I am in my second marriage.  I have a 7 year old and 4 year old from first marriage.  My husband has a 20 yo, 17 yo, and 15 yo from first marriage.  We have married a little over a year.  His 20 yo daughter chose to live with her mother.  His 17 yo son and 15 yo son live with us most of the week, as do my children.  

My husband is sweet to a fault.  His children have been babied and enabled by him for most of their lives. Their mother also enables and is a toxic person in general.  She is hateful, mean, manipulative, passive aggressive, lazy, and constantly trying to sabatoge any good thing my husband has.  My husband “parents” out of guilt, fear, and denial and the impact of this is glaringly apparent, as now his kids can’t hold down jobs, perform household chores, maintain decent grades, or socialize/interact with people.  As an example: my 15 yo SS can not cut his own food.

Anytime I have tried to address this with my husband, he defends his kids and denies the behavior.  For the past several years, his 17 yo son has had many issues including selling drugs at school and was expelled for s month, dropping acid with a friend with autism (this resulted in police involvement), smoking pot at my house, doing drugs at his mother’s house, nearly failing all of his classes every quarter (and then saving himself at the last second), and numerous calls from the school principal as well as calls from other children’s parents. My husband defends all of this.  He never gives his son consequences.  Last week, the 17 yo and my 4 yo were play fighting.  Everyone was giggling and having fun and then all of sudden my 4 yo was shrieking.  The 17 yo bit my son’s bare arm so hard he left teeth marks, my son still has a bite mark shaped bruise 6 days later.  The 17 yo got angry at my son for crying, and then got angry with me when I calmly asked “what happened?”.  17 yo answer: “He bit me first”.  I asked to see his bitemark.  He tried to, but then realized there was no bite mark to show because my son play bit his leg over a pair of sweat pants.  I called my husband and told him to come home from store to address the issue.  Husband yelled at his son, and I yelled at him in front of his father.  His son got mad at me and his father for yelling, started rage screaming at me and his dad and then stormed out of the house.  After several days of screaming and crying after all of our kids had gone to their other parents’ houses, I told my husband his son is not allowed back in our house until the end of first quarter.  He has to have weekly counseling, anger management, clean drug tests, no calls from the cops,principals,teachers, or other kids parents, and pass all of his classes without all the drama of nearly failing every class.  My husband tearfully agreed, but defended his son the whole time.  My husband tried to get me to let his son live with us “while he got help”.  I refused.  Now my husband is getting some rat hole apartment so that he and his son can live there whenever his 17 yo actually decides to spend time with him.  Whenever the 17 yo is my with him, my husband will come home.  My life has turned into a waking nightmare because of this child, his toxic mother, and my husband’s refusal to accept the reality of his children.  Was my response reasonable?