I am new on this forum, although I have been reading the entries for some time. I am just at wit's end and thought I would come on here and vent. Maybe someone will have some words of wisdom for me. First of all, my husband and I have been married for six years. He had two grown daughters, 30 and 32. I have one son that lives with us - age 14. I was concerned before we married that we would have problems with my son who has ADHD, but that is not where our problems have been. Our histories are I was in an abusive marriage and divorced my son's father. He was an excellent provider and loved my son, but had a horrible temper. My current husband had to marry birth mother when she was 17, he was 20. They were married 8 years and divorced - she had multiple affairs. The children were 6 and 8. He was divorced for 18 years because in his terms he could not find anyone that he thought would be good to his "girls". He took the divorce hard from what I understand and threatened to kill himself. He has told me since we have been married that the only reason he did not kill himself was his oldest daughter and that she is the closest thing to perfect that he has ever seen. I was divorced from my first husband and immediately starting dating my current husband. I feel I was very vulnerable and lonely when I married him. I feel that over the last six years I have gotten stronger and closer to the Lord and feel like I deserve much better.

We have three issues that are tearing our marriage apart: finances, sex, and his grown daughters. I feel we can and have come to some progress on the first two, but the last one we cannot resolve. Financially, I carry most of the load. I have made more than twice than him during our marriage. During the first several years, he had worked at job that he had been at for over 20 years - he made a little over $20k - but that didn't bother me. He got up and went to work every morning and only had a high school education. I knew he was comfortable and it was never an issue. When we first married, I told him that I would make the house payment of $1400 and he could pay utlities, etc. which probably amount to less than $500. About a year ago, he got laid off and I encouraged him to start his own business. This has started off well and he has probably made 15 - 18K this first year, which is not that much , but ok for the first year of a business. The issue is he works eight days a month on average and spends the other days of the month swimming in our pool, fishing, snow skiing, etc. I don't mind him doing this occassionally, but I really feel like I have been taken advantage of. Alot of mornings he is still in bed when I leave to go to work. He says I am paying the bills that we agreed when we first got married. I reply yes but things have changed. You have alot of time to be doing something else. Try to do odd jobs, get a part-time job, etc. but he gets furious and says that he is doing what we agreed to. My mother asked him to mow her yard during the summer and she would pay him and he refused, saying it would hurt his back. He is 53, but he is in good enough shape to mow a yard. What kind of man would let his wife carry the load like this?

Also - when we first got married, he had a small house (approx. 80k value) and I had my house (approx. 350k value). He sold his house, which was almost paid for and spent 17k to build a swimming pool and put the rest in a CD with his name only. At the time, I said I thought this was fair, as I had put down $20k on my house the year before. The swimming pool has mostly been used by his grandkids and kids over the years. My son and I have used it some. Now that I have mention divorce, he says that he will get 1/2 the equity in this house - one way or another - which is probably around $150k. He has never made one payment on this house. I pay $1400 per month and he pays utilities, etc. He does buy toilet paper, paper towels, etc. and is supposed to buy groceries - which consist of milk, eggs, bread, two-liter cokes, crackers and that's about all. He says if want anything extra we will have to get it. He buys chewing gum and batteries, but hides them from my son, because he says he wastes them. That is part of our financial issues.

Sex is a total different saga. I won't go into alot of detail other that to say it is the majority of the time about him. There is no love making involved only casual sex. I believe this comes from him being single for so long - he is not capable of really loving someone. He is an attractive man and from what I understand probably had many casual sex partners over his 18 years of being single. 9 times out of 10 he gets what most men love to have and then it is over. When we were dating, he would give me long back rubs and I thinkg I have had maybe 2 during the 6 years we have been married. I can't count the times he has gotten what he likes, but many many times - several times per week. I've tried to tell him this over the years, but he just looks at me like he has no clue what I am saying. This has improved maybe 1 on a scale of 10 since I have been trying to tell him over the last couple of years - but it is still very lonely.

