AITAH for starting to hate my stepson?AND RESENTING MY WIFE!?
I am a 38-year-old male married to my 44-year-old wife I met my wife when I was 29 and she was 35 at the time my stepson was seven years old and for the beginning, I could tell he was a special boy because he would throw tantrums already whenever he didn't get his way. At the beginning, it was great. He will listen to me all the time. I will tell him it was right from wrong and he will always come looking after me. Whenever he didn't listen to mom, I will step in and be OK you know that's wrong or correct him anyway I saw it was proper.
It all started to change when our middle child came to our lives. It was OK the beginning for the first year, but when he turned 2 my stepson, started to get jealous, he was secretly a pinching or say why only him and he will get a little bit of rebellious, but it was OK, but it's time passed by.
It was starting to get worse and worse and worse, and it started to be a little bit more strict on him and then my wife will get angry at me for doing that, and then saying that I should treat him the same way I treat or other kid which is a big difference treating a baby and treating a nine year old at the time . I will try to get close to my stepson, but he was just push everybody away.
I got to the point where we took family counseling doctors appointments with us counselors with couples therapy, family therapy little bit of everything and I always supported them.
My wife would get annoyed whenever the doctor did not agree with her and they were actually agree with me a little bit you know, but anyways, because of that I started to pay less attention to my younger son too because anytime I will pay attention to my baby boy,and I hate this because a lot of things I wanted to do with my younger one I couldn't do them because the other one was just throw jealousy for no reason even though I will try to do the same thing with him and he didn't want to.
Then I would do it with my younger one and well then he would tell my wife that why only his brother and not him but I had already given him that same choice but he blew me off... Why only him why why why I wanted to be me I wish he didn't exist blah blah blah and then when he turned 11 he started to listen to me again, and there was because my wife was letting me reprehend him whenever he did anything wrong.
I would you know talk to him and reprehend him and he will get grounded or a punishment whenever he did that he wasn't supposed to or said something mean or rude to mom or me, OK now we come to the year after Covid he got depression and everything got hard for everybody to the point where he had to be medicated and because of that he changes attitude more chill more relaxed, but my wife didn't like it saying no medicine, they should be doing this and that which I get you know it's our point of view but whenever I told her you know the doctors are doctors for a reason, they know what they're doing but then again my wife push me back and didn't take my opinion to consideration even though the doctors did several of tests on him and got diagnosed with minor bipolar, depression, and some other things similar to narcissism,
After that, she was overprotecting on a lot of things when I told her like you can be doing that it's gonna affect him sooner or later, but she just threw me under the bus and didn't listen to me to make a long story short after he went off medication he started to argue more with his mom and not me because I will step back and I was just you know I wasn't gonna get involved and by this time we already had Our third born, our beautiful baby daughter, and my eldest actually wasn't jealous of her.
He was only jealous of her middle child would say for no reason I don't know I don't like him or whatever. After a while, my son started hating going to school he just I don't like going to school. I hate it. It's not meant for me at this time. He's already 16 years old. He's a sophomore and we change him to different schools different programs and we were doing all this for him to help him out so basically within a year and a half we switched him to six different schools and there was always something wrong with school or another.
I told my wife is not the school. It's him. He's just being a teenager, he's being a rebel We need to be firm and not let him do whatever he wants cause one day it's gonna be bad for us. A cuple of days passes and he said he wanted to get a part-time job so he can start buying his own stuff and have his own money but my wife was no no no school school school school and I told her why not let him get a part-time job that way he can have a goal in mind.
Again my wife refused to listen to me and then my son has a really heart attitude towards me and mom lately. He doesn't wanna listen. He's always saying that he doesn't wanna hear from me that I don't understand him and I tried to tell him to explain it to me so I can help him out and he just doesn't have an excuse cause there's nothing he just a lazy person who doesn't like to even take shower. He goes days without taking a shower last time. it was eight days to get worse and worse and he was being rude to me all the time.
I started step back because I will get angry and start talking back to him like you can talk to me like that. I always respected you so you should respect me too . He said things like I don't care what you think. I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want you're not the boss of me. You're not my real dad. Stuff things like that.
One day it got really bad that he just wanted to go out and walk when he was supposed to go to school. He's like no I'm just gonna go out there and walk and even if it took me to school, I'll get out and do whatever I want , you can't make me do things I don't wanna do And mom came up with the idea that he was gonna go no matter what we had to call the cops and arguing with mom back-and-forth when he went to his room and barricaded himself and just played games all day and this was at work and he goes to school.
The next day we took his computer away his cell phone everything but when he came back, he didn't find anything and we told him the reason was because it was being rude. He was just being lazy and ungrateful for a thing he has. He will get him back as soon as he started going to school and picking up his grade again.
It got to the point where my wife told him "If you don't like it here what do you want to do do you want to live at your dads , and he's like yeah why not it will be way better than being here with you.
I was like are you serious cause I will send you with him if you want to, my wife was not expecting my stepson to say yes so at the end of the day he was persistent of going with his dad that we had no choice to take him to his dad which is 8 Hour drive for me.
It left my wife really depressed. Heartbroken and I was actually mad at my stepson for being so grateful to my wife and me but at the end of the day I try to talk things out with them and thinking it was only gonna be something temporarily so I take him to his dad. I told him the story and that is like I'll try to give my best shot too.
So far it's been two months since that happened and he has never sent a message talked or text to my wife and to me. He only responded once saying that why did I cut off his cell phone? Otherwise he wouldn't have called me or text me with a different number, so my wife was planning to go to visit my mother-in-law which is about an hour away from where our son is.
Today she sent him a message saying hey how you been? How are things out there and his response was "mom don't you get it? I said I don't wanna talk to you guys for a while and just please leave me alone". My wife wants to be close to his son, which I understand but his son doesn't want to do anything with her right now and I think we should just give him a space until he is ready to talk about it if he ever is, but this is putting my wife in a deep depression, which is affecting me and I am getting angry at my step for being an asshole to his mom.
It's a long story but this is a short version so I might be an asshole, for thinking hes an ungreatefull little brat only for us or talk to us whenever he wants something and whenever he doesn't need us, he just doesn't wanna talk to us at all, he's always been like that some people call it narcissist I call it him being an asshole you guys have any advice or any questions let me know.
I know there's a lot of gaps in this story but I'm a little bit frustrated and actually a little bit angry at my wife too. She's trying to come up with excuses trying to blame even herself for us for the way he is and I think it's just everybody's different. Everybody thinks differently and she wants a perfect life but it's hard to get to that point specially with hard headed people!