Asking Eric: My wife and I remained friends with our son’s ex for 14 years

Dear Eric: About 14 years ago, our son was seriously dating a woman whom both my wife and I really adored. We both thought she would be a great wife and daughter-in-law. She became the daughter we always wanted to have. Then the unspeakable happened. She cheated on him. They broke up, yet remained friends, but she claimed she had adopted us as her parents. She was estranged from her father and rarely spoke with her mother. She would come and visit us on her own.

My son was sort of OK with this and she still came to family dinners and events, even when my son brought a new girlfriend along. Then she moved far away for work, but we kept in touch all the time over the phone and internet.

Then my son got engaged to a wonderful woman, whom we dearly love. But when he found out we were still in close contact with the other woman, he had a raging fit, and all but demanded we drop her.

Now we are so torn apart. After a 14-year relationship, do we just drop this woman who became a part of our lives? It was pretty much only us in her life. What do we do?

— Second Parents

Dear Second Parents: The first thing you should do may be the hardest: talk to your son and ask him his honest opinion about the last 14 years. This blow-up didn’t come out of nowhere. You write that he was “sort of OK,” for instance. This raises big questions. How much hurt has he been sitting on all this time? Has he tried talking about this before? What is sort of OK?

Give him space to voice his feelings, acknowledge them, apologize if and when appropriate, and then talk about what happens next.

It’s not really fair for him to dictate whom you can and can’t befriend, but he does have a painful past with this person, so more caution and a clearer boundary are going to be necessary.

All of it starts with clearing the air with your son. Simply dropping his ex isn’t going to solve his problem, and it’s only going to cause you and her more pain. But this adopted parent relationship was constructed on a shaky foundation, so you’ll have to dig down before you can build up.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)