AIBU to expect honesty in this case.

[NinaNoSleep]

As my name suggests, NC and up all of last night.

A bit of background.
I have lived with my OH for the last 8 years. We live in my house. Happy, good relationship, open, honest, built on respect. We are good friends and just get on really well. He is the nicest man. We work hard, have good friends, nice home, everything I could have wished for. We have 6 children between us, all grown up, all now living away. We have two grand-children. Happy families or so I thought!
My ExH cheated on me 20 years ago but life has been kind to me and has turned out so much better than if I had been with him.

So the issue is. My DP's adult children. Two have issues with drink which gets them into 'scrapes' and another has a serious issue which has meant moving out of his home, near marriage breakdown and running up debts.

DP and I have had many conversations about supporting his DC's but also about drawing a line around not enabling their behaviours. Over the last couple of months I have felt that my DP has become less open about his DC's. I have encouraged him to meet them without me so that he can talk openly with them but then I feel shut out and not part of the 'family'. DP is embarrassed by their behaviours and feels he doesn't want me to worry about them.

We have had very clear discussions about money. I feel strongly that he shouldn't be giving his DC's money to bail them out of the mess they are in. I know they ask, he has assured me he doesn't give them any.
His lack of communication about the whole situation has made me suspicious. Last night I read my DP's phone messages to find that he has given £500 to the son with serious issues with the message ' that is it, no more, that is the last time I support you financially' and then a week later has paid, on request from the same DC, for a train ticket.
I have asked in the past if he has given money. I suspect again he has despite my protests. He always says no he hasn't. I do take the 'tough love stance' with my own DC's.

Now I feel like I am a cheat too. We have easy access to each other's phone and haven't any need to read each other's messages. Last night I did just that!

I feel let down, he is saying one thing and doing another. I feel that he hasn't respected my thoughts on 'enabling' his DC's. I feel upset that we work hard to finance their mess. The consequences should be theirs not ours. I feel some of this reflects on my DP's parenting skills in the past and worry that he has always enabled his DC's. I feel that he nods his head and agrees with my 'tough love' stance then does something else. I feel an idiot, he must be saying to his DC's 'but don't let Nina know'. I know when we are all together conversations happen that I don't quite understand, like I am missing something. I feel that this is pulling us all apart.

I don't know what to do or how to tackle this. Left unsaid it will eat away. I am a great one for respect, once that starts to erode that is it for me. I haven't been respectful either.
He is at work, dreading him coming home.

His lies have come from a good (albeit a weak) place.
This is about his love for his children and his inability to refuse them his money (even though he knows you disapprove). I'd be wary of too much disapproval - maybe his reluctance to say no is caught up in guilt at the end of his first marriage ?
Some lies are awful, hateful and destructive - and some aren't.

If he was leaving you short to fund his DC then maybe you would have a say. However it sounds like he is not and therefore it is surely up to him what he spends his money on whether you agree or not?

As for lies, deceit and respect. You are not respecting that it is his choice, you are telling him not to enable his children, you are reading his messages. You have created a situation where he cannot be honest with you without causing conflict between you. What would your reaction be if he said I've given my DS £500 and bought him a ticket?

You can't encourage him to see them without you and then feel pushed out. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

He might not agree with you taking a hard stance with your DC how would you feel if he said you were wrong or criticised you for it? You can have an opinion, you can offer advice but he doesn't have to take it.

FWIW my DH is more generous with money to our DC than I would ever be, we have joint finances and sometimes I don't agree with it or I think he's bloody daft. He is a kind and generous man who would never be able to give out tough love, even less so if they were in trouble or feckless.

Doesn't mean he's a rubbish parent or lacks parenting skills, he's a great father and grandfather, he's generous with his time too, in fact he's down there now putting Christmas decs in the loft and other odd jobs for our DD who is a SP, he'll probably slip her £20 for a takeaway when he's done and not mention it to me.

You ARE a family and the wonderful thing about families are the imperfections and craziness are part and parcel of it all.

please just let it go and don't let it spoil everything that you have, you and oh are allowed to have different opinions and ideas of parenting adult children. He doesn't want to upset you that's all and I really don't think it's a trust issue at all he's just being a father who wants to get the kids out of a hole.

He's probably annoyed with himself as I bet he would rather spend the money on himself but my opinion is that he's been selfless rather than selfish. I would also bet that if one of your children asked him for help he would do the same too

Theres 3 train of thoughts..
1 the kids must take responsibility for their finances .
2 I'll give the kids whatever they want
3 "I'd love the kids to be responsible but sometimes they cock up and need a bit of a help.

