over 4 dollars
As it stands, we've been coexisting in our little studio for now. It's a little cramped since we didn't expect DH to get into a trucking accident so soon, but we're keeping busy.
Yesterday DH gets a call and being the place is so tiny, I could hear him speaking low. I went up to get something and to confirm if he was on the phone and he's there asking "how much is it for your card?" and then "okay, I'll send it now", then "Love you too". Won't make eye contact like a scared puppy.
I just look at him and shake my head. He goes "please, leave it alone, I've had a rough day" and I say "Let me guess, that was SS19 and he wants you to pay his credit card (which SS19 had asked me about if he should get it or not last month and I told him no for this very reason). He says "yea and it's 4 dollars and I know it's wrong, I don't want to talk about it".
I'm not sure what it was but I couldn't let it go and I asked him to not ask me to suppress communication with him. He starts to melt down and speak louder "please lets just leave it alone just this once". And for some reason I feel like, it's not just this once, it's ongoing! I have a 9 year old with him and I try not to ask him for anything financially because I know he isn't working, but his grown ass 19 year old can't go get a job either and needs to ask him for 4 dollars? Gets a credit card against my advice, refuses to work at certain places because he wants better though he has barely any work experience but still calls for a handout? Yes, my heart goes out to them, they lost their mom 2 months ago, but.....it's still the same story with them.
SS19 last I heard was telling me he was applying for food stamps and helping SS23 babysit (and that was his excuse for not getting a full time job). I told him not to focus too much on babysitting because he has to start establishing himself, but I guess he's still going to do as he wants. I'm sure they all get along better, birds of a feather and all that. But if he's babysitting for his brother, couldn't he ask him for 4 dollars? As Rags would say, it doesn't pass the smell test.
At the end of it, I don't care about 4 dollars, I care that DH still doesn't seem to know how to rub his nose in it and remind him that he needs to start working. At the root of it, I feel like I'm afraid that the same way he's still able to manipulate his dad into giving him 4 dollars with a soft "i love you" at the end, he will ask him to move back in with us (if I do decide to go back to my house). And as long as he's a helpless 19 year old baby, with a weed habit, who can't find work...then no I don't want him back. And I hate how DH parents out of guilt and has to go sneak somewhere and basically go whispering around to his first family. It's annoying and emasculating (but of course I can't say that).
When I told him the above (my fears of him being asked to move back in with us), he says "Don't worry! They can be homeless like their mom, I don't care, I told you to leave me alone about it!"
I hate steplife sometimes! You think it's done because they don't live with you, but they still call to guilt their dads and a lot of these dads parent from a place of guilt/codependency.
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Nope, it is never done.
It's annoying and emasculating (but of course I can't say that).
I am team SAY IT!!!!
It should be said, every time he demonstrates that behavior. When he says "please, leave it alone, I've had a rough day" is exactly when it needs to be said.
You to DH: "If you did not do it, there would be nothing to say. This is on you and I will say it every time you do it. So, stop doing it."
Lather, rinse, repeat.
shelve it
I think I'll allow him to "shelve it" for a day if he ever needs me to put it away "just this once" but we do have to circle back to it.
$$19
Your husband is enabling to the point of disablement.
Tell husband for that 4$, he needs to give YOU 4$. Pocket money.
SD17 Powersulk, with all the new time on her hands hasnt offered to any helping out...and I thought about mentioning paid chore$, but feel that will only set me up for di$$appointment because she already has her parents and her friends giving her $ for nothin.
I like that term
"enabling to the point of disablement". It's just frustrating because DH is expected to do so much from everyone else and it's more or less valid. He's the only one who made it here from another country so all of his siblings/nieces/nephews and mother ask for things from time to time (they live in relative poverty). He also still has SS14 who lives out of state with his mom. She called last week to ask DH for more child support (they've been off the books since he was a baby and he gives her only 100 weekly). I do think 100 weekly is nothing, and that DH needs to hurry up and find work so he can help her and SS14. But I draw the line at the grown SSs. We have a family phone plan and since he isn't working, I've taken it on. Not once has SS24 or SS19 called to offer 35 bucks monthly for the phone line. It feels sometimes like DH doesn't mind transferring the load on my back just so he doesn't have to inconvenience his first 2. And it's hard, because I know that who they are is a representation of DH and their mom's parenting, and its not totally their fault, but it's why I don't know that I will ever accept living with them again. They have the ability to turn my big strong husband into a whispering afraid-to-make-eye-contact spineless jellyfish.
