Hostility is Here to Stay
I'm home alone with SS15 today. (I sometimes work from home and DW is at work.) A little exchange between me and SS only helped to highlight the ongoing situation. (I asked him if he wanted some of what I was cooking.) DW said to me before she left for work, "Why don't you take him somewhere?" DW means well and has good intentions, but as an enabler of outrageously bad kid behavior, she is clueless about the true and probably irreversible nature of this situation.
The "no" response I got to this was not the no of someone who just doesn't like corn on the cob, and it just helped reconfirm the facts. (With DW, he alternates between verbal abuse and sweetness, in a specially balanced mixed designed to control her. He'll be nasty for a while, then announce, "I love you mommy." And DW eats up the whole thing and says he's not a bad kid.)
DW sometimes tells me she wants to advocate for women's rights, and, when I was still engaging the problem, I used to tell her, "You want to advocate for women's rights, but based on the way your son treats you, you're raising a future wife beater at home. The best thing you can do for women's rights and to protect women is to discipline your son, so when he goes out into the world, he doesn't abuse women. Because he's learning from you that he can abuse women and is getting a lot of practice at it." This of course, sounded like criticism to DW, but I don't do it anymore now, because I have disengaged.
SS15 is now out of school, which means today he will be in the living room from 7 in the morning until past 7 at night, playing the same video game with occasional bathroom and junk food breaks until mommy comes home.
It's strange being locked up in a small apartment with a hostile kid, or a hostile person of any kind. Yes, I can go outside, but I have work to do, and fortunately I can do that in my own room, with the door closed. However, there is a basic stink of hostile stepturd that permeates the entire living space.
We used to send him away for the summer, but now that he's enrolled in an advanced program for kids at a local college, he's here until August. It will be my job to drive him there when DW can't, but I've made it clear he's walking if he treats me bad, and DW agrees with this and told him.
- Toxic Situation's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
Why did you offer him food?
Why did you offer him food? Disengage means they do for themselves. I don't feed my little psychopath. His father does. I may cook the food but I certainly won't speak to the child about it nor dish up for him. It makes his ODD even worse if I do.
At 15 the boy/teen can fend for himself.
You're exactly right. And I
You're exactly right. And I shouldn't have offered him anything. I was being a people pleaser! Not for him, but DW sometimes gets on my case about how I don't talk to him or take him anywhere. This kid's a little psychopath too. Thank you for the reality check.
�
I'm not one to take hostility
I'm not one to take hostility quietly.....I would BLAST some music, walk IN FRONT of the video game being played, slamming doors and cupboards, maybe even throw in a fake, loud phone conversation?
I think that's a great idea.
I think that's a great idea. In my situation, that would be like throwing lighted matches into a bucket of gasoline. There is peace here only, and did I say only, because I've disengaged. But, I'd love to be able to do that.
Even enforcing basic household rules would set this kid off.
This is what I have always
This is what I have always wanted to do, but without DW on board, the crapstorm that I would want to rain down on his head is not going to happen.
One of the crapstorms I used to try was a total media blackout, all devices, computers, video games removed. But without DW helping to enforce, I was the bad guy and she was the good guy. We also used to make him surrender all his electronics at night. He had to bring them into the bedroom. So, he would delay for an hour (you could always count on a nasty one hour scene), finally deliver the electronics, but sometimes take his iPhone out of the cover so it looked like he was leaving the iPhone with us, and scurry away into his bedroom with it, thinking he had fooled us.
One of these times he came into the bedroom after this long tug of war, around 10 p.m., fists clenched, yelling at DW, "All you care about is your sleep!!" (DW told him she's tired and doesn't want to play this game every night with him.) When I saw that going on, I once again realized, this kid is major trouble.
It's OK if you say this to
It's OK if you say this to me. The issue, as you have rightly said, is settling or not settling. I don't mind avoiding conflict at the moment. As I said, I've recently disengaged after five years of actively trying to change things. This can't be a permanent solution, and I don't think it is.
Right now, disengaging is the only effective tool I have in my tool box (I used to try many things that did not work). But the problem is, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Disengaging can't be the way to handle everything.
Yes, but DW is not going to
Yes, but DW is not going to listen. How much heartache she could spare dozens of women, starting with the skid's first girlfriend and future wife if he marries. I used to explain to DW that abusive people are not abusive all the time. If they were, victims would not stay with them (and the abuser usually knows that). And that abusive people often have a good side, and if only they were always that way!
Further down the line will be women he's in a relationship who "try to change him" because they see the potential of his "good side." This will work to his advantage, because he will know that they care more about the relationship than he does if they are trying to fix him. And he will use this to his advantage, as in, the one who cares the least about a relationship is the one who is in control. And control and aggression are two of the major tools in his tool bag.
He is going to treat women based on the way he treats his mother. She, in effect, taught him it's OK, because she put up with it.
I have read a couple of your
I have read a couple of your blogs but likely not all so I am sure I am missing something.
Why are you tolerating this situation? DW has ceded her power to SS, and so have you - why? If you don't tolerate SS's behaviour (in terms of setting your own boundaries, not even in terms of raising him), what would happen that's got you cowed?
I don't live in your situation, so maybe I just can't understand? I would like to think that I would be expecting SS to be out of the house during my working hours, and certainly at his age I had a job during the summer.
I'm tolerating this, because
I'm tolerating this, because it's either stay at this time or move out, leaving DW to deal with SS herself. It's true that it is a bad situation. DW ceded power, years ago. I was trying to do something (engaging) until recently, now I'm not (I've disengaged). That has given me breathing room and space to think over what's going on. Before that I was so involved in this scenario, often I could not sleep at night.
