married living apart
my husband and i are that couple that reconnected after 20 years. He is a good husband and a good father except for discipline. His idea of discipline is sentence writing for the 12 yo SD the last offense was spying on us out a window that she removed the privacy cover from that i will now have to pay replace. I take issue with the fact she is never forced to deal with consequences of her actions. Shes a habitual liar. My favorite saying is "if shes breathing shes lying." We have been to marriage/parenting counseling honestly its tough to follow all those rules especially when DH ignores most of what SD does and i always feel like im on the skid police squad looking for something shes done or sorting out the truth in her lies. Shes told so many lies about me and some about my DH that DH family doesnt like me and SD is supposedly a christian but has told the same lies to our preacher obviously ii havent been back to church in a long time. Anywho spying on us was the last straw again(ive already kicked them out once for defacing a porch swing my husband handmade for my bday) and to be clear his oldest was slightly difficult in the begining but she has come around and we have a fragile but good relatiknship. So i asked him to take his kids and leave. He has found a place to stay and plans to live there when his kids are coming every other weekend and stay with me the rest of the time. Has anyonehad success with this? Our marriage is important to both of us and he doesnt want to leave at all but my mental bealth can not survive living in a house where i walk on eggshells worry constantly what someone else is getting into, if my husband and i are going to fight over somethjng shes done...again.BTW DH and i share a 2 yo who dearly lives her daddy and oldest SD and my BD. I wont let the liar of a SD near the baby strajght oht of fear if something hapoened she wiuld lie to cover her own ass. Sorry for the long post its my first time lots to get off your chest. SO anyone out there married but living separately?
Thank you Sally for the
Thank you Sally for the advice! I misspoke in the first post i have two SD 12&13 and two Bd 19&2 .my husband and i are bios to the 2yo.19yo is from prev marriage and is off at college(well rounded good kid not perfect but good). I didnt make that clear but SD13 i and j get along and she is NOT a lying manipulative brat. When she gets a chance she actually spends extra time witb us. This is how i came to realize the failed relationship with SD12 was not entirely my fault. I already ignore SD12 & when she does ask me something like you i respond with im not your mom go see your dad. I already refuse to babysit ffor SD12 shes not allowed in the house alone due to her lies and previous destructive behavior(shes known ti light a match to burn things). I hated to be the one to leave because it will uproot our 2yo but i do understand the need for strict biundaries BTW i dont allow my 2yo to bond with stepbrat12. When 2yo was a baby the only time stepbrat wanted anything to do with the baby was when she thought it would get her attention she is still that way.
@sweetpea- i can honestly say my husband is not the asshole he has his moments but they arent often. He cooks cleans and helps with the 2yo works too much sometimes. When the stepbrat isnt around we rarely fight. He is good to my BD way better than her bio dad. Of course that leaves me feeling a lot guilt because i cant even start to like SD12 aka the brat. Oh and my husband knows exactly how i feel in the beginning i didnt say anything because i didnt want to cause problems that lasted less than 6months and i now freely rtell him waht i think about his parenting style(or lack of)his family, his exwife if for no other reason but to get it off my conscience.
You all give me hope we can make this work.
Sounds like it could work,
Sounds like it could work, but it needs to be rough on him. DH didn't change until I disengaged and he was left to deal with SD and her mouth. You can do this, but I do not see a marriage working for very long unless he changes the way he parents. She will not get better unless he does and honestly it may be too late. At 14 it was for my SD. But, once she had no rules at all, she got so much worse. Right now, you are problem the reason she is not worse. Sad, it should be her dad that causes her not to tip worse. Not her stepmom.
@jsmom I think it's way too
@jsmom I think it's way too late for SD12. I tell my husband that all the time. She's such a liar and manipulator she has no idea what the truth and true kindness are. BM is the same way. If she gets into trouble it's never SD12 fault. The girl is going to grow up and never make in the real world.
@Sally we are going to try it like this: we are going to sit and make rules he has to follow with his kids and disciplining them (I guess my expectation because until he met me there was little disclipline anyway) they are all moving out. We are going to do family get togethers monthly unless I get to his place and skids are continuing current behavior then I leave. He comes to see our BD whenever he wants but doesn't sleep here. If he can straighten his kids out before the get out of school(or quit coming over which I look to see happen if they follow their mom's lead they'll be having their own kids soon) he can move back in, if he can't straighten them out then when they get out of school he can come back.
I know the risk is we will be apart more than together and it may end the relationship but as much as I love my husband I love my sanity more. Since he's moved in with me with the skids I have literally felt emotionally "bipolar" up down up down, it's exhausting and I'm done. I owe more to my Birth kids than that instability. (I'm not bipolar....my family swears I'm mentally sound until the skids come over)
Why bother being married and
Why bother being married and living separately? Who would any adult allow a 12yo to dictate the terms of the marriage and the residential configuration of the family? That your DH will not jerk a knot in his spawn's tail and gives her control over him and his marriage pretty much neuters him.
Probably a more pertinent question is why do you tolerate this shit from your ball-less husband? He is the problem. SS-12 is merely the symptom of DH's ineptitude as a father, husband, and man IMHO.
As for sentences, they actually are a great consequence. But only if the kid is diligently held to writing insane numbers of them. Tens of thousands. All in perfect hand writing, perfect punctuation, and written at a pace of ~200+/- per hour each and every free hour the kid has. One messy sentence or one missed hourly quota and the total number gets increased.
Don't let the kid off until each and every sentence is written.
In the case of my SS if he was not in class or if we were not out of the home as a family he was in an empty room with nothing but an antique wooden writing desk a pad of paper, a #2 pencil and a pencil sharpener. From age 8ish to 13ish he wrote tens of thousands of sentences. If he needed to pee he had to hurry or risk missing that hours quota. If we were eating at home he got 15mins to eat them back to writing. We made sure to do the things we wanted to do so he could hear us doing it while he was alone writing sentences. Knowing that we were having fun while he was writing sentences when he could be having fun with the rest of the family made the punishment that much more clear.
"Doing my homework and not turning it in is a bad decision. I will do my homework and turn it in on time."
"Lying is not acceptable. I will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate anyone who does."
The sentence focused on the infraction so that the aching hand and arm would remind him of what earned him the punishment to begin with.
To this day he has nearly perfect handwriting. We all laugh, even the Skid, about the sentences these days but SS-22 will cringe when the stories about the sentence come up at family gatherings. }:) He gets regular compliments on his hand writing. His boss has him fill out all of the reports and forms for his department because of his hand writing. He curses us for that.
}:)
If your DH is using sentences as a punishment he is not diligently holding the 12yo accountable for doing the sentence or he is not assigning enough sentences. A few hundred is a waste of time. He needs to make each infraction result in several thousand sentences. If she does not catch a clue, double it and keep doubling it until she catches a clue and if that does not work add a paddle to the consequence mix.
She will eventually pull her head out of her ass even if it takes the impact of a paddle to break the suction between her head and her sphincter.
IMHO of course.
Good luck.