Married with Children

Sounds like you married a guy who is not going to support you in front of his son. There is no reason you have to take this kid anywhere-- you choose to, just like you chose to marry someone who had bratty kids living at home.

Personally, I'd leave too. Consider it a blessing that you found this out relatively early in your life; you are still very young. You can do better. And you can learn to behave like a grown-up who does have a CHOICE in what she is doing in her life. No one is FORCING you to stay in this situation. You can leave, work, get your own place. There are options.

And for heaven's sake, DO NOT MAKE ANY BABIES with a man who already seems like a failure as a parent.

ETA: You sent me a message saying I'm mean and that words hurt. Sweetie, no one is allowing you to be hurt but you, yourself. What I am exhorting you to do is to empower yourself. You are saying you choose a 'forever' relationship with this man, and that IS your decision-- I am most certainly not arguing that. I also speak as a woman who has been divorced for good reason and has successfully moved on to greener pastures. The choice is yours-- you can continue to do things which you hate doing and making your husband happy, I suppose. But what you are complaining about IS part and parcel of your husband NOT being a good father. Not to be rude, but by the time I was 16, I was able to take the bus anywhere in town on my own and worked an afterschool job-- and I had *really* screwed up parents. I would absolutely NOT have children with someone who felt it was okay to permanently infantalize their kids. That's not being mean, that's common sense. You are 25 now. Do you want to be 45 or 50 and having to get an job to support your 20-25 year old? Because the writing is on the wall-- marriage does not automatically make people change. Don't expect it.

So stop taking him places and cooking and cleaning for him, problem solved.

Interesting first question, therefore I'm skeptical of its validity but... I'll bite.

Weren't you aware of this grown son when you were dating your husband? How long did you know your husband before you married? Were you not aware of his previous family? Why are they were no longer a family? There's a lot of factors here that you should have been well aware of before marriage unless you were blinded by something else, possibly material related reasons.

If my husband didn't stand up for me (his wife) I'd be gone because I would then believe he married me for other reasons. I personally would not be ok with being some insecure man's trophy.

Age differences between spouses do not bother me but not having mutual respect and being a partnership would certainly bother me.

Stop being your stepsons driver

Well the "boy" is 22 and an "adult" according to your Husband.
So, don't do anything for him.
He is an "adult."
He can take care of himself.
And since he is not choosing... to take care of himself and be a bum, that is his, choice. As your Husband says, he is an adult.
A looser adult.

And when or if your Husband grumbles that you don't do anything for his son, just say "well, he's an adult and all grown up. He can take care of himself."

Then leave.

Why exactly do you treat him like a child and think you need your husband's permission to stop?

Hubby will keep on babying his son - you can't make him stop.
I don't know if he's doing it out of a sense of guilt or not.
You are either going to have to accept the situation as it is and go on basically wiping this 'adult' child's behind for him.
Or you will leave and let Hubby and his son work things out.
Hubby has chosen his son over you and he's never going to back you up.
And the son is never going to respect you as a step mom (especially since Daddy refuses to make him) - you are basically the age a slightly older sister would be.
You are the cook/maid/laundry service/bed warmer.
Hubby has no incentive for wanting anything to change.
You are not going to find any happiness living like this.
Cut your losses now.

Why are you fixing him food? He's an adult. He can fix his own meals.

He should be helping to pay for groceries, if not helping to get the groceries. His room is his business. You shouldn't be cleaning it up, or doing his laundry. Decide which days are YOUR laundry days for you and your husband's clothes, and he can do his laundry at other times.

I also wouldn't do anything for him. He's an adult? He can take care of himself. I would do nothing for him.

I would tell your husband that you are the wife and if he won't man up, you will move out. And mean it.

ETA: your follow up just makes me worry more about what you are exposing your young children to. IMO, vows are important but so is respect and you are getting none. What do you want your children to grow up thinking and feeling and seeing? His "child" is not a child. Your responsiblity is to YOUR children.

Eeek. This is very disrespectful of your husband. My dad would never let us treat our step mom that way, nor did we try. We were raised with respect for adults. And we were shown the door at 18. You and your husband have very different values. That son is not going anywhere anytime soon with his lack of life skills.
I would leave. Sorry. I would never live with a 22 year old who was lounging around mistreating me while my husband allowed it. You're too young to settle for that!!!
Do NOT do anything for that manchild. He's an ADULT, just keep reminding him and his dad that. While you are packing!!

