Blackstone ...

you said ...

"I don't know what advice to give, but one thing I have discovered is that things usually do not change on their own. You need to change them somehow"

... are you saying .... why wait for things to happen with your YF (because in most cases it wont happen !) - the best way is for us to lead the way and try to change things via his mom etc in order to make our freindship with our yf to get stronger and ever lasting.