Things are not likely to improve, this is for sure. Cowed? I could be. Like I mentioned above, engaging with this kid is like throwing lighted matches into a container of gasoline. We had many explosive situations when I was trying to be involved. DW puts up massive resistance to necessary changes herself, so much so that it's pointless to set boundaries or anything.
I've been in highly abusive situations before, and when I was becoming aware of how I was being controlled, I stayed aloof and quiet, as I was thinking over my options and trying to find a way out. I told DW of a pattern I have noticed in myself in these situations (which she knows about), that at first, I speak up to try to change things. Then I get called a trouble maker, then I stop trying and look for a way out. I warned her that soon I would stop speaking up to try to change things, and right about that time, I discovered what "disengaging" is and how I could do it in my situation. This is the point I am at now. The previous five years had been me stepping in and trying to take control away from a kid who was allowed to rule the roost. I did a lot of talking to my DW and explaining what was going on and we needed to do, and what her son was likely to become in the future and she said I was "demonizing" her son and speaking negatively of him. At this point, I am past trying to do, explain or reason my way out with her (or him) over this.
Three more years of high school and then supposedly he is going to semi-launch to college, coming back for visits during breaks, then fully launch when that's done. But I believe this is not going to happen and he's going to be staying with his mother for a long time. I can't predict the future, but for sure, no one out there is going to tolerate his crap like his mom does, so after a while of trying to make it out there, he's likely to come back, and she'll let him in.
And I need to decide what I'm going to do over the next few years.
You're intellectualizing
You're intellectualizing giving your power away. You, as an individual, always have the right to insist on your own personal boundaries. It sounds like you give that away to DW and she, in her turn, gives that away further to SS.
IMHO, you do not need to explain anything to DW to enforce your own personal boundaries. Of course when you feel disempowered and use manipulative tactics to try to get another to act for you, they get defensive. I'm sorry to use the word manipulative because I don't think you would see yourself that way because you're not a mean person. But... you have talked to DW to try to get her to stand up for you, instead of just standing up for yourself.
Do some reading on fear of conflict and co-dependency. Those are things that you may never grow out of or 'correct', but certainly understanding yourself better gives you a lot of freedom. You have a moment of peace before choosing your actions, instead of feeling afterwards that things overwhelmed you and you're left picking up the pieces.
ETA: I say grow out of but I don't mean like a kid, I mean as in something that doesn't actually change but you learn to accept and adapt to it. I have a fear of conflict myself, so when something unexpectedly aggressive happens around me it leaves me literally shaking for hours. But when I feel something is important, I will still engage in the conflict in a way that I feel is safe, including letting the other person know that I am uncomfortable with the situation but I feel it's important to challenge them on a, b, or c.
I will consider these things.
I will consider these things. I have the book Codependent No More. I'll read it, try to apply it to myself. Yes, it could be manipulative to try to get DW to act, at least some of the time. I'm not sure I have been trying to get DW to stand up for me, it's more like trying to get her to stand up for herself, or to stand together with me on necessary things.
You can't get her to stand up
You can't get her to stand up for herself. Stop trying.
What is necessary for her to stand together with you? What is an example of something you care about but cannot enforce yourself?
Some examples are (or were)
Some examples are (or were) :
Getting him to not talk the way, or act the way, he does to his mother (verbally abusive).
To not let him scream and yell at her when she says he has to stop playing his video games.
Getting DW to stop laying in bed with him at night. (DW stopped this only a year ago. And she said that many people had told her not to, but she always did it anyway.)
Getting him to eat real food at dinner. (Always a nasty scene to make him eat even one carrot, etc. I told DW we needed to agree together to remove junk food from the house and soon hunger would kick in and he would eat at least some real food. She refused to do this. But her brother - his uncle - did this to him when he visited, telling him you eat what we eat here or you get nothing. He came back from that visit eating steak. Good move on the part of my brother in law there.)
A past item was getting DW to stop bathing him, brushing his teeth, dressing him. She used to walk him through his nightly routine, even at age 12, standing by him as he brushed his teeth (it was like a ritual, their mommy time together). I finally convinced her to stop this, but for a while she used to stand behind the closed bathroom door shouting instructions to him.
Another past item, up till age 12, when he wouldn't eat, DW would pick up his fork and start feeding him like a baby.
There's more, but these are the kinds of things, some of them are not going on anymore.
Not one of those things is
Not one of those things is about you. Of course you are right about all of it, but that doesn't matter. This is DW's business and SS's business, not yours.
Truly, I think you will benefit greatly from doing some investigating and contemplating about personal boundaries and co-dependency.
This is true. I am wasting
This is true. I am wasting time in this situation. I have begun to at least read about how to select a lawyer, but have not called one. Divorce is bad, this is bad, I'd have to just choose which bad I want. But I am now willing to explore that possibility. I wasn't before.
I don't think I'm disengaged. Just too hard to do sometimes. Not sure if I'm frightened, but DW has given him complete power in the household, he certainly has it over her and when I was trying to assert normal parental power, it was nearly domestic violence. I just don't want to be in some situation where some case worker or judge decides that the kid was kicking me because "he's just a kid and he is afraid of me." While his mother is agreeing that he's a really good kid and it's only my negative thoughts about him that are causing him to be this way.
(I've heard both, from a case worker who was briefly investigating us and a psychologist we were seeing. Got a clean bill of health from Child Services and immediately dropped the shrink because it was no longer mandatory. She was telling me what a great kid he is and that it is only my negative thoughts that are keeping him in a box so he can't change - yes people get PhDs in psychology so they can tell distressed families nonsense like that.)