Forgive me - I need to "think this through" and I think this is the place to do it.

Yesterday I was going through hundreds of old photos, sorting them out to give my soon to be ex-husband his share of them. I came upon some of me and my two step sons taken very soon after dh and I were married - and before the younger one came to live with us. WE. WERE. HAPPY. I. LIKED. THEM. THEY. LIKED. ME.

These are NOT photos of people who don't like/love each other - they are photos of people who DO like each other and are HAPPY and want to be a family.

So...where and when did we "bottom out"? Well, I can tell you. It was when ss (then 14) came to live with us. WHY did it bottom out? I can tell you that too. It was because of my husband. He had the whole "divorced daddy syndrome" TO THE EXTREME. No household rules enforced for the skid, no boundaries as to who were the adults and who was the kid, no support or back for me from either of the kid's parents.

I was EXPECTED to carry all of the responsibility for him (school stuff, medical appointments, etc. etc.) but I had ZERO authority. ZERO. NONE. Dh put the kid FIRST, allowed him to interrupt adult conversations, undermined me constantly, defened the kid when he did bad things (like beat up on the neighbor boy when dh wasn't home and I was practically assulted by the neighbor boy's mother), etc. etc.

DH allowed, and even (by his silence) ENCOURAGED the kid to be lazy, disrespectful, irresponsible, mean, vindictive, selfish, rude, etc. EXAMPLE: every morning skid would get up before us and for some reason, use a STEAK KNIFE to peel an apple. EVERY MORNING skid would leave the steak knife where dd (then 2) could get her hands on it. All my harping about this did no good. All my asking dh to handle the situation did no good. OH MY GOD, WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE DANGER OF SKID LEAVING A STEAK KNIFE WHERE THE BABY CAN FIND IT??? Dh saw it as "not a big deal" because I would always get up as soon as I heard dd was up. YES...but WHAT IF I didn't hear her? WHAT IF she got up and got hold of that knife???

Also - skid's retainer from when he had braces. He was supposed to WEAR IT. But...he "never knew where it was." Come to find out, he was HIDING IT because he didn't want to wear it. DH would always say that dd must have done something with it. REALLY??? That is the MOST ABSURD thing.

So...in my mind...looking back over literally HUNDREDS of incidents and issues, it was husband who set the family up to fail. Not on purpose I'm sure. Looking back at those photographs made me realize that I had completely forgotten that there was a time when I didn't resent the skids. There was a time when they liked me and I liked them and we were happy and hopeful and wanted to be a family.

I don't think anyone goes into the role of step parent planning to hate it or planning for it to fail. But...without the bio parent on board...what else is there but failure? When the bio parent permits his kids to assume the role of adult (in ss 2's case, the "mini wife"), doesn't hold the kids accountable for being part of the family, etc., I don't see how things can possibly succeed.

YOUR THOUGHTS PLEASE!!! Seeing those photos was like being hit by lightening for me. It really made me sad about what could have been - and wasn't.