Instead of focusing on his drinking and on his depression and anxiety, focus on what it is about him that makes him emotionally, physically, and financially a burden. His anxiety and his depression are his business. So is his drinking, for that matter. Seeing his ex is really his business, and not yours. When you say that you you are tempted to tell him that he needs to do what he said he was going to do, you are talking about him, as if he were a teenager.

He probably doesn't have much more maturity than a teenager. There is probably a whole long history behind that. The question is what to do now? Your therapist is reluctant to touch the issue, outside of uttering banalities. There is no easy answer.

It sounds like he is an alcoholic. I would recommend Al-Anon to you. It helped me. It sounds like you need to be able to say that there are health consequences to you and your spouse to be able to have the right to set limits to what you will put up with. That may be a clue to where the whole problem started. I lived with an alcoholic. It wasn't the drinking that was the main problem. It is the behavior that goes with it. Your son probably had behavior issues in the home before he even got heavily into alcohol. Think about starting there.

It's your home. You decide what behavior is not okay. And it doesn't have to be actually affecting your blood pressure, or whatever, to not be okay. That's the problem. Unacceptable behavior is just that. You decide it's unacceptable not on the basis of how it affects your health. A kid can't possibly grow up to internalize good norms of behavior based on your blood pressure, or whatever.

That doesn't give you an easy answer to how to find balance. It might be a place to start. Unfortunately, it may get down to where it's a case of you having to choose between him and yourselves. That's got to be the saddest choice a parent ever has to make. I think you're deluded, if you think that keeping him away from his ex is what will avoid that.

My parents faced a situation not entirely unlike your own. My bother kept moving back home and was a cross to bear. It kept winding up in blow outs between him and my parents. Eventually, he left for good . . . to live mostly on the street. Now he shows up at the door of my sister, or me, from time to time. After my last experience with him, I won't open the door to him anymore. It's sad. Sometimes a person truly becomes a "lost cause." My deepest convictions fight against acknowledging that. I can't imagine how tough it must be when the "cause" is your own child. I don't know what the answer is. I guess I'm more acquainted with what the answer is not. Tolerating what should not be allowed is not the answer. What you have to set limits on is what behavior he may, or may not display toward you. I'ld strongly advise you to unconfuse yourselves by focusing on that, and don't worry about who he has "contact" with. That truly is his business. I know you think you are heading off the problem - at the pass, so to speak - by concerning yourselves with his seeing the ex. You can't micro-manage an adult like that. That strategy won't work.