Your wife has two codependent children and if they aren't depending on their mom, they're depending on a boyfriend/girlfriend.

In my humble opinion, she needs to cut them off and let them fend for themselves for once.

Enough is enough.

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain."

is parenting thru guilt. She needs professional help so she can stop.
Does your wife work too? If so, I understand her need to leave her half to her children. Second families typically do this sort of thing, especially if she has has worked.

It must be very difficult for you, especially since your kids sound like they are headed in the right path. Take solice in that your children will be okay and pray that hers can find their way.

because I can see what my husband has done with his parenting from guilt. I was fortunate to divorce after my kids were grown so they wouldn't have to live in a step-household (not that all step households are bad BUT IN MY Opinion I'd prefer my kids not have to deal with this).
My kids are on a very solid and good path & his are just hanging in there. When I have made suggestions (and believe me not often) they are sweetly acknowledged but discarded----even though I know it would help.

AND NO, IT IS NOT YOU. Your wife sounds like she has a screw loose & only a very well qualified professional will be able to help her. She can't put you first in the relationship because she feels so guilty about her kids lives (especially after seeing yours).

that is a hard question about cutting and running.

do you still love your wife? is there hope for her to change?

if you are not happy and have done all you can to make it work, then maybe it is time.
I am dealing with an angry ss who is going no where fast. thankfully his dad my FH sees what is going on and knows how it is affecting our relationship and is making an effort to steer away from the parenting by guilt..it is a sloooooowww process!

“You will never be on top of the world
if you try to carry it on your shoulders.”

that would be my first response. I wouldn't want to put my 16 year old son in that kind of conflict. He needs a sane home so he can continue studying in peace. He needs to see you in peace. He will thank you for it later. Maybe after a few years, after yours is up and out & her kids become independent(not likely) you can pick things up where you left off.
There are many ways to live as there are grains of sand on the earth. Pick a way that you protect your son (1st), enjoy your life and still have love in your life. Think outside the box.
Good luck.

By decision I mean your wife needs to make one. Is she going to continue to ruin her kids lives by enabling them and not holding them accountable for anything, even to the point where her kid can threaten your life and get away with it? What if your child threatened to kill her, would that be ok with her?

It sounds like she keeps her kids between you as a barrier and excuse, for what reason I don't know? All of you should go see a family counselor. Sorry but this just makes me mad! and I grew up in an alcoholic family so understand family ties vs. unacceptable behavior and don't have much sympathy for the troublemakers! Please let us know what happens

"Fortune favors the brave" - Virgil

You have many years invested in this relationship and express you love her, so there must be something there.
Thing is , do you respect her still or has how she deals with her children weakened your view?
You had every right to state the boundary that you did if for no other erason from a saftey point of view.I think I might even file for a restraining order, that may bring it hoem to wife,and I am very sad that your wife is supporting a child with a drug habit, that certainly will not clean him up.
It sounds as if the two of you need therapy TOGETHER, otherwise it sounds as if it will be an endless cycle

Sit down and have a heart to heart with your spouse and let her know that this is ruining your relationship and that there are some things that you want. Then list those things you want from her in relationship to the step children. Explain to her that is time for them to start taking care of themselve, for example would SS have money for drugs if she was not paying some of his rent? Her giving him money is encouraging him to spend his foolishly. I do not think you are out of line to give her an ultimatum or deadline for improvement so that you can see if she is truly trying to fix the problem.

It sounds like things have gotten to a point that even you are questioning whether it's worth your time and stress. You love your wife, but you are being asked to be #3 in her life (after the two adult skids), instead of #1. You deserve to be #1! Isn't that what marriage is all about?

I agree that a good counselor would be in order for the two of you. Your wife deserves to hear--really HEAR--your concerns, and also hear what you intend to do if nothing changes. She should be allowed to make the decision to draw appropriate boundaries with her dependent brats and give them a chance to learn from their mistakes and grow up, or decide to keep killing them with "love," relegate her husband to #3, and be single again.

