My husband and I have been together for six years, married for two. We are both artists and gig workers, though I also have a full-time job, and he primarily works nights. He has a 15-year-old son from his previous marriage. When my husband and I first got together, the boy was 9, and my husband and his ex-wife were freshly divorced. It was a nasty divorce, too, so I sacrificed my feelings and finances and did everything I could to ensure the child felt comfortable in my home because I knew he must be going through a lot.

In the beginning, when I was just the girlfriend, I did the most for the son - I made him home-cooked meals, packed school lunches for him, picked him up/dropped him off, took him out for dinners and breakfasts, paid for trips to the beach and lavish Christmases and birthdays, etc., etc., all on a meager income. In all that time, I never got a nod from BM - not a thank you, nothing, not even by way of the kid (e.g., a card on my birthday, a present on Christmas). My husband even asked her if she would like to meet for coffee with me, since I would be in her son’s life, and she said she’d consider it, but nothing came of that. I really wanted the meeting because her son could be sassy and disrespectful to me, and I wanted to know from her what she was comfortable with me doing in those moments. I didn’t really have her blessing to discipline him or call him out (I suppose I could have done so anyway, but I didn’t know if that would just create more trouble for my husband), so I just absorbed his blows. Some nights I’d just cry myself to sleep from SS's crappy comments about my food, the comparisons he’d make of me to his mother, and the stress of it all. Nonetheless, I was always courteous to BM and tried to establish a line of cordial/friendly communication. Since my husband works nights, before SS had his own mobile device, she would send me texts at night asking if I could pass my phone to her son so she could call and say goodnight to him, and I would always respond quickly and kindly. After he got an iPad at age 12-ish, followed by his own iPhone thereafter, all texts from her ceased. In fact, I haven’t really heard from her since.

My husband and BM never had an official CS arrangement, just a sort of gentleman’s agreement. She’d always say it was because she thought the two of them could/should handle things in a “friendly" way and without lawyers, but I think it was for other more nefarious reasons: 1) She loves my husband’s family and wanted to keep them in her lives (effectively barring me from having any kind of real relationship with them, even though they are now my in-laws, because they prefer her), and 2) so she could continue to manipulate and wound my husband. Even though he has always had one job, once she had the kid, she wanted him to “man up” and do something more traditional that made more money. He wasn’t amenable to giving up his hard-fought-for profession, and that’s where things started to unravel. He doesn’t make that much, never has, yet she wanted a husband with a 9-5, even though that’s not who she married.

My husband’s father passed away during the pandemic, and she capitalized on his death to gouge my husband for more CS than he can afford, banking on the small inheritance he received from his dad’s passing (she originally asked for $20K and an outrageous monthly payment, and we talked her down to a more reasonable but still ridiculous amount). As a gig worker, he smartly put away the bulk of that money for retirement or emergencies, so he’s paying the CS via his own small income - the nest egg is only backup. Of course, this directly affects me - I have put my dreams on hold so I can cover what he can’t re: our housing costs, groceries, bills, etc. - so he can make these CS payments. He agreed to give BM an amount he can barely afford for the remaining five CS years, plus a handsome lump sum (to make up from his inability to pay CS in those early years after she’d kicked him out of the house and he was getting back up on his feet) so that she’d have all the money she needs and would leave us alone. They signed a contract, had it notarized and blessed by the court system, and we figured that would get her off our backs until SS turns 18.

But now, nearly 2.5 years into the contract, she is asking for extras. My husband can’t afford extras, so he tells her to use the money he is already providing, and when he says that, she berates him, chastises him, emasculates him, belittles him using rationalizations of what “good parents” do, etc. She also point-blank admitted to not even needing his funds, that she is more than capable of providing for herself and her son, but that she needs my husband to pay for half of extras as a matter of principle. HE CAN’T AFFORD TO GIVE MORE. He barely contributes to our home and is always living gig to gig. If he regularly dips into his inheritance to give her more money, he’d end up owing taxes on what he takes out, and his tiny retirement fund would dwindle down to an even more useless amount.

I HATE BM, and I have to be in this situation for 2.5+ more years, and I’m not sure I can bear it. I hate how she still tries to control my husband, how she sows seeds of discord between my husband and me by creating stress and financial instability in our marriage, and how she uses their child as a pawn to continue to talk down to and gouge my husband - and, by association, me - for even more money. I’m really at my wit’s end with it, and I want to just run screaming from this entire situation. I love my husband, but we don’t have kids, and sometimes I fantasize about leaving this marriage and just moving far away where I don’t have to be stressed out by BM and SS and my husband’s in-laws who are Team Ex-Wife and have never given me the time of day. It’s exhausting, and I feel like I deserve better. Everyone says “it will be over soon,” but time is precious, and 2.5 more years of my life is a long time to be miserable. Just hoping I could get some support in this group - thanks in advance for any words of encouragement.