Never pay for chores, nor use
Never pay for chores, nor use them as punishment. Chores are the kids contribution to the workings of the home and family. Doing their own laundry, cleaning their room, watching a younger sibling, etc.. are NOT chores. Those are a given.
Chores are vacuuming, mopping, washing dishes, mowing the yard, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting the furniture, etc..... Not paid, not a punishment. Regardless of how a kid may feel about it.
Punishment... is moving piles of gravel back and forth across the back yard, digging out the garden, sifting the dirt for debris, mixing in loam and sand then putting that back in the garden (though to my mother, this is a chore), emptying out the shed, cleaning it top to bottom, putting everything back (also a chore in my mother's eyes).
Paid work is digging out the crawl space under the house to basement depth at $10/yard^3, scraping layers of paint off of the house and repainting it. Though that one was a pleasure because dad and I were doing it side by side when I was 13-14yo.
All IMHO of course.
I try not to ask him for
First of all unless he's profoundly mentally challenged, I highly doubt this overgrown adult male son is so inept he can't figure out how to come up with $4
Your husband is probably lying and it's more like $400+
Either way if I were you I'd be upset too having a grown man enable another grown man in a way that affects the household finances and your mental peace.
This is just me but I'd make it clear that there is NO financial obligation to these adult offspring and any money going out to them needs to be a mutual (not unilateral) decision between y'all
If you say no then that's the final answer. Y'all don't owe him 4 cents, 4 dollars, or any money for that matter.
Homeless men on street corners panhandling got more work ethic than some of these snowflake adult men of this generation smh
Not only is he throwing away
Not only is he throwing away your household finances on a wastrel but he's LYING to you about it. I abhor liars - how can you trust him?
not sure that he's lying about it
I can check his account and see exactly how much he sent SS19.
eta: just checked, 10 dollars
Call him out as the liar he is.
A lie is a lie, and a liar is a liar.
Its probably
On AUTOpayment.
$4 per day on auto payment =
$4 per day on auto payment = $120/month = $1440/year of y'all's marital income thrown out the window on overgrown adult male financial leech .... without your consent.
my thoughts on what is taking up SS19's time
What I think SS19 actually does all day is smoke/vape with SS24. I know that when SS24 was leaving, one of the last things arguments we had was because I was sure he was doing more than marijuana and I kind of forced DH to force a drug test on him. So SS24 (at the time he was 22), admitted that his gf (now his baby mama) gave him a perc. So yea, SS19 got kicked out of job corp for marijuana possession, went to live with SS24, his baby mom and the Sgrandbaby, and I think the baby mom's dad went back to his apartment. I am almost certain they all hang and smoke together and can't get it together financially as a group. Hence SS19 calls DH for help, I guess b/c maybe SS24 isn't paying him, or maybe he is but they spend it all on vape/marijuana. SS24 did tell me once that he couldn't save b/c BM smokes 800 dollars of marijuana a day (which I highly doubt as she'd likely be dead). Anywho, I'm annoyed that DH has to get called for it and that he doesn't set the law down. He gets pussified around his first 2 kids.
LOL @ "pussified" ... idk if
LOL @ "pussified" ... idk if this is a real word or not but it's cracking me up and I may have to add this to my vocab list
LOL
I channeled my inner Lillywy00 for that one.
Those wastrels can't possibly
Those wastrels can't possibly be smoking $800/day together much less BM smoking that by herself. That is supreme and total bullshit. Elder SS is probably just pulling numbers out of his ass while venting while trying to score some sympathy points. That is a THC cost of ~$24,000/mo and pushing ~$300,000/year. Which is far more than even a high income engineer makes, as much or more than most MDs, far more than most RNs, etc...
That is nearly a third of the annual earnings it takes to be a 1%er.
Unless they are growing it themselves, stealing it, or stealing to buy it of course.
I have no idea what they do for work or money but my guess is that they collectively earn subsistance level incomes. At most.
He says "yea and it's 4
If it really was $4
That's still a problem.
.....of course he doesn't want to talk about how he's enabling his grown able bodied son to mooch off the elderly.