In the end it comes down to you, your sanity, and having a good marriage. A marriage between 4 people is not a good marriage, and it sounds like that's what you have right now.

You deserve better! What advice would you give to your son if he were in this very situation?

to the drama and dysfunction and YOU ARE NOT. She will always have this drama --- are you ready to live like that? She may bring excitement into your life?????

Lots of kids nowadays don't get out of the house by age 25.

Just food for thought.

I feel so bad for you and I feel bad for your wife as well. The reason for that is I have been there. I went through a period with my son when he was younger (19) and he was out of control. I was supposed to drop everything and help him with every problem he had - it is a guilt trip. He made my life a living hell and it took me 6 mths for me to get up the courage to pack up his things and tell him to move out or I would have the police physical remove him. I told him that I was not responsible for him as he was an adult and he would have to solve his own problems (drug use, fights, getting mad kicking holes in my walls, punching holes in my walls, kicking the dogs, etc.). That was one of the hardest things I have ever done and we did not speak for a year and a half. Well guess what in that time when Mommy wasn't around to fix everything for him he started doing the right thing. We now have a great relationship and even though I wish he was going to school or had a better job he at least works, pays his bills and is responsible for everything that goes on in his OWN life. He never asks me for a thing. That being said - it's YOUR wife that is going to have to make the decision when to put a stop to this. She is enabling her son to be dependent on her. She is putting him first before your marriage and she is not respecting your wishes. I'm sure she is feeling torn btwn the both of you but she is going to have to decide that you and your marriage come first. Would she be open to going to counseling? I went when all this was going on with my son and the counselor set me straight real quick. I wish you luck and please let us know what happens. I'm sure it is hard to talk to your wife about any of this because all it does is start an argument.

We really have to put our foot down. I have checked my FH's phone before because he stated that my FSD BM didn't call that much. Yeah right! She would call 7 times in one day - not that he would pick up but she is nuts - whole other forum (thank god she lives in another state) about something stupid like the rubber band came off the 15 yr old girls braces or something else utterly stupid - he can't stand the woman. Anyways they have been broken up for 15 years and she called him for every little thing and had made his life a living hell. Ok my point? It got to be were it was interrupting my time with my FH all the excessive calling etc and I had a fit and told my FH this had to stop. I did not speak with him and slept in the other room for 2 days (in my own house mind you). I cut and pasted questions and answers from this site (never gave him any info on where i got the posts or what site) and emailed him about 8 pages and told him that if our life together was important and if that I WAS IMPORTANT to him to read what I had sent him and let me know how he wanted to proceed because I was not living at the mercy of some other woman's BS. He was shocked and utterly humilated and we had a good talk and cleared the air after that and he took care of the problem and things have been fine. SO - you might want to do the same thing - cut and paste some things fromt he the adult stepchildren forum and let her read it - I guarantee it will be an eye opener. After that head for counseling. I know my situation was completely different as to what you are going through but along the same principal. I personally would not sacrifice my marriage to a good man with good children for my bad apple kid - it's time that kid figured things out on his own - mommy can't do everything for him. Everytime he screws up it doesn't matter cuz he can always go running to mom for help.

Dear Techknowledgy,

I'm sorry that you have to deal with this sh*t. It's frustrating and awful. I hope that your wife can stop helping her son fail. She is not doing him any favors by supporting his destructive lifestyle. I will tell you my story, and them tell you some strategies that helped my marriage, and my respect and love for my husband, to survive.

I have been in your shoes for a long time. There were periods where I thought my marriage would not survive, but it has. DH and I married when my kids were 3 and 5, his were 4 and 6. My kids lived with us, his kids lived with his ex-wife, who completely poisoned them against both DH and I ("your father left YOU, didn't want YOU" (not her!), it's all Nellie's fault...) Then she did a very surprising thing - when the older one was 8, she sent him to live with us. When he was in high school, he starting having lots of problems (poor grades, drugs, discipline issues at school). DH's parenting decisions were always driven by guilt at having left his ex-wife and not sticking with a crappy marriage for the kid's sake. Of course parenting by guilt is not good parenting.

