Number 1...I feel your pain. My DH was exactly like that with my SD12. It was as if he was afraid of her. I think he was afraid of losing the relationship with her. Your SS sounds just like my SD. She new she could find a wedge between BF and I, and doing anything to drive us apart. Her BM taught her everything she knows (she split up at least 2 of her BM's marriages)SD's BM has been found guilty of Parental Alienation of her daughter and youngest son. It got so bad in our household BF kicked her out and said go live with your BM.

Your DH some how needs to know he's being played against you in working on breaking up the marriage. Have you both tried marriage counceling?o Maybe he needs to read some of the comments on here about how other's feel?

Bedwetting at 16 is a little old. I understand that kids especially boys, have this problem for awhile and they eventually grow out of it. But at 16, he can strip his own bed, wash, dry and re make the bed. Do any other laundry that needs to be done.

I have a SS11 who has been responsible for his own bed wetting. We have taught him to shower after he wakes up, strip his bed etc. He has been doing this for 3 years now. Same thing with my BS when he was younger too.

I'm curious to know if he is doing this on purpose to cause more havoc in the house?

I would check out the DVD on PAS called "Welcome Back Pluto" I got mine from amazon.com you may see somethings on there you may recognize.

If DH doesn't get his act together and stop making excuses for your SS he will be looking at a whole lot of other problems as far as his son is concerned and it sounds like he might end up alone...doing it alone.

Hang in there!

OMG! This is exactly my ss13 and my dh. On ss's last overnight visit the little turd burnt 9 small holes in my couch!! He was the only one home besides dh (me and the other kiddos went out of town). It is not a question of whether he did it-there are no other possible suspects and he had access to a lighter and he slept on that couch, yet because he said he did not do it dh did nothing in response. It has now been 1 month and I am still mad as hell. SS has only been over here once for one day since that happened, and dh took him camping another weekend, but there has been no further mention of my burnt sofa.

Dh is continually wanting to give ss "fresh starts". I told him I dont think he understands the concept of a fresh start. A fresh start does not mean someone can do whatever they like and have no consequences but everyone will just agree to never mention it again. Fresh starts occur daily with ss.

My ss is also a bedwetter. He likes hiding the wet things in various locations for me to find. He's never been scolded for wetting, has been encouraged to try and come up with methods to help him stay dry-which he considered a scolding. I asked him a few months ago if he could PLEASE bring his wet things to the laundry rooms so I, his humble servant, could wash them for him? He ignored me. I asked him, again, to please bring them out and his response was to MOCK me. I swear, I live in crazy town. What 13 year old MOCKS anyone who is offering to wash their pissed on bedding and clothes?

I believe in the real world when you mess up, you take responsibility for it and you try and make amends. That's what normal people do-at least I used to think so-now sometimes I dont even know what normal is.

I spent years asking my dh to do something different. Trying to get my ss to do something different. No luck. Finally I did something different and have refused to allow ss to live in my house unless they both start doing things differently. Neither of them seem real motivated to do anything at all, so ss is beginning to look like a permanent nonresident.

I would suggest making the 16 yr old solely responsible for the trash n the SECOND he walks in the door-tell him he has a trash csn to fix....stand over his shoulder while he is fixing it n when it Is done tell him that u WILL NOT b disrespected in UR OWN HOME!!! N the next time he feels like breaking something-it had better b his own things or he will b reimbursing u for whatever he breaks!! End of conversation! Take back UR house hun!! When ur husband has something to say about it-tell him if he does not like how u r handling it-then he needs to do so-bc what he is currently doing is not working for u!! THEN u need to make sure u tell him that u will not b disrespected by his kids-n if he is ok with them doing so-then u two have way more to discuss than either of u think....

FYI-it took my husband about two years of me enforcing punishments for his children before he "decided" to take over...mainly bc the resentment was full blown by that time n I was at my breaking point....so it is possible for things to change....but no amount of complaining will MAKE him-he has to want to.

Good Luck!!

Beyondpissed-off - your FH sounds a bit of a case - he is obviously quite clever with words, and can make it sound like you are Cruella deVille with very little effort. I would suggest that you give serious thought to disengaging - it has made life very much better (though still not easy) for me with my teenage SDs, I have been disengaged now for 7 years.
There is detailed information about disengaging at this site: http://www.steptogether.org/disengaging.html

We get the SDs EOW, I still do some cooking for them, (although after a recent episode that is about to change again, and DH will be doing it for a few months at least), but other than that I don't have much interaction with them apart from very brief pleasantries when they arrive and leave. This means that he has to handle ALL the parenting, something I think your FH would benefit from having a crack at; he will not be able to blame you for stuff so easily once you are disengaged.

Marriage counselling. You reach a point where you're so entrenched in negative interpretations of each others motives and behaviour as parent and stepparent that it's almost impossible to make any headway on resolving the main areas of conflict. Soon every tiny issue becomes an opportunity to trot out the same resentments so even the small stuff causes conflict. At that point you're not discussing things or trying to listen to each others perspective and address it, you're just recycling the same argument.

I had counselling with DH, it made a huge difference, because we were also in the 'you're too hard on them' 'you're too easy on them' cycle where he felt I was constantly criticising and I felt he was completely ignoring my views so I criticised even more to try and get him to hear and understand, which reinforced his perception that I was way too critical and made him pay even less attention in a ' la la la I can't hear ou' kind of way. Having an intermediary to help interpret and keep things calm was the only thing that enabled us to get past it and we very rarely have rows on the same scale now.