I'm number 3 - I never had the benefit of help from my parents and now that I've actually got money to spare (not in abundance) if my children are struggling I will help out. I'm not saying I throw it at them and will expect it to be paid back eventually but it's what I do.

enjoy your wonderful family x

Perhaps the next time you talk about a mortgage, or his children or anything financial, you could acknowledge how hard it must be for him to see hid children struggling, even though they are grown-up.

Ask if he would feel happier to have a separate bank account into which he could put £X each month, so that if there was anything he felt he really needed to help his children with, the money would be available and it wouldn't impact your joint domestic finances. You needn't let on that you know about what he has been giving them - just describe it as a sort of Emergency Fund. He needn't tell his children it is there, and needn't make things easy for them, but if push comes to shove, he can help them out.

This may make things easier for him (not sure if I could turn my back on my offspring either) - and it would certainly be easier for hi to tell you if he felt he wanted to.

I hope you manage to get things sorted between you.It seems such a shame that your happy relationship has this shadow over it.

Nanna50 your husband sounds lovely 💐

I am here reading and appreciating your support. Happy to be more reasonable about it though do feel deceived and that has never been a part of our relationship. I know that with a cheating ExH I need truth and honesty now.

The monies given to any of his DC's are never a loan and are repeated and wasted on drink or on shoring up his family because of drink. The money allows this family to spend frivolously on trips and clothes whilst not paying their mortgage or being able to buy food.

I will need to have a conversation with DP. Maybe I am not being reasonable but I know that for me, the expectation and repeated requests to support this DC will drive us apart. I don't think he deserves support, I don't think his actions should be mitigated by us. I don't think we should suffer the consequences repeatedly. I feel that by giving we are allowing his behaviour to continue. I say us because my DP is so determined that we are one family. It doesn't feel like that. It feels like them and us!

I have some thinking to do don't I. I accept all of your views and I am pleased to have posted. It is interesting the range of views.I need to think about how or if I can deal with the support we need to give.

As an added update on my above post where I said I would expect money to be paid back eventually .... I have worked out this out in my head. I shall be 196 years old 😬 And will book myself a bloody nice cruise

You don't have the right to dictate to him how to parent his (grown up) children. Just because 'tough love' works for you, doesn't mean it necessarily works for him and his children.

Am assuming by the reference to 'your house' that the inheritance on this will go solely to your children, despite the extras he pays for making sure that your nice life is achievable? Perhaps his only chance to help his children is right now whilst he's here.

This is why alcoholism is known as the family disease

I suggest that you and your husband both find an Al-Anon meeting to help you process everything and work out boundaries.

Your husband is enabling his children.

Ill try and find a link...

Best of luck talking to him OP, I hope he will be genuinely mortified at his deceitfulness and you'll be able to move on together. It's really obvious from your posts that you deeply value family and respect, he'd be an idiot to jeopardise that.

Maybe he hasn't thought it through properly and doesn't realise he's created an "us and them" split in your family by his actions and lying about them. I am more like him than you when it comes to supporting adult children, but that doesn't mean lying and undermining the family dynamic is OK. I hope he'll see that when you talk to him xx

AL ANON MEETING FINDER

Also can i suggest, you move this thread to the Relationship section, or start a new one there. There are a lot of experienced women over there who can support you, living with alcoholism in the family

online meetings

There is lots of information available via Google search about 'enabling an alcoholic'

Some examples;

www.verywell.com/enabling-alcoholic-is-not-helping-63297

www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/enabling-an-alcoholic/

I think you have to be clear that it isn't the DC that are driving you apart. You've said that in a few of your posts but actually what is driving you apart is that you don't seem able to support your DP in supporting his DCs in the way he wants.
It's clear from your posts that you have very firm ideas on how to deal with his DC. If we can sense this in a few posts then your DP will be well aware of it too. You're pressuring him into what you see as the 'only sensible response'.
You can choose to rip your relationship apart over this or you can accept he's making what he feels is the best decision for him and his DCs, and support him to do that. Either way, you need to stop blaming his DCs for the way you are choosing to respond to this.

Some of my thoughts overlap with other posters but I think this boils down to a few issues

• you are definitely hurt at your DP's deception
• your DP doesn't want to hurt you or his children

The next bit is wrapped up in whether you can bring yourself to accept that your DP's choices in supporting his DCs are (a) rightfully his to make and (b) it is ok if his choice is not the one you would make.

If you were really ok with agreeing to disagree about supporting the DC, then your DP may well have told you. Why wouldn't he? Your posts are not totally consistent on whether you could accept your DP making a different choice to your own preference. At one point you say that agreeing to disagree would be one thing and it is the deception that is the real concern at another you suggest that if he continues to support the DC financially that actually it could be a deal breaker. I think this is one point where you need to be very clear, if you can, in your own mind.

