Hi all, 

I need a little help from this community. I'll start with some background on the rocky relationship with my stepson, then see what some of you think of what I should do next. 

I met my wife nearly twenty years ago and we fell head over heels for one another. I was in the final year of my university degree and she was already divorced, an RN, and mother of two. She is five years older than me. When we met she was 30 and I was 25. I met her children soon after. As I was training to be a teacher and had many nephews and nieces, I wasn't too concerned about step parenting. I was very naive and didn't realize what  I was getting myself into with a ready made family. Never mind that her ex was/is a pedophile and a sexual deviant. It was a lot to deal with. Her daughter was very hesitant to have a relationship with me until now in her twenties and she is living with her fiancé, is an RN too, and is a very responsible, lovely young lady. The son has been completely opposite. He was maybe a little too eager to have a relationship with me. He called me dad (much to the dismay of his sister). We spent a lot of time together. I read with him, taught him about sports, played video games together, etc. Although we spent a lot of time together and were building a good relationship, he was always missing his dad, thought his dad was the coolest guy in the world etc. I never once discouraged this and tried to pump his dad's tires even though I knew he was a dead beat and a sexual deviant. This guy would only take the kids twice a month for one day on every second weekend. They missed him and cried a lot for their loss of him being in their life. It was hard to console them as he refused to have them for any more time. As the years grew on we had two boys of our own and did the best we could to raise four children and be professionally successfull. I tried to be a good stepdad, as our kids were young and my wife has MS that was not yet diagnosed, I did the bulk of the driving the kids places, watching their sports/activities, bday parties, homework help, making lunches, etc. The real life day to day stuff. Meanwhile their bio dad kept up with being the fun uncle and neglecting the real world parenting. 
 

Fast forward about six years and my stepson started to go off the tracks. He was sneaking out of the house, breaking into vehicles, doing drugs, skipping school and bringing his then gf to our home without us knowing or being there. We were growing concerned as we could not control his behaviour at all. We gave consequence after consequence, took him to counseling and nothing seemed to work. His bio dad and stepmom at the time proposed to take him on full time to straighten him out so to speak. On the first meeting my wife and I declined their offer as we didn't want to give up on him and we wanted to keep our family unit together. Our two younger boys did and still do look up to my ss and to his credit he is a good big brother. After some time the ex was going through a divorce with his then second wife. He again asked to take on his son fulltime and perhaps make up for the lost time when my ss was younger. At this point we were exasperatted and thought perhaps that my ss and his dad should be reunited and this might quell the acting out and poor decision making. At this time we had no idea that my wife's ex is a pedophile. This did not come to our attention until this past summer. We knew he had some sexual issues, but nothing to do with minors. During my ss' time with his bio dad it was nothing but a complete disaster. My ss continued to do all of the same things and became addicted to hard drugs and alcohol. Everything came to a head when my ss kept stealing his dad's liquor, dropped out of school, and refused to follow any rules what-so-ever. His dad then kicked him out and my ss was homeless for several days before his then gf's mom let him stay with them. The same trends continued and my ss started to fight with his girlfriend's mom's boyfriend - I hope that makes sense? As you can see there is a pattern of anti-authority and problematic behaviour towards men. I should also mention that my ss' bio dad was completely neglegent during these years and spent more time away from his son then with his son.