Amazingly we are still married. The kids are now 20, 21, 22, and 23. It has always been the 23 year old that has caused issues between DH and me. Biodaughter 20 is a junior, has a prestigious internship lined up for summer, doing great. Stepson 21 is graduating from college this June. Bioson 22 graduated from college last June, has a great job. That leaves stepson 23. Part time job delivering pizza, rents a bedroom in a house, junior college dropout. He lives near us and we see him weekly for laundry and a meal. Last two times I saw him, he stunk (literally) and his fingernails were black. Very gross. He used to seem very intelligent but now he seems to have no brainpower - cannot use logic, cannot make good decisions. I think he either permanently fried his brain with drugs, or is on drugs again. I fear he is falling apart again (has had cocaine, meth, marijuana, police, public nudity issues in the past).

It would be easy for DH to "bail him out" of every problem. But he has learned to keep his distance as much as possible.

We have been to a couple different counselors together to learn how to a) save our marriage, and b) do what is best for SS23. Fortunately these two things are the same thing. You mentioned that your wife had a counselor, but I would suggest that you BOTH go to a counselor TOGETHER. One that is experienced with "loser kids" (sorry such a harsh way to state it, but accurate). My experience with counselors is that the counselor will tell her to quit helping her son screw up his life. Because her son is going to keep screwing up his life until he is sick of living a screwed up life. Who knows how long that my be, but so long as she is easing his pain with her misguided "help", it will not be painful enough for him to decide to stop making poor decisions. In the mean time it will ruin her marriage, make no mistake about that. One interesting thing to note here, and the magic of going to the counselor together, is that when the counselor points out how she is not "helping" her son, she will consider what he says, give it some weight, think about it, accept it, see the wisdom in it.... These same words from YOU will just cause a fight. But from the counselor she will "get it".

One other thing that helped me - at one point I just said "enough - I'm locking him out". DH accepted this. Basically, he chose me. It was very sad indeed that he had to basically choose between me and his son, but I never felt guilty about forcing that choice. I didn't really feel like I had forced it - of course I was the one locking the door and telling DH to choose, but it was SS23 who was yelling through the door, high on drugs, and staying at our house due to his roommates kicking him out for drug related confrontational behavior, failing his junior college classes, just lost his job, picked up by the police the previous month (naked in a stranger's house!) etc. I feel like SS23 is the one that forced that awful "choice" for DH. Then an amazing thing happened. SS23 drove off and went to the ER and was admitted for treatment. Stayed 3 days, detoxed, put on anti-psychotic drugs, etc. So my action pushed him to get help. He left treatment and refused to take his meds, but I think it was helpful anyway. I was so relieved that DH agreed that SS23 could not come back in the house that night. I love DH very much and would have been devastated if he had decided to keep supporting SS23's idiot decisions and destructive lifestyle (upset for both me AND SS23).

Since that time he has given my feelings more choice when it comes to dealing with SS23. Things are not perfect by any means, and never will be in my expectation, because SS23 will always make destructive choices I think. But the marriage has survived.

If you feel like you just absolutely cannot continue living with your wife, why don't you try a trial separation but make sure SHE moves out. That way her son can mooch off her and make her life miserable maximally (since wicked stepdad won't be there). She might get sick of it faster than you think. Living with sane, employed you will look like heaven compared to a mooching drama drug kid.

Hope this helps.

Nellie

Techknowledgy,

If you feel like you want to ask wife to choose between you and SS, make sure you can live with her decision, whatever it may be. She may say "I have to SAVE my son's life!!!" or something equally dramatic and impossible (like she has any power to save him). Just make sure you can handle that. You have to decide if you would rather be without her, or deal with idiot SS forever. Because she may not choose to quit enabling him.

Nellie

I hope things turn out for the best, for all three of you. My definition of which would be that wife quits enabling SS, your marriage survives, and SS gets his act together.

