Dear All, I possibly should have contacted the list many years ago before it got to this state of total despair but now I am truly at the end of my tether & I just need some genuine perspective on my situation. I'm in a daily mental hell from which I can't see the light and I feel like I cannot go on anymore. In a nutshell I have been in a step father role for a SS whose biological father ran off when he was born & to this date has not paid one red cent of child support. As a consequence for approx. 19 years I worked very hard to support & protect my DW & the SS. From early on I thought the SS was a nice little boy & I felt sorry for him so I believed since I genuinely loved his mother I should do anything I could to protect him & give him a chance at a good life, education & provide a nice roof over his head so to speak. I also knew who his BF was & knew of his many crimes against the women he would rope in for short periods of time before leaving them devastated both financially [as in stealing money off them] & then leaving a biological gift of which there are now many & he has done this for more than 20 years on an International scale. As the years went by it became apparent that there was an odd conflict between my Wife & her Mother & it was a struggle over my Wife's son, which was indeed very strange.
The Grandmother became so obsessed with her Grandson & this led to a tussle that ended in court with her accusing us of being heroin junkies in an attempt to wrestle the Grandson away from his Mother. The Grandmother tried to gain sole custody & even went to the extreme extent to convince the court that she was the true biological mother & it went downhill from there, but in the end it was thrown out of court for obvious reasons. By that time the damage had been done but because my Wife's parents are quite wealthy they could afford to keep us in court for as long as they wished until the Judge realized what was going on. The kid appears to have been old enough to understand what was going on & he played his Mother up against his Grandmother with me in the middle. The result was that he was spoiled rotten by both women in what with hindsight now appears to have been a battle to see who would spend more money on the kid to win his affections. I was forced to chauffeur the kid to school till he was almost 17 until I could not take it anymore & I then steadfastly refused. The kid regularly skipped school, stole my money, disrespected me on the most disgraceful of levels & all the while his Mother turned a blind eye to it all because it seems she did not want to upset him. She always said I was the problem not him & that I just hated him for no reason & that I only wanted to cause both of them trouble.
This bizarre situation has taken my money, my time, my self-respect, my sanity & possibly now my life. My Wife said she had to have two abortions because her living kid had to come first so I have now lost the chance to bring my own son or daughter into the world & I am devastated by that. My Wife simply says that I would not have been a good father & I did not want kids anyway, which is news to me & not true. The icing on the cake of all this madness & this is just a summary because it would be too voluminous to go into all the odd things I have experienced in the past 20 years, the icing on the cake was when the kid discovered night clubs at 17 & he threw his education that I paid for in the bin to hang out at cafes & nightclubs all thru his final exam year. When he failed the exams we had to have a meeting with the School Principal & this is when we first find out what really had happened, that he was hanging out spending our money in cafes during the day & then in nightclubs during the night, we had no idea. He begged & cried to his Mother to let him repeat the final exam year & she relented only for the same thing to happen again. Then he had no choice but to leave school & this is when he expected me to foot his bills while he continued to party on, refusing to look for work. He also discovered cars & that he needed one so he begged his Mother for a new car. I steadfastly refused but that only spurred on his Grandmother who went behind our backs & bought him a brand new car to the tune of US$35,000.00. I could not believe it, he was rewarded with a new car of that value for failing school twice & not because he was handicapped or mentally challenged, it was because he was a spoiled brat who believed his step father [me] & the world in general owed him a living.
So since receiving the car his bad behaviour ramped up to run-ins with the law, albeit petty traffic incidents at this stage but nonetheless they're a prelude I believe to something worse. He has rewarded his Mother on Mother's Day with total disrespect & fowl language. Despite the disgusting way in which he treats his Mother he managed to sweet talk her into giving him US$7,000.00 for a trip to New York for his 21st Birthday [& we do not live in America]. I was so shocked at this & when he came back from his US Holiday I refused to continue to fund his sponging ways so we got into an argument & I must admit it was the first time I had attempted to seriously discipline him & I did get aggressive, even wanted to knock his head off, which I didn't, but he still called the police on me anyway & told them I had bashed him up, which was a lie. For years I have tried to correct him & also teach him the right way but his Mother would always accuse me of "causing trouble".
I guess the reason I am contacting this list is after 20 years I feel totally betrayed & lost & I have suffered so much from just trying to help a kid out of a terrible situation & all I got in the end as a reward for my good deeds was being almost arrested by the police because I refused to keep funding the kid's lazy lifestyle at 21. The only reason the police did not arrest me is that they quickly realised what was going on & even stated "looks like we've got a spoiled son situation here" & then they left & my security cameras showed them laughing their heads off as they left my house, so I felt totally embarrassed. I actually stated to the police that I was a successful businessman who had ponied up for 20 years all the child support that the BF should have paid plus much, much more & they agreed that the SS should have called them to investigate his BF not investigate me. So I ask this list for help, help from a barometric P.O.V. cause I feel very isolated & I need to know if I am truly just causing trouble as my Wife says I am or am I right when I say to my Wife that the general consensus for common sense thinking people around the world surely must be that the kid is disgracefully spoilt, he has never been disciplined & this is why we have a kid who continues to steal from & disrespect his family going forward. Please, anyone tell me what's right here & what's wrong, I've lost my compass on it all & don't feel like going on however I don't want to leave my Wife out of loyalty cause I do believe that she is essentially a good person, but I don't know what to do or how to solve this & I just can't take it anymore.
Thanking anyone in advance who can give me some kind of perspective.