At this time, I decided to try and help my ss and let him live in our home again with the expectation that he would not do drugs or drink and that if he broke those rules he had to go to rehab. Again, more failure. We tried to have him go to rehab and he was too scared so his older sister went and bailed him out and brought him back here. I was stressed to the max, had to put up with him doing drugs, drinking, and providing a very bad example for our younger boys. Right before I was about to kick him out, or maybe he could sense it coming, he dumped his gf and went to live in a crackhouse with some girls he worked with at Walmart. Later he hooked up with a girl he worked with at a diner and they had a really turbulent relationship, she gave him a VD, then later got pregnant. Once again, stupid me, I felt bad for him and took him back in. He then continued with bad behaviour choices and setting a bad example for my boys. And once again I had to kick him out for drunk driving and laughing at the police officer who was so very kind to let him off as he ran home and was away from his vehicle. Shortly after this he ended up in a psychward on Christmas eve as he tried to overdose on pills. We then sent him to rehab far away from our home where he couldn't be rescued. He ended up running away, coming here to our home for a couple of days where he stole a valuable coin from me and sold it for booze and drug money. My sister in-law and her husband then tried to help him and took him in for some time and he again burned the bridge with them. Thank goodness they found evidence that he sold the coin and told me. Shotly after this time he joined AA and he did get sober. He joined a gym and became a bodybuilder. Good stuff, he was finally doing something positive with his life. Then right after last Christmas he had another messy break up with a gf and me being a sucker for punishment took him in one last time to help him get an education, have visits with his daughter who is now 4, and hopefully out on his own. The agreement was that he was to get some type of training and/or education. He sort of did and decided to become a personal trainer which COVID derailed. During this past summer he was making good gains at the gym and has been sober (as far as we know) for over a year. He then dropped the bomb that his bio dad raped him when he was living with him. He swore us to secrecy and said he'd deal with it on his own. Since that time he has been amping up his time in the gym, taking steroids (not sure if they are illegal or not?), but not working and not advancing his life in any meaningful way. We think he is working out so much to overcompensate and protect himself so that no one will ever take advantage of him again. Which is all reasonable in the face of this occurring to him; however, we have noticed that he has become more and more aggressive and unreasonable to deal with. 

This brings us to yesterday when he was trying to borrow 500 dollars from us as he thinks he will become an online stock broker as his job. As a mature adult in this situation I tried telling him that this is not a real job and he cannot count on that for guaranteed income in the eyes of a bank or car dealership. He started to become very disrespectful and talking down to me, saying I don't understand anything and calling me "dude" and "man" in a really condcending manner. As he is not paying rent and not fullfilling his obligations as a father, I then got upset and was talking aggressively back at him telling him he is playing house in our home and still doesn't have a vehicle to safely transport his four year old daughter. He became highly volatile and called me a pussy and and a jackass. Even making fun of an intention tremor I have had since birth. I then asked him to leave and he heightened his verbal attacks on me. Everything from being a terrible stepparent to being a bully and I should be ashamed as I'm a teacher, etc. My wife then got us both to leave the room and I left to walk my dog for a good long time to think about my history as a stepfather and if I did owe this 24 year old man anymore of my time, sweat, money, or mental anguish. I came to the conclusion that it's best that he move out again. He then became, in my opinion, very manipulative saying that I was sending him to a rapist's home as if the only other place he could go was his bio dad's house. When in fact he can stay at his sister's home, his grandparents, or even a men's shelter. My wife then relented and said he could stay one more night to gather his stuff properly today and make the necessary plans to stay somewhere else. He then slept until noon, went to have a visit with his daughter then casualy got some stuff together and telling my wife again that he doesn't feel safe going to his dad's house and that he'll have to baricade the door. She then came crying to me bagging me to not send him there as if it was my choice for him to go there. I relented slightly and said that if he came and sat down and apologized for what he said and for making fun of my tremor that we could possibly salvage a way for him to stay a bit longer. He then sarcastically apologized for calling me names and when I asked for him to apologize for making fun of me he refused, made fun of me again and and went on a tirade swearing at me and calling me all sorts of names and that my wife should not have married me, that I'm a piece of sh*&, I'm abusive and she should have protected him from me, and a whole plethora of other insults/jabs. I then had enough and told him to get the f&*% out of my house and after some more bantering with my wife he finally left. 

So here's my question, am I being too harsh in cutting this man out of my life for the forseeable future. His rage and unreasonableness was actually quite frightening. My wife of course is scared for him and doesn't want him to start drinking again, but I feel so done and exausted by this guy that I don't want to ever see nor talk to him again. I told my wife that she has every right to have a relationship with him and of course wants to be a big part of his daughter's life, but for the time being I've said no to him and his daughter coming here to visit as he is threatening and not reasonable. Am I being too hard on the guy? I'm just so done with stepparenting in general. Anybody have some good advice for a burnt out stepparent?

Thanks for taking the time to read my sob story!