Hello. I am new here. This is my first post like this anywhere. This will be long, but I'd like some honest feedback on what I am doing wrong. Settle in for a long one, and thank you in advance.

I grew up in an abusive, violent home with an alcoholic father and emotionally absent mother. I have said since I was a small child that I never wanted children of my own. I have suffered with suicidal thoughts and depression since I was as young as 2 because of my father telling me I ruined his life and should have never been born, etc. I have been to therapy for it. I am in a much better place than I used to be. My husband has literally saved my life. He is a wonderful kind man who has saved my life and helped me so much.

When we started dating, I knew he had kids. I was already iffy on dating him because of it. But he was so kind an nice, I fell in love with him. I spent time with the kids and him, it was all fun and games, then time to go home. I thought "ok maybe I can handle this parenting thing. I might not be perfect, but maybe I won't be awful". So now of course here we are married. The first year or so were decent. Me and my husband never argue, except over the children. That is literally the only thing we have ever argued about. Now it seems we argue every day his son(14) is here. 

His son isnt a bad kid. I have seen some of the kids he goes to school with, if he was like them, I have no doubt I would have already divorced his father no matter how much I love him. But he still does things that just infuriate me to no end. Honestly, every little thing he does wrong infuriates me. And I dont let it go, for days. I feel like the evil step mother. I am so tired of being the bad guy. Let me give you a little more background and explanation.

As I write this, I have to stop from calling him "my" son so I dont confuse everyone. He doesnt visit his mother, its been years. She has picked his sister over him. Let me sum it up for you, one chiristmas his sister got an ipad, and he got a sponebob fishing pole. She even gave me his baby book. She has practically disowned him. Its so sad and I completely empathize with him, since I have an abusive father who never aknowledged me as his daughter. I know I cant replace his mother, but I am the only mother figure he has. To his friends, at the doctor, at school, he refers to me as his mom and I am written on his paperwork as his mom. He doesn't actually call me Mom, he calls me by my name, but that doesnt bother me. I still call him my son to everyone around me, cause I do love him like my own and I consider him my son. But I think thats the problem, because I love him like my own, I expect from him what I would expect from my own child.

So here are some examples of my frustration. He has no chores. At 14 years old, he has no chores around the house. I grew up on a farm, my childhood was nothing but work, and I don't want that for him. All I ask of him are simple things:

1. Turn your dirty clothes right side out before putting them in the dirty clothes basket, it helps me doing laundry.

2. Empty your pants pockets of toys, etc. before putting them in the dirty clothes basket.

3. Put your toothbrush and toothpaste back in the holder so I don't have to pick it up to clean the sink.

4. Put your shoes back on the shoe rack out of the way so I don't have to pick them up to vacuum.

5. Hang your coat up on the coat rack by the door instead of throwing it down in your room.

6. Brush your hair everyday and put on deodorant.

7. Put on your belt everyday and stop sagging.

8. If you use something, if it was neat before, it better be neat when your done.

9. If you drop food, clean it up.

I only ask very basic things like this. I dont ask him to clean my house, but I do ask him not to make it harder on me when I do the cleaning by myself. I feel like for instance if I am the one who always vacuumes, then he can atleast put his shoes up on the rack so I don't have to pick them up to vacuum. I feel like its the least I am owed. Basically I just want him to only pick up after himself, not do chores that affect everyone, just himself.

Before everyone gets judgemental, my husband does help around the house when he is home. But he works full time and I am home all day because I am a full time online student. Back when we both worked full time, we both split choes equally between us. But now that he works and I dont, I feel its inappropriate to still expect him to do half when I am home all day. When I go back to the work force, we will resume splitting chores between us equally.

Anyways, when my step son cant even do these, what I feel are very basic, tasks I am infuriated. Infuriated might be an understatement. And I won't let it go for days. I know I have issues all my own to work out. I get too angry too quick. That is not my step sons fault. But me and my husband have been together over 6 years and at 14 years old my step son still hasn't mastered these basic things. For 6 years I have lived with what is now a teenager that literally has no chores or responsibilities, and still cant be bothered to help me out enough to clean the $hit out of his pockets before putting them in the dirty laundry. Now that he is 14 I have tried to push my luck a little further, going as far as to actually ask him to take his laundry basket (he has his own in his closet) to the laundry room for me. He still leaves dirty laundry in the bottom of his closet and it enrages me. When he is blantantly disrespectful my husband will speak to him and he is in trouble, but things like that, my husband doesnt understand my anger. For over a year he wouldn't put his toothbrush and toothpaste back in the holder. Every single day I quietly put it back, till I finally couldn't take it anymore. My husband just doesnt seem to understand why I get so angry about it. The other day I was watching him while my husband was at work. I had to go to town, so I told him to get ready to leave in the next few minutes. I have repeatedly told him that "getting ready" involves putting on real clothes and brushing his hair and putting on deodorant. I had to ask him 4 times to brush his hair and put on deodorant. Now that, he did get in trouble with my husband for. But the thing is, he does that all the time. He will not do anything that I ask. My husband "talks" to him, grounds him from the video game for a week or two, but afterwards everything is the same. I understand kids make mistakes, hell adults make mistakes, none of us are perfect. I understand kids wont get it the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and maybe not the 4th time either. But after the 20th time of being grounded for the same thing, if it were my decision, I am done with the grounding. The way I see it, by then grounding isn't working. Id start getting rid of the video games one by one till he learned that actions can have permanent and not just week long consequences. But my husband says you cant permanently take things away or it leads to resentment. Ultimately it is his decision and I try not to argue that.

