Co-parenting with an alcoholic —children refusing contact. What now?

Does he only deal with your kids eow?

OP, is your husband doing all the care for his kids (cooking, washing clothes, lifts, shopping etc )?

What often happens is the step-mum gets lumbered with it all. And people are quick to shout ‘well, you know what you were getting into when you married him’, but less quick to check he is raising his own kids.

'Aut' literally means self, doesn't it?
Autistic people struggle to see outside of their frame of reference. Can most definitely overlap with selfish.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with stepping back. If your plate is full, then it is full. You already have two ND children who need you and a full time job.

Your dh children are ultimately his responsibility. Extend hand and love if you can. If you can't, don't make things worse for everyone and let it go. Get advice from social services on how to separate right now. To cause the least amount of damage. You don't need to take action right now. Just collect information.

That's totally understandable. It threw me for a loop when my husband went off the rails, and I'm not ND.

To be quite honest: leave. It is abundantly clear you don’t want his children there. Children should have a home wherever their parent is. At any time, never mind in this situation. What would happen to your children if you were some way incapacitated? What would you want for them? Is it someone who feels the way you do? I wouldn’t have thought so.

It’s also likely there’s a difficult road ahead for the children for a whole raft of reasons. And 8 months is nothing in the grand scheme of recovery. If you’re not prepared for your husband’s children to live with him for as long as you see yours living with you then leave. You’re only kicking the can down the road and sadly for you all, it will most likely get worse before it gets better.

You’re a high earner so you’ll be fine financially and actually you are the one with the most agency in this situation. You can leave the crisis centre. The children are living with it forever. And for the forseeable future, their dad has to live it with them.

No one is honour bound to raise someone else’s children. It would not be at all selfish for OP to prioritise her own two autistic dc and leave.

This uncertainty and stress must be so horrible for you - imagine how awful it's been for the kids who have much less agency and power in these situations. Which doesn't negate the stress on you - it's horrible all round.

It sounds like creating some certainty and routine for as much as you can, as long as you can, will help everyone. The kids don't want to be away from their mum forever but it'll likely be a while, so I would advise trying to find a 'new normal', whatever that looks like, including how to make space for what you need (eg finding literal space when the house is more full). The counselling will be really helpful here so that's a great start.

It may also be worth looking into resources such as Al-Anon UK which may be helpful in coping with the ex's behaviour & giving some background. It may also offer routes to support for your stepkids or resources your husband might talk about with them.

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t consider a relationship where you don’t live together. Surely you have experienced this in the past?

I agree with PP. Anyone who marries someone with children should be prepared for those children to live with them full time. If you can’t, and I don’t blame you at all if that’s your decision, then you have to live separately. Your preference would be to completely split up.

Your own DC need to be your priority here.

Are your two kids solely yours or shared with DH?

If they’re just yours, I’d be making plans to leave.

You need to worry about your own kids, especially as they’re ND.

How is addition of 3 full time new residents affecting them?

I have very little sympathy for these posters who marry a man with children and who then end up having to have the children permanently living with them.

The reality is that when a woman marries a man and believes that the children only have to come every other weekend they’re not actually accepting that the an has children, they’re tolerating the fact. When actually you need to go into a marriage with children on the understanding that those children could come to live there permanently, at any time.

How often does your ex have to put up with your children living there? Would you have been happy if he wanted them to only live there every other weekend? And if not, why not?

This is why stepmothers get such a hard time on here.

Invariably men who get together with a woman with kids have to accept from the outset that those kids will spend the majority of their time there. And anything beyond that acceptance simply wouldn’t be tolerated.

But with women who marry men with kids it seems to be the other way around, and that they can expect to only have to have the kids every other weekend, and anything more than that and they’re claiming victim status.

None of this is about you. When you married him you made a choice to be a full-timestepmother to his children. Not a conscious choice perhaps, but you go in knowing full well that that could be the case. And if you didn’t think about that then that’s on you.

The only victims here are the children.

Most addicts don’t “get better “ and you can’t live your life banking on someone else helping you by changing their life. You need to assume that she won’t change and what is best for you and your kids.

What do you both need to do to accomadate having step children living with you all full time?
Do you need a bigger house? Extend the house?
I would be thinking kids will be living with us full time and how do we move forward with that.
Hopefully you have the ex blocked and your husband deals with the contact

Legally the children are considered old enough to decide how much contact they have with each parent.

It is completely understandable that the children have said no - if they had said yes, there would be a host of other worries that their dad would have like how long until they are let down again.

What I assume the services and your h will do is ask the children periodically if they want to see mum because they might change their mind but living with their dad full time is obviously the safest place for them.

Yanbu to be shocked at the chaos and changes to your life but the kids need a reliable parent and it needs to be their dad. The alternative is foster care and I think it would be unreasonable to do that to kids who have gone through so much. It’s up to you what you do but it’s very possible that the kids never see their mum again.

Can you get any therapy to help you through this? It sounds like a very distressing and overwhelming situation

She isn’t selfish! She is autistic and struggling with the uncertainty this situation is bringing. She’s overwhelmed and in need of support not stupid vicious comments like these. If you don’t have any advice to give that’s fine but don’t attack her

It's tough for you. You have split responsibilities here. His first responsibility is to his children, and you should and I'm sure did realise that when you chose to marry him. Your first responsibility is to your children. That's assuming you don't share children, to whom you have a joint responsibility. I have a lot of sympathy for your situation as the fundamentals have changed. Normally, it is women who get on and do the bulk of the parenting when relationships break down, and you are suffering now from having made the gendered assumption that your DH would essentially be "excused" from most day-to-day parenting. Some people on here will condemn you and say that was unreasonable, but you've been unlucky here. As a general rule, fathers only really have to step up when mothers fail, and most mothers don't fail.

my DP’s ex wife is a chronic alcoholic & we have his youngest live with us full time & when the eldest is back from uni we have her with us full time too. They see their mother every few weeks if she is ok (not too drunk to be passed out or create an atmosphere) but only for dinner for a few hrs. Very rarely is it overnight. Like you we had social services involved especially cos the youngest kept trying to go back to 50/50 against their advice but under pressure from their mum. We don’t get any time together alone but life is calmer with them here 100% and not suffering under their mother’s influence or outbursts. This was always a possibility & I think you need to think of the kids.

I actually don’t think giving a timeframe is helpful for you as you could become fixed on that and are already asking, what happens in 8 months.

No-one knows and this is something you can’t control which I know feels very destabilising for you and I do sympathise.

Mum could get sober, the kids feel able to go back to shared care and she could then relapse again. I think I’d try and think of it as the new normal and then work out whether it’s something you can live with. It’s ok for this to feel overwhelming and it’s ok to worry about the impact on your kids but that’s for you to work out rather than change the situation for his kids.

I grew up with an alcoholic parent. I'm going to be blunt.

Your husband's kids are refusing to go to their mom's because they've likely been traumatized over and over and over until they can't go there. They are going to need their dad's support and therapy. Their needs (safety and security) need to be prioritized over your wishes. This could last for years.

What do you want him to do?

I think you need to be working through this with a counsellor and not Mumsnet imo.

Surely you realised this could happen, what if the other parent died etc?