You are here

Is this marriage worth fighting for?

Theyhaveruinedmylife's picture

I am a 50 YO mother of three independent, successful, compassionate and kind adult daughters, who I raised as a single mother.  I am now married to a 50 YO man whom I met in high school...he has two teenage sons (19 & 16).  Both sons have been diagnosed with ODD, IED, DMD, ADHD, and the younger one has ASD.  All disorders were diagnosed AFTER we moved in together. We have been married for almost 6 years, living together for nearly 7 years.  

In addition to the mixed bag of disorder diagnosises, both kid are the most disrespectful, defiant, deliberately disobedient, mean spirited, self serving, selfish, lazy, unmotivated, and narcissistic people I have ever met in my life.  Neither one has been taught how to cope with adversity and neither has been taught the idea of patience...they both want what they want when they want it and cannot handle not having an instantly gratifying result.  They cannot handle when they don’t get their way.  Neither is prepared for life.  My current big problem is the younger SS...he will turn 16 at the end of the month and is absolutely destroying my marriage.  His behavior is atrocious and his blatant and intentional disrespect for me, my husband, our dogs, our home, and everything else is abhorrent.  Over the past three years he has been seeing a psychologist, a psychiatrist (for prescribed med monitoring), he has bee to stepping stones, had wrap around service in our home, has seriously threatened to kill my DH, has been in a psychiatric hospital for his threat to my DH and to himself, and now we have family based therapy come to our home a few times a week to try to help.  Through all of this and much more, I have done everything in my power to preserve my marriage and keep this family dynamic in tact.  I have reached the max that I can handle and gave a time frame of 14 weeks (12 weeks remain) in which I need to see significant changes and effort on everyone’s part or my DH and his “prince” will have to move out and we will separate.  

Does anybody see any hope for my marriage?

Comments

tog redux's picture

Well - it depends.  How is your DH dealing with all of this? What does he expect from you? I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that your skids' bio mother is not particularly functional either. What role does she play in all of this? Given you called SS DH's "prince", I'll assume he's a coddling and lazy parent.

I've stayed because my DH put me first and never let his son treat me poorly.  He's a good parent. He recognizes how the stress affects me and doesn't expect me to do anything I don't want to do in regards to his screwed up son and his crazy ex.  Even with that support and our strong relationship, I sometimes wonder if I can stay.

It's really a personal decision for you. If you read these boards, you'll find tons of women who, in my opinion, have stayed far too long in toxic situations. Sounds like you are not willing to do that.

Harry's picture

t

Harry's picture

The kids are not going to get better.  Most likely will get worst.  What is the plan for kids ?  They will never live on there own ?  Group home ?  BM ?  Your home .?    If they are going into a group home in a few years. That is one thing.  If you are going to take care of them that another thing ?  Or is his head in the sand and doesn’t know ? 

Real question is, Do you want to take care of these kids the rest of your married life.  That you will neve get to do things as a cupple. No vacation by yourself, No diners by yourself unless there a list of thing to be done before you go out. 

justmakingthebest's picture

My stepson (18) is Autistic and Bi-polar along with some other fun things. He will never live on his own. The difference is that his father demands respect in our home and that he contribute to being a family. He has chores, he has responsibilities, he has to work on the weekends- he is a dishwasher at a nearby resturaunt. 

If my husband wasn't the man he is, there is no way I would take this on. However, becasue of the father and man he is, it isn't a stuggle. There are days where SS drives me nuts (BM isn't in the picture so there is no break) but at the end of the day, even with his issues, he is a good person. It doesn't sound like your SS's are good people. 

Unless a group home for them was in the very near future, I don't think I could live in your shoes. 

ndc's picture

For me, no. I am not a noble enough person to sacrifice what would be necessary for someone else's kids who had all those issues. 

Kes's picture

Do I see any hope?  on the basis of what you wrote in that blog post, no, not really.  Just reading through it makes me lose the will to live.  The one bright spot is that you obviously own the house you are living in, and that they will have to move out, the sooner the better.  

fairyo's picture

I had to deal with much less than this, but only knew my skids as adults (supposedly) I think the very fact that you are wondering about leaving makes me think you should be making plans to do this very thing. I left at the age of 60 even though I had no idea if I could support myself or not, but my future looks bright. Your future, if you stay, looks pretty bleak from here.  You cannot fix anything you didn't break- so why should you devote your life to doing so? Theyshouldruinyourlifenolonger!!