It is not wife's job to make her husband happy. Each of us have the responsibility to make ourselve's happy. In marriage both the wife and husband are equal and responsible to make the marriage work. You do for his son because you want to make your husband happy. What does he do to make you happy?

I'm guessing that you come from a culture who sees marriage relationships differently than they are expected to be in the present day world of the United States. I'm guessing that you've taken on the idea that men and women are equal which makes it very difficult to accept the old ways in which the husband is the one who makes the decisions and tells the wife what to do.

You are at a place where it's important to decide which sort of marriage you want. Can you be happy if your husband continues to act this way? Do you believe that your happiness is as important as your husbands? And that you have the responsibility to take care of yourself and your children.

I suggest that your husband will not change and that at 50 he began adulthood in an era during which a large majority of men felt that the wife should bend to his will. (The husband made the decisions. ) he has been this way 35 year.

You are young. You know that what he's asking you to do is unreasonable and makes you miserable. I suggest that if you want to stay in this marriage you must become assertive. You can tell your husband and his son NO!.
Stand up for yourself. Show your children a healthier way of living. I suspect your husband won't like this and he will try to force you to do as he says. When you insist on being treated with respect he will be the one to leave.

Being strong, self confident, and willing to take a stand to insist on being treated with respect is difficult. Perhaps this is an opportunity for you to grow and become assertive. You have to decide if you want to take on this fight.

If it were me I'd begin to make plans and find ways in which you can be on your own. I'd contact a women's shelter to get help knowing how to do this. I would not stay with anyone who didn't treat me with respect, who favored his adult son over you.

I am trying to imaging marrying someone the same age as my children, and I can't.

Sorry, but I don't think this will be your last problem. You have some good advice below. Good luck.

Sit down with your husband when his son is not in the house.

Make sure it is a time when your husband does NOT need to go out the door in 10 minutes to get somewhere else; a time when his favorite show is about to start on TV; or a time when he is going to say, "Oh, I only have a minute, I need to do X."

Tell him that you and he need to have a serious talk as a couple and that you will not be answering your phone and expect him to turn his off, too. Tell him this is a two-way discussion and by the end of it, you and he, as a couple, need to have specific plans and decisions MADE and actions in place.

Then tell him -- with words you have carefully scripted in advance; do not improvise, do not "wing it" -- that his son needs to move on with his life and move out, sooner rather than later. Explain that while you want to treat his son as part of the whole family, you feel that YOU are not being taken into account, and that you are feeding, driving and cleaning up after an adult rather than doing things that you - also an adult! - want and need to be doing: Going to school, or working, or whatever it is you need to be doing right now.

Tell your husband, "I realize that you say that he's an adult so you wont' correct him. But your decision not to address his rudeness to me is hurting me badly. I feel as if I do not matter to you as your wife when you let your child treat me with that kind of disrespect. I feel that I am looked on as the driver and cleaner by him, and that it seems to be OK with you that I am in that role. You refer to Son's being an adult but you let him accept my services as maid and driver. So I do plan to cease cooking for him, cleaning up after him and driving him, because -- as you say yourself so often -- he is an adult. An adult does not live on dad's couch and play video games. I need to be the wife here and not the mom; I need to be respected in my own home; and I need to have your respect that would be shown by making this your home and mine, not his. I know you love him and want him to be comfortable but as you have said - he is an adult. There are two young children in this household. It is time for him to move out. There is not enough room for him and I no longer have time to be his chef and chauffeur and also attend to the two kids."

You and your husband need to agree to giving son a specific move-out date AND STICK TO IT. I fear dad is going to cave in and let little boy keep being little boy. Go on strike but do it with a huge smile on your face. If you do not have a job or you're not in school or you aren't busy with your own kids -- you need to be. You need to be too darned busy to say yes when son needs a ride; too busy to clean up after him; you need to just dump his mess in a corner when he doesn't clean up, or dump it where he will stumble over it.

I think your husband may be taking advantage of you here. He is not treating you like his adult wife, frankly. It's time he did. YOU say your vows are meaningful to you but they don't seem to mean a lot to him if he inserts a person nearly your own age in the household then expects you to be maid to that person. Why are you tolerating this? Stand up for yourself or you only have yourself to blame. Your kids are witnessing you being treated badly (and kids learn to do what they see) and your kids are seeing that it's OK to live on the couch and play game as an "adult." Either get them out (vows or no vows, they matter more than your husband, don't they?) or stand up for yourself and say son goes or you do.

