Hi, Im a new member and Im glad to have found this place. I'm sure others here can sympathize with the feeling of being alone in their own families, and its gratifying to know that we arent. I'm at the end of my rope with my adult SS, and after 15 years of marriage I'm trying to decide if its finally time for a divorce. My resentments are growing inside me not just with him but his mother to the point where I'm becoming more and more unhappy by the day. Its especially cruel and unfair to me to be here considering the massive amount of effort and work it took to get to a happy point in my relationship with his mom.

         Theres so much to unpack in our relationship that to try to do it here would be a novel, but we have dealt with and overcome pretty much every trial a relationship can be put through. What kept us together throughout initially was my very special needs daughter, as she requires 2 people to care for her and neither one of us was willing to degrade her care because of our many relationship problems, though we came very close more than once and for good reasons. However, as time and necessity wore on and as other trials impacted our family, we rediscovered our love for each other and a mutual respect and appreciation. It was unexpected as I was sure that despite our unquestionable love for one other, our equally unquestionable dislike (if not outright hatred) and resentment at each other had buried any kind of passion between us. 

        Somehow, between the birth of my youngest daughter and my wifes mother being diagnosed with cancer (and sadly passing, she was a good woman) we were able to rediscover what it feels like to be in love. With the situation being what is was, it required me to be the best man I was capable of being, and my wife needed me in a way that she never had before. My growth made it harder for her to carry her resentments, and in turn she too grew into a better, kinder version of the woman I loved. It took a lot of work, struggle, pain, and commitment to bring us here, but we made it and I am so grateful for it.

        However, one issue we have always had is my relationship with my ss. His father is not and has never been in the picture and is the epitomy of a dead beat scum-bag. In the 15 years Ive been with my wife, he has not paid 1 cent in child support nor made any effort to contact his son, even after his debt became around 10's of thousands of dollars we offered to let him talk to and see his son (as long as he was sober) and forget about the money, he didnt care. In fact, before my wife and I started seriously dating, I took her and her son in just to get them away from him. Unfortunately, I was not able to be the father to him that she wanted me to be, it wasnt until I had my own children that I understood what the love for your child feels like and sadly I was never able to make myself feel that way. I tried to treat and raise him as my own and at show him the love I could. Until recently, I have always referred to him as my son publicly and privately. Still, I have made many mistakes raising him, and our relationship has never been great, we both resented each other for numerous reasons. It wasnt until a few years ago that I began to be somewhat comfortable with our relationship, though we were not what I would call close.

      To say that has changed over these last few years would be a massive understatement. His level of disrespect, extreme laziness, lack of willingness to help, manipulations, bad attitude, and destruction to our house have reached a level that I find intolerable. It was becoming intolerable when he was still a minor, the fact that he is 19 and that I have no legal obligation to put up with it makes it even more so. I know he is still a teenager and that sometimes a certain level of most of these issues can be expected, but the fact that it is my home and my happiness being destroyed make me less than sympathetic (not to mention I was already long in my own place at his age). If he was trying to better his life I might be less inclined to be as angry, but his entire day consists of waking up whenever and spending the rest of his waking hours playing video games and getting high. He is too good to get a job flipping burgers, and he is too entitled to take a bus to a job regardless (as I did for years at his age). He has won the war of attrition when it comes to chores, as anything you ask him to do becomes a nightmare of badgering him to actually do it, then having to either literally walk him through it step by literal step for the 100th time or re-do the half-*** job yourself. At this point, the only thing I ask of him is to put his dirty dishes in the sink as everytime I walk in his room and see the broken screened TV from where he threw a controller at it, or the broken furniture, or the many holes in the wall, or the fact that his room is at all times filthy and foul smelling I get filled with rage. I am not rich, I am the sole provider and the majority of any disposable income I may have had is spent living in a house beyond my means mainly to have provided him with a good school, not that that ended up making any difference as he left high school and went to a charter school because it was easier than actually having to work for a diploma. So every time I see the destruction that has been wrought in there it ruins my mood. 