Also, I wonder if there is another way forward with the DC? Is financial support the only option? Is there anything that is practical but non monetary that your DP, or both of you as a couple could do to help the DC get his head straight? I agree that throwing money at a problem is often a bad strategy, but there are other forms of support that could make a long term difference.

I do wish you well and also agree with a PP that you need to try and get some rest and sleep. Your DP sounds a good man. He probably wants to be able to problem solve with you rather than on his own.

My only thought after reading that is, if you can't ask him and you believe he's going to keep enabling his children financially, is your house protected in the event you pre-decease him? Will your children inherit your house directly? Will have the right to live in it?

My concern is that if you are 'trusting' him to do the right thing with your house, which presumably you would want to leave to your own children, you can't. He isn't being honest now, he is enabling poorly functioning adult children, and he would likely use it to help his own children if there was a way to do so.

I do think you need to talk to him. Tell him you were concerned, clearly knew something was up so you looked at his phone. And while you're sorry it's come to this, it's too important not to discuss now that you know. What on earth is going on?

Oh, really good point dragons

oops Loan not 'lone'! Autocorrect!

I don't think you should be attempting to forbid a father to help his children. He isn't being honest because he doesn't feel he can be. Its not fair of you to demand that of him really. They're his children, it is up to him whether he supports them financially.

Dont be emotionally blackmailed into supporting him support them

Alcoholics are very persuasive and convincing. If your DH is worried about his son and the rest of his son's family he may fear very dire consequences if he does not intervene.

I would tread very carefully in your shoes. If in the worse case scenario DSS for example left his family, attempted suicide or died after being refused money by your DH he may forever blame himself, or you.

Al anon helped my dad with his alcoholic second wife a great deal. I would go to them, together, to help you both develop strategies which will best help everyone.

For what its worth, my "step mother" banned my dad from helping myself and my sister out financially when we were students (no 'problems' to be ashamed of on our side). He used to secretly give us cash and meals, which I was very grateful for.

You and DH sound lovely, I hope it works out for you both.

Thank you all again.
Loads to think about.
I can see that I am being inconsistent. I suppose I thought that by being open and honest and having an agreement in place about financial support for our children when this issue first arose around the money for furniture, that was it. We had made that agreement and have only 'topped up' our thoughts overtime as new situations have arisen. If we had decided at that point to agree to disagree then all would be fine now. But we didn't, we agreed that we wouldn't financially support our children, partly because with 6 of them that felt like setting ourselves up for a huge stretch. Giving £1000 for furniture to the first DC to have a child, felt we should offer this or be prepared to be asked by the other 5 DC's when their need arose. DP, more than me, was very reluctant to think we needed to set aside another £5,000 for nursery furniture!
I have kept to the agreement made, despite a tricky time for one of my DC's. My DP and I talked about that situation and decided we wouldn't help.
I feel just feel betrayed now that DP has helped his DC without me knowing.

As far as my house. I'm not worried about this. We will draw up legal documents to work out inheritance for all 6 DC's. My DP also has money saved from the sale of his family home which will be added into the mix or set aside for his DC's. This would include any changes if we bought together.
We are supporting the DC in other ways through counselling, care for GC, time and talk but alcoholic recovery advice has been about 'detached love' to support the DC to see the effects his alcoholic behaviours have.

Joys of blended families!

I have kept to the agreement made, despite a tricky time for one of my DC's. My DP and I talked about that situation and decided we wouldn't help. I feel just feel betrayed now that DP has helped his DC without me knowing.

Ahhh, that may be a huge factor in why he's not being honest. You had an agreement, an agreement he wanted, and an agreement he helped 'enforce' against one of your own DC when they were in 'trouble'. And yet now he's enabling his drinking irresponsible DC and lying about it...

Wow.

Good luck discussing it with him. Sounding like a bit of a hypocritical coward

Dragon, yes maybe. I suppose we are both under lots of stress.
Nearly time for him to come in from work. No nearer knowing how I am going to talk about this. So many complicating factors. Really tempted to bide my time, but I think, knowing I've had no sleep he will ask what I am worried about.

I have kept to the agreement made, despite a tricky time for one of my DC's. My DP and I talked about that situation and decided we wouldn't help. I feel just feel betrayed now that DP has helped his DC without me knowing.

This would make me angrier than everything else - especially if the problem my child had was not of their own making or one that they were working hard to overcome. To have not given short-term financial help to my own child, only for him to give money to his, for difficulties that are available AND their own fault . . . that would break my heart.

You can always tell him that if he's giving his DC money, you are going to match it pound for pound to yours (you needn't' - just put in in another account.)