Been with my dh since my ds was 3. He's now 13 so it's a long term relationship and dh has over the years helped a lot with ds - taken him to football games, provided financial support, holidays, childcare, lifts, all the usual stuff. We now have 1 dc together too.
Since ds hit the terrible teens they are clashing more and it's so hard for me being stuck in the middle. My ds can be rude and lazy. My dh equally does wind ds up. Sometimes it'll be him chipping away with what he thinks is jokes/banter but then ds gets pissed off and ends up telling Dh to shut up or similar. We had an incident like this tonight and Dh bit back and a big row ensued.
There is fault on both sides but I cannot abide my Dh acting as though he somehow deserves respect when he's the one creating the problem. I've tried calmly telling him what he's doing and how it annoys ds. I've also spoken to ds about his attitude. But neither of them change.
Now they will probably ignore each other for a day or so and I will be stuck in the middle again. I'm getting where I think we'd be better living apart but then that wouldn't be fair on our little one and other than these occasional fall outs we are generally happy as a family. Ds on the whole is a good lad and doesn't talk to anyone else (including his bio dad) like this. I don't know if it's some alpha male / stepparent dynamic going on.
I would appreciate supportive helpful comments not the immediate LTB stuff that generally comes with stepfamily posts. I'm sure teenage boys argue with their actual dads too.
Equally I'm sick of living with it and I can only see things getting worse as ds gets further into the teen years. I can't make them see how damaging this is for us all and what the potential consequences could be.