It Never Ends

For years we have put up with so much crap from my husband's ex. Changing visitation at the last minute, demanding more money, lies, trying to stop visitation altogether. Just generally making our lives hell. My stepson can make things difficult, too. He lies all the time, and won't confess even when you catch him red-handed. There's always an excuse for why he didn't do anything wrong. He can blatantly disobey us and have a million excuses as to why he didn't do anything wrong. He tells people what he thinks they want to hear, instead of what he really thinks. He tells only part of the story, instead of telling everything you need to know to fully understand the situation. He once had me so upset at his mother thinking that she made him buy his own pair of shoes for school. After asking a lot more questions I learned that the truth was that she was going to buy him shoes, but he wanted a more expensive pair. She paid what she had been willing to pay for the cheaper pair, but made him pay the difference. Very different story than what he first led me to believe. Between him, his mother, and DH's parents, it seems like our lives are never peaceful.

My stepson has been saying for two years that he wants to come live with us. A month ago he even signed an affidavit saying that it's what he wanted. In this state, when a kid is 14, he or she gets to decide for themselves where they want to live, and you don't have to go to court to get custody. So we thought it was a done deal. We tried to be cautious and not get our hopes up too much, but we really thought there was nothing the ex could do to stop this from happening. We were planning things we would all do when he came to live here, I'd gone to the school to see what we needed to do to register him, my husband called a couple of coaches of sports the kid said he wanted to play to see how he could try out for the teams, we even arranged an introduction with the band director because he said he wanted to be in the marching band. We were talking about planning a big family vacation, too. He's never given us any indication he would change his mind.

Today our lawyer said he signed another affidavit saying he rescinded the first document. His mother waited to have it sent to our lawyer until after this weekend, when the kid was here. My husband went to his house to see him after school to find out what happened. As usual, he had no answers. He offered lame excuses and couldn't even look DH in the eye. We knew he would be pressured and manipulated over there about this. But I never thought that he would go this far. I have no doubt that he's confused and gullible and susceptible to their conniving ways. It's happened many, many, many, many times before. But while I knew there was the chance he would change his mind, I never for a second thought that he would go so far as to spend an entire weekend here and act like things were fine, knowing he had put things in motion to change everything. He said he was scared when they gave it to him to sign, but he spent three days here and never said a word, even after DH made comments about what they would do when he came here to live. He had ample opportunity to let DH know what was going on, and he never gave us any clue as to what was about to happen.

To top it off, his soccer coach's wife, who has never even met DH, sent DH a long e-mail today. Apparently she knows everything that goes on over here and proceeded to tell DH what a rotten father he is. Her husband, who also doesn't know DH, sent an e-mail a long time ago telling DH how he should be raising the kid. Where the hell do complete strangers get off telling other people how to raise their kids?!?!

This kid makes me so furious!!! He jerks his father around for two years saying he wants to come here, getting DH's hopes up, telling him what he wants to hear. We never ask about things at his mother's house. We have asked him not to talk about us over there. We have made a point of telling him that our life is ours, theirs is theirs, we don't need to know their business, and they don't need to know ours. But now we discover that not only does his mother know everything (albeit a very warped, skewed view of things), but the freaking soccer coach's wife knows our business, too!!! And the things they all think they know are only half true. Somehow being grounded Friday night and Saturday morning got turned into being kept in his room all weekend without any food! As if we would ever do such a thing! I honestly have no idea what he's telling them and what she's exaggerating to people. He has a habit of telling us that he tells her one thing, while she says he tells her another, so that we never know who to believe.

There's so much more that I could rant and vent about, but I don't want to think about it anymore. The main thing is I hate how much this is hurting DH. He was so looking forward to having his son here. He hasn't lived in the same house with him since the kid was two. He was just so excited. It kills him to be played like this. At least he has our son here. Monkey's not going anywhere. And we've decided that we're not putting our lives on hold anymore. We've stayed in this area so he and DH could see each other on a regular basis, instead of moving someplace we'd rather be. We've rearranged schedules, put off plans, and sacrificed over and over again for him. No more. If this is how he's going to treat us, then so be it. We're moving on. We're just going to enjoy our life with Monk and not worry about anything else anymore.