One note on my issuing the "choose" ultimatim. I really felt like I had no choice but to do that. I honestly feared for my own safety at that point. DH travels a lot and was leaving on a trip the next day - and there was SS23 high and confrontational and scary once again. I was too scared to let him continue to stay out our house. We had tried limiting him to the garage after a certain hour, but when he did coke, he wanted to shower compulsively, and he would yell and kick at the security door between the garage and the house. Yikes.

I also have to wonder what is said at the $120 counselor. She may not be portraying things quite accurately. If you were there, she would have to be more honest. The counselor would say "what was your view of that Techknowledgy?" Once the counselor heard both of your viewpoints on an issue, he might have different things to say. I'm not saying your viewpoint would be 100% accurate, or hers, but the counselor should be smart enough to sort out a realistic view of what is going on, somewhere in the middle.

Good luck and keep in touch on the board.

Nellie

You have to know that you are not alone in your frustration with your wife and wayward SS21. I, too, am living in the same limbo-hell right now, and I seriously question if my marriage will survive.

Just like you, I truly love my husband. The problem that we now face is that the same caring, generous qualities that attracted me to him in the first place are being expressed as enabling toward his adult children--and he has 5 of them. Two of them seem to be doing OK--in college and professional training school---and the other three are various shades of drug addict, alcoholic, manipulative money-grubbing sloths who don't see the need to work. His alcoholic, pothead son21 was just released from jail for assault & battery, and will be sentenced next week.

OK, so you get the picture.

A huge problem we face right now is mounting debt--primarily brought about from DH shoveling guilt money to the three adult grubbers. (BTW, DH was the one who initiated divorce from their mother over 10 years ago.) Together DH and I make enough not to qualify for the upcoming tax rebate, however you'd never know it from how we live. We've recently hired a financial planner to help us dicipline ourselves out of this financial mess, however I concerned that DH won't be able to wean himself off giving them guilt money.

DH recognizes that "we" have "a problem with money," and that he has to stop handing our money to his adult children, but he doesn't seem to be able to stop. Here's what I am so frustrated about for the month of April (yes, only one month, folks):

- DH co-signed on an apartment for SS21. He skipped on the lease, and now DH and I owe $1650.00 to make it right.

- DH co-signed on a house for SS21 after the apartment. God knows what we will owe when he skips on the one too.

- DH has promised $250.00 to SS26 if she travels to SS21's sentencing to "provide moral support."

- DH just paid $86.00 to reinstate SD24's car registration when it lapsed, $250 to SD20 because she "was short this month," another $80 to SD18 just because she asked for it, $100.00 to tow SD24's car, $85.00 to register SD18's car, and another $85.00 to change the title on SS24's car.

- In addition, we continue to pay $180 each month for their cell phones, and $165.00 each month for SS18's car insurance.

Talk about enabling! Each and every time he forks over our hard-earned cash, we dive deeper in debt. DH is sacrificing our well-being for his guilt toward his adult brats, and it's killing our marriage. Just like an addict he swears his Daddy Warbucks routine will stop, then a few days later he has an excuse why he needs to pay out again.

I feel stabbed in the stomach each and every time he gives his kids our money, and I've begun to cry almost uncontrollably at times (I am not normally a crier). We come up short on our bills each month, and just can't seem to get ahead. I've never lived like this before! DH seems addicted to giving them money and I can't stop it. Each time he informs me of another payout I feel our marriage slipping away a bit more. He gets angry at me when I talk about how much he gives his adult children--like I have a problem.

So I can completely understand what you are going through, Technowledgy. Just like my spouse, your spouse has chosen her adult loser kid over you, and would rather continue the enabling-guilt routine than rescue her marriage. Nothing hurts more than this. To us, in our positions (which look way too much like Munch's "Scream"), the answer seems so clear--JUST STOP, DAMMIT!

However I think that our spouses are so guilt-ridden and addicted to the chaos that is their children that they can't see clearly. In their own ways, they are just like drug addicts--although in this case they are addicted to their unhealthy adult children rather than a toxic substance.