        So again, the only thing I ask at this point is that he put his dishes in the sink, and like literally every other thing I ask for, I cannot get it. When I ask, I am met with a bad attitude. If he does it for a couple of days, both he and his mother act like its some watershed moment for him, even though inevitably it stops again. Now, this is in and of itself a minor issue, but with everything else that has gone on its the straw breaking my back. He was kicked out a few months ago when he took his disrespect too far for the umpteenth time, and part of him coming back was that he would cease with the disrespect and do what is asked of him. 

      And so we come to the actual problem. Due to the nature of our last confrontation, it was understood that he would be asked to leave when he graduated high school. Im not a monster, I dont mean the next day, but that at least he would be on his way to getting a stable life under him. I have also told him he was welcome to stay as long as he was working, in school, do the little asked of him and treat me with respect. Obviously none of those things are happening, and I am growing more and more angry by the day at the enabling and gaslighting his mother is doing. She feels that my anger is unjustified and that by getting angry about dishes I am picking on her son, when I try to explain that its absurd to make this about dishes and theres a whole more to it than that she says I have a chip on my shoulder. She refuses to have a conversation about setting a timeline or goals for his leaving. She completely undermines any kind of authority I might have in my own house, as in one sentence she will berate him for being rude or not doing what he is asked, then in that same sentence tell him to "please just placate him (me) so we dont have to deal with this". I am not interested in being placated. I am interested in being treated with respect in my own own, if I cant be appreciated. Understand, until now I gave him money, I gave him rides, when he and his friend got too drunk to drive at the river it was I who drove 2 hours to get him (mind you all of this is in just the past 2 months), I mean, I do for the kid despite my resentments. So I dont feel like Im out of line when after doing all of this for him (as I always have), I get angry that not only cant I get a *** **** bowl put in the *** **** sink so that when I need to feed my daughter I have something to put her food in, I get treated like dirt for asking and treated like a bully for getting indignant. 

       My wife has repeatedly yelled at me how angry she is that "I've put her in this position". According to her, I am at fault because I get angry about being treated disrespectfully all the time, that I am at fault for "constantly ruining everyones day" and I am at fault for wanting him out of my house regardless of my desire for a simple goal to that end. "I am forcing her to choose between me and her son, and she has to choose her son". The fact that I am so frustrated and fed up with this has led her to decide that I walk around with a chip on my shoulder with him, though in fact I try to be as civil and polite as I can and its only until Im met with the aforementioned disrespect that I get angry. In short, she is not going to have my back on this and in fact is making it worse. At this point, my concern is she is ok with him being a 28 year old pothead living at home as long as she doesnt have to feel guilty and Im the one being disrespected, and nothing Im seeing from either of them tells me that this is not a valid concern. 

        I love my wife, but my children are my world. We fought so hard to keep one alive and she will always need help, and the other is the breath of fresh air to the fear and tragedy we had to go through with the first. They are both the light of my life, and the thought of not seeing them every day, not taking care of them, not playing with them or hugging them or tucking them in is the same kind of grief I have felt when someone I love has died. Yet I cannot continue this way, the amount of disrespect I feel from both my wife and stepson is causing any hard fought happiness I had to disappear and be replaced with resentment and rage. I tried to talk to my SS before I sat down to write this, and his response at my heartfelt attempt to connect with him is to smirk in my face though "I smile through half of everything I go through, even when I think I'm about to die" is his excuse when I called him on it. I cannot talk to my wife, she has flat out told me not to talk to her about this and yesterday took great pains to explain why she hates me for this, and though she apologized for saying it today Im tired of hearing I hate you too, regardless if I love you is said alot or not.       

I dont know what to do. I dont know what the right call is. Do I stay and try to hang on to the marriage Ive worked so hard for, or do I leave before I lose my mind and deal with the grief of seeing my girls every other weekend? I love my wife and have rediscovered being in love with her, but her stonewalling me on this and her lack of care for how this makes me feel makes me question if its even worth it if Im going to lose my self respect and happiness to "keep the peace". It is most definitely destroying what we have managed to build with each other, and when I see him smirking at me it makes me have to leave before I grab him by the throat. I cannot afford therapy, but I do have a place to go, and every day this continues I wonder how much of a fool I'm being to not go there and just let these two do their own **** dishes and pay for their own house and their own bills. Something has to give, and soon. Thank you for reading this, and Ill appreciate any guidance I can get.