.  

The drivers for your ex SS to have the issues he has likely land squarely on his father's shoulders.  Even if you participated in some toxicity of the relationship.. again...it was his father's obligation to protect him from that.. so dad should have left you if you were so "horrible" (which you likely were not).

In the end, he is an adult.. he will need to go on his own self healing journey.. as you must do for yourself.  You don't owe him any more than you have done at this point.  keeping a tie to an abusive and dangerous ex is self sabotage.  you need to move past this.

Just a follow-up.  Thanks everybody for your responses to my original post.  I really appreciate it.  My ex-stepson's birthday was at the end of October, and I did not contact him.  I felt bad at first, but I remembered back to when he used to lie to me a lot, just like his father.  My ex-stepson also didn't contact me on my birthday back in September, so I'm just going to completely let go of him in the same way that I let go of this father.