I feel I do so much cleaning and doing for him, and he has no consideration or respect for me at all. I almost failed a test because instead of studying myself, I helped him with his algebra homework instead (dont judge my husband, he tried and didnt understand it). I don't mind to help him, I loved helping him. It brought such joy to my heart to see him perk up and feel good about himself when he finally understood. What pissed me off was the next day when I was trying to clean my house in a hurry so I could start my own homework, he poured soup broth down the sink and left it splattered and dried all over the sink after he had just watched me scrub it. Here I spent all that time helping him with his work, and now that I am behind on my work and trying to get the house clean so I can finish it, he cant even rinse the f****** sink out after I just cleaned it?! He can't even care about me and what I try to do around here enough to just not make things harder? Again, I don't ask him to clean my house, I just ask him not to do things like that and make it harder on me. He has no regard for anything I do for him. I have spent hours this week trying to find him a car since he is 14 and drivers ed isn't too far away. We are trying to find him something affordable, but still nice, we aren't just settling on crap. I want him to not be embarassed and have a clunker, I want it to be something he likes. I have been trying so hard spending hours looking online for him, yet he cant take all his laundry to the f****** laundry room for me?! He wants a new bed. I already ordered him a nice memory foam mattress from Amazon, and have been trying so hard to find him a nice bedframe I can afford, yet he cant even put his toothbrush in the holder for me so i don't have to pick it up to clean the sink?! It has been this way for so long I am just at my wits end. Maybe this repetition is why I get so angry so fast. Or maybe I'm just messed up and need to work on myself more with it. I just dont know anymore.

Me and my husband had a pretty bad arguement about all of this last night. I swear we usually have a perfect marriage. We are usually best friends. We usually love spending every waking moment together. We used to work together, and everyone would talk about how they couldn't handle being around their spouse that long. Well we aren't like that, we loved it and did it for years. But we have this exact same arguement almost every week and..... have you ever loved someone so much, but felt so far apart, but wanted to be close so bad you cant stand it, but not want to be in the same room, all at the same time? This argument is the one thing that just tears us apart. I'm currently shut up in our bedroom while he is in the living room. We usually cant stand being in separate rooms. Let me put it this way, we are big gamers and we have 2 PS4s and 2 TVs in the living room side by side with a reclining loveseat so we can be together. I hear him go to the bathroom to throw up every now and then. We are usually the perfect best friends, but this one argument is killing us and I don't know what to do. I want to be close to him so bad my heart physically hurts, but I don't even wanna be in the same room with him right now. If I am honest, I absolutely can't wait for my step son to grow up and move out so our marriage can go back to being happy like when he used to spend time away with his mom. I feel like an awful person for saying that, I know I am, but its how I feel and I wish I didn't. I tell my husband how I feel. He crys and apologizes for being a bad husband and father and says he's trying. Then he shows me articles that this is just normal teenage behavior. They dont have fully formed brans so they arent capable of remembering or paying attention. Well I grew up on the farm. At half his age I had way more responsibilities. He cant pay attention enough to notice he left dirty clothes on the floor of his closet, well when I was way younger than him, "not noticing" that the chickens were out of water in the middle of summer could kill a whole flock. I always paid attention to my chores, before I was anywhere near as old as he is now. I always made sure to scrub the algae out of the water troughs completely. I always made sure to clean the horse stalls completely. My parents just used me for manual labor the moment I was big enough. My childhood was nothing but work. I don't want that for my step son, so thats why I dont argue with my husband about his lack of chores. But I dont buy all these articles that call this "forgetfulness" and "lack of attention" normal. I know they will some, I totally get that, no one is perfect. This is everything though, every single day. I call bull$hit. This just aint normal. This is simply not caring about others and what they do, and pure laziness. 

I love him like my own, I swear I do. But I find the more involved I get with him, the more he doesn't act the way I would expect a child of mine to act, and I get angry and frustrated. I think its best I love him, but from a distance. My husband needs to just handle everything to do with him. Id rather have a distant, but not negative relationship with him instead of one where I am super involved but an 'evil step mom" in his eyes. I guess my point of this rant is, how do i remember to disengage? Like what is a strategy I can do to keep myself calm when he does things like that that make me want to blow my top? Do any of you have certain coping mechanisms or something that you use in times like that to remind you not to get angry or say anything, and just let your husband deal with it? I find he makes me so mad sometimes I just blurt it out and I need a way to remind myself to stay composed and let my husband deal with it.