Responding to comment.

On the previous post, Magaret said,

How hard it must be to say yes to something when you're not comfortable
with it. I know he feels like an adult, but he is only 19. If my decisions as a
19 year old guided my life now, I'd be a complete mess. But I see that you're
weighing smaller decisions against the larger good. In the long run, that will
benefit him more.

I guess I was not quite clear. I don't have a problem with him spending the night (somewhere else) with his boy/friends. It is a pretty normal thing for him to do, actually. The problem is more that I am tempted to think from a place of anxiety -- that Evan's behavior is not just normal 19-year-old stuff but rather a replay of what I went through with David.

If I don't think carefully, I will act from that anxiety and say things that I don't mean.

And I don't have that luxury. Saying things that I don't mean can have consequences they would never have if Evan were a birth kid.

Of course sometimes I have allowed kids to do something not because I thought it was right but because I did not think it was worth the fight (choosing battles and all that). In this particular case I'm fine with it.

But thanks Margaret for your support!