Now to his daughters, why I signed on here to start with. Every time there has been any issue with them, he sides with them and gets mad at me. I tried to start off treating them like I would my own children, but over the last few years have really had to disengage. The youngest daughter has been on meth for several years and was arrested a couple of years back. She was in an abusive relationship and I have always tried to support her and encourage her to do better in her life. She is one that goes around bad mouthing everyone and we have had a few issues over this. She has came into the house saying she was going to buy her dad a bigger garbage can and did i need to borrow her carpet cleaner, why didn't i hang up my pans instead of putting them in the cabinet, etc. The first major issue was when my sister-in-law came and told me alot of things that she had said. The most hurtful was that I was jealous of her and her sister because they were prettier than me. This was when I was still really trying and it really hurt - I had been trying to help and be nice to both. Her father did make her come and apologize. I was pretty hard on her when she did and told her she shouldn't be going around talking about anybody like that, her mother, grandmother, me or anybody. These two girls have no regard for the things that are really important to me - the top two being respect and honesty. After she left, my husband got very upset with me and cancelled a vacation we had planned together - saying I was too hard on her - we didn't talk for weeks. This was the first real issue.

During one of our earlier Christmases, I was missing one of my Christmas platters that I had sitting out for a few months as I cleaned some cabinets. I had given both daughters keys to my house and the older daughter had been coming over while her house was being shown when we were not at home. One day I noticed my Christmas platter was missing. During the Christmas season, the older daughter showed up with a platter of cookies left over from a party she had at her house. It was the exact same platter. I did not say anything to her, but did ask the father later if he felt she would take my platter. He said that she was always used to coming to his house and getting anything she wanted but he didn't think she would take anything that belonged to me. She was pregnant at the time, but I told him I would not say anything until after the baby was born. When I did, all hell broke loose. She denied that she took it and things got heated. I told her a few things about how disrespectful and dishonest she had been about other things. We almost divorced over this, this was during the first couple of years of marriage. I apologized to her and asked that we talk and she never would. I wanted to tell her why I felt like she might have taken it after her father's comments. This has never been resolved because she would not ever discuss - but I have caught her in SO many lies since then.

One day I came home and you could tell someone had been in the house. Mail was rearranged, broom out of the closet, etc. I asked husband who had been there and he said probably daughter. He called and said she had been there with the other sister, husband and kids while their house was being shown. The younger sister called me one day on the phone and was talking about that day and mentioned what her mother (BM) was doing while they were there. I was furious - what a violation of our boundaries - and lies when asked about it. I also told older daughter what I thought about this - she said she didn't lie - her dad didn't ask her if her mom was there - i told her leaving out part of the information was the same as lying. Once again, I am the bad guy. My husband said well, they didn't tear the house down.

I recently sold my car and started driving one of my husbands - he has 6 cars. He wanted to know how much I was going to pay him for the car - you can imagine how that went over. He said he paid cash for that car that he had saved up. I am driving the car and I DID NOT pay him anything. One day when I was cleaning up the car, I found a manilla envelope under the back mat. In it I found a handwritten list of my husband's assets by the older daughter, a blank husband's will form, and two power of attorney blank forms. I was livid. He said his daughter had given him these and he had never looked at them again. He said she said that he and I needed to make a will - I said no it says HUSBANDS will and I have power of attorney unless you give it to someone else - obviously she wanted him to put her name on these. I feel so betrayed - like there is no loyalty to me - He insists he forgot they were there, but got mad and told me I need to quit snooping around in HIS car. Again, I am the bad person and the ex must have talked daughter into doing this.

The most recent incident happened around the same time, when he told me that the youngest daughter did not want to live with me because she did not feel comfortable with me. This is the one I have tried to help so much. He said that I have ruined his relationships with his daughters and that he had a perfect life before me. She called me a couple of weeks ago crying and said she was sorry for anything she had done to me and I told her not to worry about it. I told my husband and he asked the older daughter what she thought was going on and she said "I think that God is really dealing with her. She has been on drugs for so long and went around sassing everybody." They can say things like this, but if I say anything, I am the problem. The younger one once told me that the older one never got over her parent's divorce and would have had problems with whomever he father married.

Saying all this, I am always the bad guy - ruined his relationships with his daughters. I really want to leave, but don't want to put my son through another divorce situation. I am going to try and hold on until he gets a little older if I can - unless I see it is doing damage to him - I try to keep him out of all this. I feel like hanging on for a few more years until he graduates is what I should do - I have asked my husband to leave several times and he says he is not going to leave, because he has done nothing wrong.

HELP