Yet again many thanks to all of you for your insight, experiences, wisdom, and caring that you have shown me.
Time for my story. I have been married to a wonderful man for 14 years. Both of us went through tough divorces before finding each other.
By choice I never had any children during my first marriage. My husband came into the relationshp with a 15 year old daughter from a his late teens years. He and his Mom raised her from her 2nd birthday. He later married a woman with 3 girls, then they had a girl of their own.
His 15 year old girl and I hit it off right from the start. We became close friends and remain so after all these years. During his relationship with his wife, mind you that union now has 4 girls in it they took guardianship of an infant boy who was born addicted to drugs. He was the child of the first wife's sister who literally left him on their door step. My husband has no blood relationship with the boy or 3 of the girls. Yes, very confusing. That marriage only last 2 years, so my husband never had any time to fully bond with the boy and the 'mother', the now ex-wife turned everyone against my husband.
It's very obvious to me that after being with my husband for 14 years that he is not the monster the ex claimed he was. He also has an excellent realionship with his oldest daughter from that early relationship.
Through the years we have always sent his biological daughter and the boy presents and cards for every major occasion, the kids living with the ex-wife. When we lived in the area they would also come for visits. After we moved away we also had them visit us on school breaks.
The thanks that we recieved from all of our efforts was non-existanct. Never once did they call my husband on his birthday, Father's Day, Christmas and so on. We never received an acknowledgement of their cards or gifts. Nothing!
3 months ago, the 'son' (remember he was never adopted or has any bloodline to my husband, and we haven't heard from them in 9 years now) called and said he was in trouble and needed a place to live. My husband called his ex-wife and she explained the situation. Here is a bit of the problems: He's 17 years old and had failed the 10th grade, then got expelled from school when he went to repeat the grade the next year for threatning a teacher. At first he was allowed to stay at home during the day while his 'mom' and sister were at work, the older daughters had left the nest. After he had stolen money and items from the home he was made to leave the house each day while no one was home to watch over him. Then he started stealing from the homes of his friends. No one ever pressed charges. At some point he just had to find his biological mother, the sister of the woman who was raising him as her own. He found out that she litterally was a whore on the streets and still a drug addict. She had over 5 children from various men through the years. His bio-father is in jail.
My husband and I discussed it and decided to give the boy a chance away from his current enviroment to give him a fresh start. Yes we did go out on a limb since we weren't related to him, and me, the motherless child by choice, but I agreed. The major reason I agreed is that I was adopted 52 years ago by the most wonderful 2 parents anyone could ever ask for. I was and am truly blessed. Both of them are still alive at 86 and 90, a present from God! So I thought is was my turn to 'give back' the blessing I had been given by being adopted. So he came to live with us 6 weeks ago.
It has been my worse nightmare come true. Yes DallasGal I too had the Cinderella mentality. I thought at long last I would have a son to take to baseball games, to pal around with while my husband was at work. I was dead wrong. He is lazy, shiftless, self-centered and a slob. He has no respect for our home. The only thing we have asked of him is to keep his room picked up and the guest bathroom that he now uses clean.
None of that was and is on his agenda. He lost his first job in 3 hours. So far this second job has lasted 9 days, but he gets paid today and we'll see if he then quits. He is extremely disrecptful to me, he leaves a mess in the kitchen, and until I put my foot down, blarred the TV in the living room whenever he was home.
We bought him his own TV, VCR etc (used) for his room. Now he has removed the DVD player from our bedroom along with a boom box thing from my computer/relaxtion room. He just takes whatever he wants from us and places it in his room.
The finally straw for me was when he had spilled his drink all over the kitchen floor and I asked him to please clean up after himself as he was walking away from the mess. He turned back to me and told me to clean up his mess. Then he got right in my face and started screaming at me.
He was nasty and ugly. Basically he stated he didn't care a dam about me, this house or anything or anyone but my husband. He didn't care about the rules we laid out and wasn't going to live my them. I let him have his say and somehow or another told him that it wasn't important if we never became friends, but he would respect me, and he would respect this home, that he would do the simple tasks required of him.That I had the full backing of my husband and we would discuss this later with him. When I told my husband about it late that night after he returned from work, to say he was livid was an understatement. He wanted to snatch the kid up and throw him out that door right then and there. We talked about the outrage further and decided to have a family meeting the next night.
The jist of the meeting was, that he would respect us, the house and would follow the rules or he had the choice of leaving then. If he ever got in my face again that he would be asked to leave the house immediately. I am so very thankful that my husband took my side of the arguement. The fact is he knew the 'rules' of the house before he ever came down here and agreed to them, yet now he doesn't care.
My husband feels that no man ever should disrespect a woman and scream and yell at her for any reason. We have never had a realtionship that included screaming, we calmly talk out any probems that we may have. In the last 6 weeks I can't tell you how many times my husband has lost his temper with the boy. As a matter of fact I never knew my husband had a temper as such until the kid moved in. My 3 cats, who are my babies, sorry if I offend anyone, they have never been so scared and skiddish since we got them. The tension is constant, I walk around on eggshells when the child is home. My husband is a manager of a retail store so his hours differ from day to day. Before the boy moved in we had what I termed the perfect little life. We adore each other and or little home that we have struggled for and I had the 3 cats in the yard life....they are indoor cats by the way, but I think you know what I mean.
I truly wanted this to work out with all my heart when he walked through our door, but I will say now, I just wish he would disappear from our life. I have to take medication for high blood pressure now. I have lost 15 pounds due to the stress and the worse thing of all is I fell off the wagon and started smoking again.
So that's the story, sorry it's so long.
Diane thank you for the invitation to vent.
To all of you thank you for the advice and the other websites that I can check out. Your guidance has been most valuable and priceless to me. To know that there are other women out there who care and are willing to take their time to help me is a blessing.
Mary