Maria,

Welcome to mamapedia!!

have you ever bothered to stand up for yourself and say ENOUGH?
Have you ever said NO?!?!?! to him...he "needs" you to take him places? Great - guess you're not such a big boy after all. You want something? You need to EARN it.

The fact that your husband does NOT stand up for you? Nothing will change. From where I stand? Your husband sees you as a trophy wife, maid, and cook....and you allow it. And as long as you allow it? NOTHING will change.

So you need to set the ground rules. State your expectations. And the consequences if he (your husband) can't get behind OR in front of you regarding his son's treatment of you. As to your step son? You need to say NO. Simply say NO. At the age of 22? He's a leech on society if he's not going to school or at least working some job...that tells me that his dad did NOT do his job in raising him and really?! Is that what you want for the rest of your life?

If you aren't willing to give up yet - try marriage counseling.

Role model for your step son and SHOW him how a man should treat a lady...DEMAND better treatment. If he scoffs and your husband won't back you? Then you are in a never -ending battle and you need to make the decision if you are better off with or without him...and only you can make that decision.

Good luck!

Stop being his servant. You're better than that. Find volunteer options for yourself to get out of the house when he's there. Go window shopping, join a book club, go to the library and curl up with a book, anything to not be available to him. He'll have to find his own way again. He has a paid limo and taxi service plus a maid and cook at his disposal. Why would he want to change that...?

Dad is allowing him to talk about you like this? I'd be pissed at him, he's an adult and 50 for God's sake. He knows better.

EDIT: Are your younger children your husbands? IF not, you really have no ties to this man. Vows are vows but if they are not going to work it time to cut your losses. There is no shame in divorcing someone who is not defending and protecting you against the world. There also a time when children need to leave the nest. Momma birds do this all the time. time for him to go to work and learn how to drive and buy his own car no more driving "mister" around.
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Are you from different cultures? I ask because of how you are responding to your husband's whims and your step-son's whims.

Anyone over the age of 18 not going to school or working, should be in the military. They need to get out of the house and fend for themselves and learn how it is in the real world. He cannot learn how to provide for himself or a family if he does not.

I would have a very serious talk with hubby alone without the stepson in the house. Go out for dinner and have a talk anywhere by home when you do it. Then I would suggest marriage counseling. If that does not work, there if the big D. I would not stoop to be second or third rate in my own home and thought of as a maid or servant to clean up after adults.

It is honorable to do things to please your husband but not the way you are going about it. Learn how to RESPECT yourself. If you don't love you nobody will. Sorry to be so blunt but sometimes you just have to be. Time to grow up and put on your big girl panties and let the chips fall where they may. You need personal space, quality time, respect and privacy from the world and you are not getting it. No more trophy wife.

the other S.

so why do you take him places, fix him food and clean up after him?
khairete
puzzled S.

It is good that you do want to make your marriage work and that you want to be a parent to your husband's children. However, the current household arrangement is not good for ANYONE. You are being treated disrespectfully by your step-son and you can't raise your young children or concentrate on the relationship with your husband because there's another adult living in the household. Your younger children are seeing a terrible model of 'adulthood' (an older brother who isn't taking any responsibility for his life and whose father is allowing him to mooch off others and disrespect them at the same time). Your husband cannot work on the relationship with you and raise his two young children because his older son is occupying the living room. Your step-son is not learning to treat you (an adult woman and a step-mother) with respect, nor is he growing up and transitioning to life as an adult. An adult does not live rent free with a parent, play video games all day, and need transportation. What's the deal with not having a driver's license at age 22? That is one glaring sign of a person who isn't moving to adulthood, and probably needs to be fixed ASAP.

It seems pretty clear to me that the best thing for everyone is for your step son to leave the household soon. As for how you get there, there was a great suggestion for you and your husband to sit down and talk when you both can concentrate for a good hour. That probably means a time when all children are out of the household. Maybe Step-Son can take his step-siblings out to the movies or a ball-game? While you need to listen to your husband to understand why he is willing to let his son vegetate in the household, you need to have an organized list of points to explain to him why the current situation is bad for everyone, particularly how his son's current behavior is not 'adult.' It shouldn't be that hard for him to understand, since this son was born to your husband when he was only 8 years older than his son is now. Ask him what changes would need to happen so that this son could be ready to have and RAISE a child eight years from now, and how you two could help him move towards that type of adulthood by forcing him to start standing on his own feet.

Good luck!