$4 was just the trial rate. He's going to treat y'all like Amazon subscription customers. Next month it with be $49 then $179/month and more.....
you get it
unfortunately DH doesn't. A couple of months ago, SS19 asked DH to give him one of our beds. I asked DH why it is that he couldn't just buy one off amazon for about 150, being that SS says he works at Ubereats. Plus, I told DH, what does he know about how the owner of the apartment feel about this? He said he met the guy, and that the guy is "cool" and doesn't seem to have an issue with his son living with him. I find the whole thing embarrassing. Idk how DH can have his grown ass son up in another grown ass man's house. I told him that man prbably accepts SS24 b/c he knocked up his daughter but I imagine SS19 being there is too much.
And the fact that they call DH to just do all this work and he's so willing to do it, just annoys me. He'll ask me if it's okay but I just wish he had the cojones and self awareness to see what I see.
OMG no
Imagine that! You're right! It's a variation of the BBc service
Sadly I had to be just a
Sadly I had to be just a cunning (if not more) as the layaway plan pr0stitut3 in order to disable her B. Beck N Call Service....took me to a whole nother mind space that I'm not proud of
I frequently took attention and seggs off the table while he was subserviently running around town getting pinged on his non parenting days for non emergencies by his no boundary failed former family.
There’s no excuse for DH
Not to be working. McDonald is hiring. May boy be his dream job. Or a job he likes. But it's money until he finds his dream job. Your DH has kids before you he is supposed to support them , SS 19 and 23 are adults. It's nice to help your adult kids if you can afford it. But DH is not working.
'SS 14. How is he surviving on $400 a month ? Why did DH have a kid with you if he could not support his other kids . Not to say anything about the three of you in a studio appartment. I see a pattern here. DH doesn't support you, your bio kid. Or his DS 14. [ DH not working so I guess no $100 a week ].
You knew all of this before you got involved with him. So vent. Venting is good. But it doesn't put food on the table or pay for the table.
I am okay
I am actually financially okay, and when we planned our DD, I knew that he wouldn't be able to contribute so much in the financial arena, but I did think he would be a good dad, and I did think this could be a good family for my own child (I knew I'd only want just one, and I wanted them to have siblings like I did). My biological clock was ticking.
I own a house, I only subletted it because I needed a way to kind of get his kids off of me (sad the extremes I had to go to). I knew SS19 would flunk job corp, and I knew if we were in my house, he'd beg to return (and my bleeding heart would probably allow it). DH owns a 2 bedroom apartment, he is renting it out (which is how he is still able to pay his child support). I rented a studio because DH was supposed to be gone for months but almost immediately after I rented the studio, he totaled his 18 wheeler in an accident.
DH is currently looking for work in his field and may accept an offer for after we return from a trip we had planned to go visit his family and tie up some business dealings. But for me the point was more the fact that SS19 is doing so bad, that he has to call DH for 4 dollars. And that DH, instead of communicating with SS right then and there, just gives in and gives him the money without at least trying to figure out why he's doing so bad that he doesn't have 4 dollars. Because I am considering going back to the house if the tenants don't renew their lease, but I need to make sure SS19 isn't going to be able to convince DH to ask me to have him move back in. We did speak about it yesterday. I clarified my point to DH that I just don't want SS to find out we are back in the house, get himself kicked out of SS24's home and try to live with us again. DH got the point, and agreed that he will not agree to SS19 living with us if he gets himself kicked out and is currently living the lifestyle he's living now.
Get it in writing
Get it in writing. With signatures.
trying
To think of a way to do this without being abrasive. I think I may have to, if my tenants decide not to renew their lease next year. I really don't want him to ask me to have either SS live with us, because while I want the best for them both, I'm certain they will both be trying to come back at some point in the future.
One PowerPoint Slide
For my now xSS24 and his dad (my xH), early in his junior year of high school I created a single PowerPoint slide with 4 columns - one for each goal. Each goal was a requirement to be able to continue to live here after high school [SPOILER ALERT: xSS failed, barely achieving one goal = graduating high school]:
Below the 4 Goal columns was a Timeline: a horizontal arrow with dates (17th & 18th birthdays; HS graduation; enrollment dates for and 1st day of community college (CC) Fall semester). This graphical slide documented the much discussed and 100% agreed-upon standards for living here as an 18+ year old adult. It was printed & taped to xSS's bedroom door throughout his Jr. and Sr. years if high school. Everyone agreed the goals were reasonable, logical, and do-able...
