Hello everyone. My stepson turns 18 soon and I am still in the process of divorce so I am still a legal guardian. The stepson has made some bad choices lately and is not doing well, likely as a byproduct of the almost 2 year process of our divorce so far. He had to move from living with his biomom (my STBXW) to a new state with some family, about 10 hour drive away. There's much more to the story, but He hates his new life in the different state, misses his GF who broke up with him (she is almost 3 years younger than him), and says the day he turns 18 he is moving back to the old state to be with GF and other family, not mom.

When my ex discussed his plan with him tonight, she got upset and told him he has to get his own car insurance, get his own phone plan, and his own computer, and that she wants him to send that stuff back to me since I bought it for him.

I don't want his stuff back. I'm not interested in making his life shitty for the sake of making it shitty just because I disagree with his decision making process right now. The cost of the phone is so minuscule for me but for him it would be something he would likely not be able to afford since he is definitely going to have to be on his own insurance.

He has struggled with drugs and alcohol in the last two years, and I don't want to push him so far Into depression anxiety and low self worth that he makes even more irreversible bad decisions.

I've raised him as if he were my own son for the past about seven years, so he and I have a fairly good bond that was significantly eroded when I told him a few months back that I agreed with his mother that the destructive decisions he was making weren't okay. Really not sure how to repair the relationship. For now I am just trying to be an adult that is stable, calm, and doesn't constantly shit on him when he talks to me, but let him know that in this world there is such thing as accountability and responsibility.