I have been with my DH for 12 years, married 6 years ago. When we met, he already had D (then 8) and S (then 5), and had been separated from their mum for 2 or 3 years. Access at the time was intermittent and the relationship with his ex appalling, with lots of badmouthing being done to the kids about DH. DH settled down with me and was able to give them a stable environment for visiting. As our relationship strengthened, he saw more of them, alternate weekends which worked fine, I tended to spend more time with SD than SS, she was very girly whereas he seemed to want his dad more. I got on reasonably well with them, though DS was prone to tantrums and occasionally made ?daddy, why won?t you get back with mummy?? noises ? which I don?t remember feeling hurt by, seemed pretty natural to me.
About 5 years ago, SCs mum abruptly left the country, on about a week?s notice to us. I was heavily pregnant with DD1. SD moved in with a schoolfriend as she was just a few months away from taking her GCSEs. SS asked to move in with us but given the lack of notice and our circumstances, I initially said no. SS went away with his mum for a few weeks, but rang DH every day begging us to have him. 3 weeks later, a week after DD1 was born, I gave in and he came to live with us.
The area we live in is not the best place in which to dump a cocky naïve 13 yr old. He has always had naughty friends and sure enough, within weeks he was hanging around with a very bad crowd, being sullen and stroppy, probably feeling very upset by his situation with the new baby in the house taking DH away from him. He started smoking weed and began getting in to trouble at school, until a matter of a couple of months later he was expelled. The only place that would take him on was a very intimidating remedial institution which seemed to us the worst place to send him, so we researched boarding schools and we got him a place at one about an hour?s drive away. He came home every weekend but spent more and more time at friends? houses and less and less at ours.
I realise that to SS this must have seemed like the ultimate rejection at the time, he would not have realised that we were doing this primarily for his safety and education ? but with hindsight I can see it must have been devastating and was the start of things going really wrong. My relationship with him completely deteriorated after that and for the first time I became aware of the real stereotypical you?re-a-wicked-stepmother attitude coming out. I have since had 2 more DCs, so there have been a lot of us in the house, and things have just got harder and harder. Again with hindsight, I see now that the additional DCs have probably added to SS?s sense of isolation and exclusion, though I have tried not to make him feel this, and tried to include as much as a sulky teen will allow.
If challenged about anything (mess, tidying up, telling us where he was, money going missing, broken bathroom windows), he flies into a rage and out come the usual curses about hating me, me not being his mum, me excluding him from the family, not being good enough for his dad, sending him away etc. After discovering he had stolen money out of my purse for the 3rd time in as many months, I gently asked him to own up (bearing in mind I?ve got pretty scared of his reactions by now), and he completely lost it. Fortunately our childminder was in the house, as I felt very unsafe ? he threatened to punch me, ran up the stairs and kicked a door open to come in and hurl more abuse at me when I?d retreated up there to get away from him, waking up the sleeping babies next door and reducing us all to tears. I had to ask DH to come back from work to deal with him, and very sadly with the level of aggression and lack of control, we decided that we had to get him to move out for good.
Some time has now passed and he is staying with a friend nearby, so we know he is safe. He is 18, has no regular work or income and will not be able to stay where he is forever. He wants to go back to college next year (after a second and third expulsion in the interim). I feel that I can not have him back in the house after what has happened, but I feel terribly guilty and worried for him. But I feel that I have to look after the younger ones and the situation could not continue as it was. DH is re-establishing contact with him and trying to support him in finding a way to move on ? maybe working abroad until he returns to college, though he will probably just think it?s another way of getting rid of him. It is worrying for a young man of his age who?s into dope to be hanging around where we live with no work or drive.
SS has not apologised to me since the fight (though I hasten to add apart from the initial challenge from me about the stealing I didn?t say anything confrontational or nasty, I was too scared), and I have no idea what to say to him. We have not yet come face-to-face but my instinct is to try and avoid seeing him, which seems ridiculously cowardly. I don?t want him to think it was OK to treat me the way he did, and I want him to know I was frightened and hurt, but I also realise that in saying this to him I will probably just be a blubbering wreck. Part of me doesn?t want to show him this amount of weakness, but I think that is probably pathetic.
I don?t know what I am asking for, really ? maybe just some understanding? I realise some of you will be horrified at our kicking him out ? god knows, I?m beating myself up about it constantly. I can?t remember ever feeling so guilty or stressed about anything before. But I feel completely powerless to do anything else for him, except support DH in supporting him. I am trying to suggest ways DH might help, but any suggestions on that front would be great too.