I guess the reason for this post is to get someone else's opinon on whether it is me or the situation which is wrong.

I met a girl 3 years ago who (at the time) had a 14 year old son. He will be 17 in a couple of months.  When I met her she had lived in her own house for the last 10 years.  For the first couple of years of her son's life she was living back with her mother.  Her mother and her have and continue to be the "parents" to her son.  I am not included in any of that side of things.

When the son was born she had moved back in with her parents.  6 weeks after the birth the father/husband died and my opinion is that my girlfriend and her mother then focussed all of their grief and lives upon the new baby and since then he has been treated like a baby having everything done for him.

After knowing each other for approximately 1 year I moved in with my girlfriend and her son.  Things appeared okay at the beginning but over time I just felt "shredded" by the way things were in the house.  I recently moved out.  We are still talking and I think there is hope that we will "sort things out" and get back together properly.  We will see how that works out.  The situation in her house does not appear to have changed since I left.

The situation in the house was/is still as follows.  The house is very untidy and rarely gets cleaned.  Dishes pile up in the kitchen until there is nothing left in the cupboard and then my girlfriend decides to wash up.  There are no rules in the house and no routines.  The dining table and dining room are used as a junk yard and people eat with food on their laps because the dining room cannot be used. My girlfriemd's son's bedroom is a complete and utter pig-sty.  He has been told to keep it tidy but rather than make sure he does it she cleans it for him when she cannot bear it any more.  It is clear what he learns from that.

I was never used to living in a house which is complete chaos.  When I moved in I told my grilfriend that there needed to be some rules and routine put in place so that cleaning was done on a regular basis.  She agreed and a spreadsheet was prepared for her son so that he was aware of his jobs and when they needed to be done. (he never did anything in the house previously).  My girlfriends mother things I am a control freak because the jobs were put onto a spreadsheet.  The idea was that it was like a school timetable so it was easy for him to understand. The other jobs were agreed between my girlfriend and I so that everyone had things to do to keep the place in order.  Generally this lasted for a couple of weeks with me doing my bit but everything else decending into chaos again.  If her son did not do his jobs then there was never any consequence, despite my protestations.  She says he is a good lad and so she does not want to stress him.  In reality there is no discipline in the house.  He has a set bedtime but she needs to get out of bed pretty well every night to tell him to turn off his computer and go to bed well after that time. His room is full of cups and glasses when there was a rule put in place that only one was allowed in there at a time to avoid clutter.  The fact he breaks that rule means little as she appears not to see the cups most of the time.  When she is allerted to the fact she just tells him to bring then downstairs but rarely makes him wash them.

My girlfriend regularly complains that she feels I am not committing to the relationship.  I feel I do not want to commit when the house is a tip, there are no rules or routine, she is not acting like a parent and as it is her house she changes things all of the time and I feel I have little or no say.  I feel he is not my son and so it is not my place to discipline him.

I feel that the son is completely spolit and will never leave home (why should he?)  I am not prepared to live in her house with her making the decisions and I am not prepared to accept the two of them moving into my place carrying over all of the existing problems into my home.

In September 2019 her son started college and so started leaving the house earlier in the morning and getting home later in the evening.  My girlfriend felt sorry for him and so took all of his jobs away from him and does them herself.  I said he should do something at the weekend but that was not happening when I was there.  He told his "2nd parent" (Grandmother) that he was going to bed early because he was so tired.  She then decided it was fair he did no jobs in the house along with his mother. In reality since starting college he did this once.  He spends all evening from when he gets home playing computer games in his bedroom and needs to be told to go to bed after his bed time.  My statements that if he can play computer games for hours on end every night he could take some time out to dry the dishes etc has only met with resistance and me being portrayed as a bad person.

My advice to anyone else would be to cut their losses and leave.  Maybe I should take some of my own medicine?

I would be interested in an opinion from someone who is not involved and can look at things objectively.