Yet my xSS chose not to do 3/4ths of those goals because he's a lazy, lying, manipulative user with chronic victimitis. Therefore, the slide (which I would periodically update with a "You Are HERE" dot on the Timeline) also served as an eviction notice when the 1st day of CC Fall semester came and xSS wasn't enrolled, didn't have a drivers license or insurance, hadn't enlisted in the military, and was chronically late paying $20 towards his phone bill.
How my xH reacted and everything that followed is documented in detail on my blogs. Long story short - clarity provides freedom... in one way or another.
I went back and read some of your blogs
It is so interesting to see how similar our situations are with our SSs. Except I never created a Powerpoint, but you and I had the same expectations. I wanted SS18 to finish high school, and then ideally I wanted him to enroll in a full time college program (and to start with core curriculum if he sstarted unsure). I settled for him at least to work since he fought back so hard on the college thing, but he never even got to finish high school.
The worst part is that DH parents very differently than I do and SS was allowed to drop out, as DH refused to do the work of forcing him to finish. At that point, I saw it was never going to work with all of us living together, because DH already failed with SS24, then was failing with SS18. I refused to be a part of that and will always refuse.
Just this morning I had to clarify again with him, that whatever life throws at his kids, if they are who they are today, I never want him to even ask me about them staying with us. He can give up his apartment to them if he wants to, but to live under my house with me and DD9, not going to happen.
Parenting is very interesting because while there is no manual for it, consistent parenting and discipline really does yield a very different result than lazy parenting (parents who don't care enough to follow through on discipline). DD9 woke up Friday morning and I hear her cluttering around the kitchen. I asked her what she was doing, she said "don't worry, just stay in bed!". Of course, I knew she was attempting breakfast, but I had been teaching her since she was 4 how to make eggs and pancakes.
Neither SS made breakfast for us....very barely a couple times. Very different outcomes when you can do consistency, discipline and put in the work of parenting.
Parenting vs non parenting
As a child free woman, with two skids, I made the comment of "its hard to screw up too badly parenting, as long as you PARENT consistently and regularly, its when you FAIL to Parent that you screw things up really badly."
Sdalmost25 Feral Forger STILL has no license, but at least she is working somewhere close and living in an apartment somehwere close, so next time she gets kicked out, its not a 6 hour rountrip to pick up her and the foulness.
Remember, it isn't $4 it is $10 and your POS DH is a liar.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Where is the insurance payout for his catastrophic business loss over the destruction of his 18 wheeler.
So much that is going on with your DH does not pass the smell test.
Take care of you and your LO.
*nea*
He got the insurance money relatively quickly
I took half. He's been living off the rest, and *finally* heeding my advice regarding his new career field which is to go work for a company first for at least a year before investing in another 18 wheeler with some of his retirement money. I never agreed when he bought the first one because I knew he'd have difficulty securing contracts as a brand new class A driver in his late 40s. I think there may have been a sense of him wanting to make close to or more than what I get, and sadly he didn't listen. Led to him getting scammed by one company (I called it after I saw the "CEOs" name was a Common John Smith with no credentials after his name). Left them after he came out in the negative after a month, then secured a better contract in August, but by October he had flipped the truck due to being loaded wrong (which in my opinion, he would have known had he gotten at least a year of experience).
Before he retired from his first career, he made sure he liked trucking (his friend is a trainer and he went on the road to learn). Thing is we had only planned for him to work locally but he tried to go over the road, and that's where I told him if that's what he wanted he needed to take then SS17 with him. I was livid that he just changed it up like that, it felt like when he changed his schedule a couple years after we got together.
He can be very stubborn, but it looks like that experience took him down a notch, and he finally won't go making huge decisions without my blessing first now.
I told him to go work for a company, use their truck for at least 6 months/a year before he thinks about using his money to buy another truck.
My dad has been in that business for over 50 years and we all tried telling DH but he wouldn't listen initially. Now...looks like he's getting it.
I am happy that he survived
I am happy that he survived his accident. Many don't.
Your guidance is wise. Hopefully he takes it to heart, drives for a company and learns his new trade to a safe skill level.
Good on you for preserving half of the insurance pay out.