Hello, everyone; this is my first post. How is everyone out there?

Let me just get down to the facts here!

Just to let you know, I'll give you the background first. This might get a little long. (Sorry, I'll be ranting a little bit here)

I have been together with my significant other for 7 years. She has two kids, I have none. I have helped her take care of her son and daughter pretty much the whole time. When I met her the two children's ages were 7 for the daughter and 9 for the son. During the first few years, everything was great. However, her son started high school last year, then BAM! - everything changed.

Her son starts talking back to her mother, who lives with me, and father, who lives about 30 minutes away. This happens quite a bit now. I'm just trying to stay afloat here, keeping sane. It's pretty hard though. Anyway, after a time he starts hurting himself. He gets taken to the emergency room right from the school itself. From there, he gets put in a mental hospital for 7 days. He gets diagnosed with extreme anxiety disorder.

There are a lot of ups and downs, even during the summer, all the way to the school year now. We think everything is better - there have been two sets of therapy he has been going through for months, and they finally finished.

The other day, someone he knows gave him marijuana at school and told him it would help his anxiety. He tried to do it with someone else when we went to take the daughter to her dad for the weekend without him because he didn't feel like it. (His mother lets him do lots of things even his sister can't do, who does everything we say and is a really sweet person). We got a call from someone in the neighborhood that saw what he was doing. I was still at the gas station, so his mother called him and told him to get home and meet her there. It took her a few times before he finally left to go home.

We turned around from the gas station and I dropped her off and took her daughter to her dad's house. I came back and everything seemed fine, like nothing happened. I found out later that he was doing it wrong and never got the effect he was supposed to get. He ended up going to his dad's the next morning.

On Sunday, my fiancée gets a call from his son, again asking to do the marijuana, and has the nerve to ask his mother to do it with him! This kid has absolutely no shame at all. Of course, she again said no.

That night, he gets angry because his mother won't let him do what he wants, and he starts cutting himself again, because he said he knows it would hurt her. She calls his father, and all his rants last for about another 3 hours until he falls asleep.

Well, currently everything is ok. His mother took away a concert for his punishment.

She tells me that he may be bipolar as well. His mood swings are crazy. His father's side of the family has quite a few mental issues going on.

Now I'll tell you how I fit into this. I support her for anything she needs me for. I pay for his cell phone, yet he treats me like crap. I help pay the bills. I do anything she asks of me. However, this kid still gets anything he wants, even after treating his mom like garbage. For instance, after she took him to a concert she didn't even like, on their way home, he tells her he wants to stop therapy. She says no, and then proceeds to tell her that she isn't worth anything and that his father and stepmother were better that she ever was. Nothing ever happened. He has remorse the next day, but a few days later treats her and the rest of the family awful again. It's a continuous cycle. I think all the babying turned this kid into a selfish jerk who gets anything he wants.

Tonight, I can't even watch You Tube on my computer because it will interfere with his gaming on the brand new computer she bought him. I told her this isn't right, and I get the I have no kids thing in my face and that I'm bullying her. I'm just speaking in a civil tone to her. Even his sister doesn't get all the privileges he does, and she's great. She's a tough kid, and puts up with a lot of crap.

The last 7 years I literally have no say in what goes on in the house; I'm just kind of the babysitter and have to take the kids back and forth to different places. I don't know what to do anymore. I still love her, but when she starts hauling in on me verbally when I've done nothing, I can't even talk to her. Any time I try to have a conversation with her about the kids or anything else, she just walks away before the first sentence is over. She's never told me I'm Sorry, even though I have done so many times. Of course, there are also many good things as well, or I would have been gone by now.

This is my first long relationship; it started when I was 36 years old, now I'm 42. I was in the military for 20 years, and never had to deal with this before. (I think it has helped me put up with a lot of shit, however.) I grew up in a different part of the country than where I'm at, where the values are a lot different than here. My family lives 900 miles away, so I really have nowhere to go if she starts in on me.

Are all 15 year old kids like this, or is it just him?

Sorry for the rant, I feel better now. Hope I get to know you all better.