I'll start by saying I know I'm not alone. I didn't always know that, but I'm now realizing just how common it is for relationships to be destroyed by poor parenting during the blend.

I'm struggling more now than I have ever in life, and I say that as the only child of an abusive single mom who had Alzheimer's for the past 9 years with me as the sole caregiver - while raising a chronically ill child and another a decade younger. I really need advice from people who get it.

I have 2 kids, boy and girl, and one is grown and successful and independent. The other (13) is literally complimented daily on his manners and kindness and has parents wanting to watch him so he can rub off on their kids. The same was true of my daughter. Sure, he gets moody and certainly tries the usual adolescent pushing of boundaries, but I am not a parent who allows that stuff to take hold. He's truly the nicest guy and a delight to be around. 

Now I'm married to a woman who has 2 girls, 9 and 12, who has spent none of their lives doing any discipline. The older is a complete nightmare - and not in the easy to condemn, overt ways. She's highly gifted... and highly deceitful and manipulative and sadistic. She can't connect with kids and has had that trouble all along, I think because her family has always walked on eggshells around her tantrums and never corrected anything she said or did, so she genuinely believes she's always right and the smartest on the room. The condescension and rudeness goes so far beyond even the meanest of typical mean girls that it's literally nauseating. Her father is this way as well, but with a huge white knight complex where he just does whatever makes him look like the nice guy while privately being just as awful as she is. The younger is so sweet but is a people pleaser, so unfortunately is starting to mimic her sister for her approval.

Old me would have left already. Here's the problem - I fought hard for this marriage to even happen. I moved my son to a new country, went through a court battle because his father didn't want a white woman raising his son (who he'd left for years at a time multiple times), went through a grueling and expensive immigration process, and sacrificed everything, including the house I bought on my own and my children grew up in, to be here. The court process was awful. Just before we united as a blended family, my mother died. Then the stress of a rushed move to be in place before school began. Then my wife's mother died unexpectedly. Then I had a stroke. Then covid hit the world. Then my daughter's disease flared up and I had to fly back to her through the pandemic and leave my son for almost a month, living in quarantine upon my return.

This has all been in the past 8 months.

I have no job here, no way to afford the crazy cost of housing here, no support system here outside of my wife's small family. My son has been through hell. I don't know how to leave, but I know staying is destroying him and me.

The stuff we're dealing with is: the older skid curses at and calls everyone (except me) vile names (mom tells her to take her plate up the kitchen, gets back "I WIIIILL, when you stop being such a jacka$$!), refused to go to school for about 24 days over the first 3 months, lies every hour, steals from us, has tantrums that include kicking holes in doors, talks over everyone, bosses her mother around, "accidentally" elbows and bumps and kicks me regularly, and ignores even the simplest of rules until she's caught, has disrespectfully debated it for - I kid you not - an hour at least, and thrown a tantrum. She left me a voicemail that was nothing but screaming and cursing after I went for a drive because her mother was aggravating me again by taking up for the same behavior. My wife offers me these gems excusing her daughter's behavior daily: She was hungry. She's anxious about presenting homework she didn't get to finish (this kid gets home at 3p and has no activities solely because she just doesn't want to). She's tired. I didn't see that (I watch her see these things). I didn't hear that. She didn't mean it. I'm working on it, but I can't change everything overnight - she needs baby steps. She doesn't like change. She doesn't like food. She's hitting your son's cat with a butcher knife to play because she adores her. She's just intense.

Other people in my wife's family and circle have said they're glad I'm here because they think I'm going to come and straighten this kid out. I'm not. I told my wife before we married and before I moved that I was not going to be the disciplinarian of my skids. I know that's not healthy or smart and I think we should be following best practices for an already difficult family makeup (international, interracial, LGBT, exes being jerks on different ways, etc). These same family members won't tell my wife what they think of her kids behavior. They just sit and cringe while the girls destroy restaurants and kick seats and talk and throw things in movies. I love my in laws a lot, but they're total enablers.

An I doing more harm to my son by staying in this crap (he can't stand the older daughter) or by risking it all, to start over, uproot him again, and try to make it on our own?