Sounds exactly like my SS13! Has he been coming over to your house when he's not here!?!?

Seriously, I think all 13 year olds are assholes.

I completely understand everything you have said. Lazy, check. Poor hygiene, check. Rude, check. I loved my SS and had a great relationship with him until he turned 13. Almost overnight he became withdrawn, sullen, cocky, unhelpful, and argumentative. I was shocked at how annoying I found him and ended up wrestling with myself every time he was in the house trying to work out whether I was being unfair to him, and trying, but failing, to stop finding him annoying. Somehow even though you KNOW it's hormones and you KNOW it's typical it doesn't make it any less annoying! I got more annoyed because DH just let everything ride and I always ended up being the bad guy.

I put it down as a teen phase in which I had to scale down my parenting input. Gradually I stopped making an effort. I used to collect him from his mother's as soon as school finished on a Wednesday so he could spend as long as possible at ours. Then it got to a point where he would not say a single word for the 20 minutes drive, just a monosyllable if asked a direct question, and would then go straight to his room when we got in, emerging only for dinner when his father got back. After a few months I began to feel it was pointless for me to be putting my baby and pre-schooler in the car for a 40 minute round trip specially to collect him, when he had no interest in spending the extra time with us. It was easier for his dad to collect him at a later time on his way home from work.

I basically took a step back from involvement in SS's life and tried to get his Dad to take more responsibility in terms of spending time with him and being responsible for chores and discipline. I had my own stuff to deal with as I was heavily pregnant during this period and then had my 3rd baby.

Seemingly unaware that his own sullen behaviour was causing people to make less of an effort with him SS then went on to develop a major chip on his shoulder. The more time he spent in his room the more he seemed to feel he was being left out. The less effort he made to talk or spend time with us the more he seemed to feel it was boring at ours. The more he ignored his chores and had to be reminded, the more he felt he was being persecuted. Although I had stepped back to a point where I was mostly asking DH to ask SS to do stuff instead of doing it myself, I cracked a couple of times and had an argument with SS, he announced that he did not like me, and since then has refused to come to the house. This was upsetting for me, upsetting for my husband, and caused huge conflict between us, to the point that our marriage barely survived.

With hindsight gritting your teeth and putting up with an annoying teen is a whole lot better than a huge rift in an otherwise happy family/marriage. Especially if you have your own bio children with the Dad who also stand to lose out from the rift. If you don't have bio children to consider and you really can't stand it then you have to make a decision about your marriage, but remember SS will get over it and become less annoying like his older brother. Can you hang on till then? If so then this is my best advice:

Try to carry on as normal and be pleasant to SS when you are with him regardless of how sullen he is, avoid spending too much time with him, and wait for the hormones to die down. Try to remember a lot of it is not him, it is temporary insanity.

Talk to friends with teens and read lots of books about teens so you can try to keep his behaviour in perspective, and hopefully laugh about it. You will need regular doses of this.

Try to do your own thing more often and spend some time away from the SS's. This is not defeat, it is a tactical withdrawal.

Rather than telling your husband flat out that you are finding his son annoying, try to drawn him out on how he is feeling about his son. He is probably finding him annoying too, although probably less so due to parental tolerance, but if he was able to share a little of his own frustration with SS it might make you feel a whole lot better, and like you are dealing with a difficult teen together rather than you're on your own with his nightmare son. If you talk about how you feel try to make it neutral rather than accusatory towards SS, maybe something like 'I'm just a bit down because I feel like SS and I aren't getting on very well at the moment and he seems a bit withdrawn. How are you finding him?'

Leave his Dad to follow up on anything SS was supposed to do, and if DH doesn't do it, that's up to him. Let it go. If it's chores calmly tell DH that if he chooses not to make SS do his chores that's up to him, but it's not fair to expect you to pick up the slack for his son, so can he do the chores for SS.

Good luck. I hope you do better than I did.