But the "high" they get by enabling, bailing-out, and "helping" their adult losers is the same as a hit of cocaine. That's the only reason I can think of that they would sell us--their spouses--down the river rather than change their ways.

The most frustrating aspect of all this is that I cannot change my DH. Only he can change himself. I can't do anything to make this better! All I can do now is trust that DH will do what he promises and stop giving them money. At this point I've given it three months. Like most addicts that are using, DH has promised that "this is the last of the payouts" and that "he will stop." I don't hold out much hope, but for the sake of the marriage I am willing to see if he can do it. He has agreed to go to couples counseling--at least we have that.

If not, I'll be forced to assume half of our debt in a divorce. This is all so sad. These adult losers are just not worth it!

I like your Wicked picture.

Techknowledgy how is it going?

Nellie

Wow Techknowledgy, your SS has health insurance! Consider yourself lucky! My SS23 does not. Nor does he care. Even though he had Hodgkins lymphoma and went through 6 months of chemo. This was while he was in the UK living off his Mom, so his treatment was free. Of course he didn't do the follow up scans - now he is back here. You would think that a serious illness would make someone more responsible but - no - he says he doesn't want to work full time so he doesn't have health insurance.

My and DH's plan if the lumps return - put him on a plane back to the UK. That would solve a lot of other problems also. I am starting to worry about him but every time I bring up something that concerns me, DH gets defensive and gets angry at me, like I am criticizing SS23. My concerns are that he seems to have lost all interest in personal hygiene (stinks and black fingernails), has sores all over his hands, claims he saw an airplane stop forward progress and hover for 30 seconds, and has shaking hands. DH has an explanation for all of this, and his explanation is not drugs. SIGH.

Nellie

Want to know the sure-fire sign that you are dealing with someone crazy?

They make you feel like YOU are crazy!

Crazy: SS with poor personal hygiene and hallucinations.
Crazier: He's doing great, Nellie. What's wrong with you?

Crazy: Continuing to coddle a sicko SS23 and choosing him over your husband as your primary love relationship.
Crazier: Expecting your husband to "understand" and "support" you.

So today DH and I visited our financial counselor. She looked over our expenses and immediately questioned all the payouts to his adult brats. Cell phones? Insurance? Car payments? Rent? Cash? Speeding tickets? Parking tickets? Airline tickets? She looked him right in the eye and told him that THIS HAS TO STOP NOW and he has to let his adult children grow up and learn to take care of themselves.

I almost jumped for joy! DH looked stressed and admitted that, yes, all these payouts have to stop. We'll see. I think too many of his emotions are tied up in giving money to his useless kids.

Oh, by the way, the alcoholic SS21 called this evening and wanted DH to make up the difference in his rent this month because he "fell short." DH said no. I am still in shock.

You illustrate one of my points perfectly. Here's how it works:

Sarah: DH, you need to stop giving money to your adult kids. It is causing financial hardship for us and wrecking my feelings for you.
Sarah's DH: (Angry) But the need my help . They'll be homeless and hungry if I don't rescue them!

Sarah: Counselor, DH is giving money to his adult kids. It is causing financial hardship for us.
Counselor: Hey Sarah's DH, why are you doing that? You need to stop doing that.
Sarah's DH: (Sheepish) Yeah you are right counselor. I need to stop.

Nellie

I thought you guys might be amused at DH's explanations for SS23's worrisome stuff:

Stinky: He's a boy. It's a boy thing.
Black fingernails: He's a boy. It's a boy thing.
Sores on hands: It's contact dermatitis, from his job at the laundry (which he quit in August, this was the following February)
Shaky hands: My hands shake too (they don't)
Hovering plane: He most like saw a VC-22 Osprey, a plane that can hover. (Uh, OK)

Tonight he came over for dinner. He said that the milk was much warmer than usual. The fridge temp readout was 38 degrees, like always. I can't wait for the explanation. I think I'm not even going to comment on it so I don't have to hear some half ass reason.

Nellie