Me and my husband have been married for 6 years. Prior to marriage I had 3 boys and was pregnant with a little girl. Together we had another baby girl. He’s always been good with the littlest boy and the two girls but with my two older boys he’s always been kinda cold and he hasn’t really made an effort to connect with them. My older boys are 10 and 11 now and the past few years have not gotten better. He never talks with them. If he’s not criticizing them he’s getting onto them about something and barely ever lets them explain themselves. My boys can’t go to him to talk about anything and it’s just sad. I’ve told him for years to make an effort with them and stop being a jerk. I’ve explained to him how it’s not okay and about a month ago I finally blew up because he started yelling at me in the car in front of the kids and my mom even though I told him it wasn’t the time to do all that. When we got home from that and everyone went to bed I told him I was done with the relationship and him being a dick to my kids. Well he said he would do counseling and we started working on a relationship book too. We decided to work on things together and he took the boys out to dinner last week. Yesterday he ended up making my older son so mad that my son was almost crying and my son said he never wants to talk to him again. After bedtime I told my husband he hasn’t made any real effort with the boys and taking them out to dinner once was not any real effort. I told him that I have been asking for years for effort with the boys and he’s given the bare minimum and I’m pretty sure I’m going to talk to my lawyer on Tuesday and file for divorce. He said non of this is fair because he’s been trying. I told him it’s not that hard to just love someone. I feel bad for my kids and I’m just all over the place in my head. I don’t think I can fix this. Sorry I write so crappy and thanks for reading.
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You have to put your kids first. They can’t protect themselves, they depend on you. It is your job! Your husband is a grown adult and he has been mistreating your older boys for years now. You have been asking him to be kind and to make an effort for literal years. No real effort has been made so I’m going with yes, it’s time to leave him and put your kids first.
Why did you marry someone who obviously doesn’t care about your kids? He’s been bullying them since they were 5 and 6 years old. He’s not going to change. Leave him and get your kids into therapy.
The best time to have acted on divorce was the first time you realized he was treating your boys differently and recognized it was a deliberate pattern. The second best time is now. Your sons won’t trust you to keep them safe if you stay.
Go to that appointment. You can’t sacrifice your kids mental health for him and if you stay, that’s exactly what you are doing. They’ll grow up resenting you because you chose a man over them. A man who is abusive towards them. I can’t believe that your mom said it wasn’t the time or place to yell at you. There’s never a time or place. Or did you tell him that? Either way, you don’t have the right to do this to your children.
You are a good momma bear. So many women just complain to their husbands and their kids get neglected. You have to do what is best for those boys. Sometimes personalities clash but with a 4 and 5 year old, when you married? This is so hard for your family. Did you try family counseling? Maybe it can bring out why he has a problem with the boys. Had they not been disciplined before and he feels like he needs to be the corrector?
You definitely have to prioritise your children here. Emotional neglect is very real and is a truly harmful thing for your children to experience. If you don’t change the situation you are enabling this mistreatment of your children.
I think it will take a years for your husband to truly be able to change whatever is motivating his poor treatment of your boys, and like, he should be much further on this journey if it is has been an issue from the start.
He will always be in your family because of your youngest child, but give your older boys a fair chance at a loving home, this guys does not sound capable rn.
Your older boys were 4 and 5 when you married. You married a man who was unkind to very small children for no particular reason. What kind of person is that? They have spent over half their lives being mistreated by the (main? only?) father figure they have. How much longer do you think your children should have to suffer in their own home? You should get divorced asap and then talk to a counselor to find out how you can apologize and make things right for your boys. He hurt them and you hurt them by keeping them in this situation for so long.
Does your husband have any of his own kids from a previous relationship? How does he get along with them?
You’re a negligent parent for allowing anyone to mistreat your kids. I blame you and feel sorry for your kids that they don’t have a real advocate and parent in their lives.
You should not have married him before you had a sense of how he was with your kids, and then broken off the relationship the moment you realised what you now acknowledged 6 years in.
Second best is finally choosing your kids over your partner, so please get out and never ever repeat what you have put your poor children through. If they fully choose to forgive you is not guaranteed, and you should not expect it.
He doesn’t even have to love them to be kind. Why have you let your children live like this for so many years? Get this man out of their lives and start doing the work of making amends to them
A man 19 years older than a 23 year old with 3 kids and one on the way, marries her… red flag. Treats your two older kids like crap, redder flag. Is extra nice to the smaller ones, especially the young girls. Reddest flag.
Protect your kids. And for God’s sake, work on yourself because 5 kids with at least 2 men before age 30 means you have some damage you need to heal.
YTA. You jumped into a marriage not taking into consideration how he is with your kids. Now you’ve messed them up and put the total blame on him. It’s your fault as well. You should have worked on the relationship with him and the boys before even agreeing to move in together. That’s on you.
Why did you marry someone that was ‘always kinda cold’ with your sons?!? Your children rely on you to always have their best interest in mind, so it never should’ve gone this far. You owe it to those boys to end this right the hell now and to get them into therapy and all three of you into family therapy.
I’m calling bullshit. You got married at 23 and were pregnant with your fourth child by then? So you had three children before even turning 23? So when did you have your first child, at 16?
This sounds completely fake.
Choose your children. For once, choose your children.
They have been abused for six years. You chose this man over them, and you continued choosing him. I’m glad you are finally thinking about leaving him, but it’s very sad that you took this long to consider it.
Leave this man, as soon as possible. Contact local domestic violence centers. They can connect you to resources such as housing and legal assistance. They can also connect you to additional therapy for your children, and more importantly yourself.
Yep, sure sounds like it, those boys are about to be teenagers and if you don’t protect them now, you will lose them.
How could you marry someone who bullied your children?? Look better late than never but you need to rebuild their trust after you allowed them to be bullied and ridiculed and then literally showed them that was okay.
Leave him. And get ur kids counseling. Better late than never, however, you are extremely late.
It’s your job to protect your kids. Stop allowing them to be harmed by him. Make your exit plan now. Seriously. Stop this.
You’ve given this man more than enough chances. He knows you don’t like the behavior but has given/shown little effort. He knows his marriage is on the line yet he still can’t bring himself to do better. Be done. It’s time to stand behind your boys and put them first.
If you stay, your boys with resent you for keeping them in that situation and they may resent their younger siblings for being treated better than them. Don’t allow this disparaging behavior to go on any longer. Even if he were to be better, it would most likely only be temporary. It’s been 6 yrs. This is as good as it’s going to ever be.
Updateme hopefully after you leave.
As someone who’s mother stayed with a man who didn’t treat her kids well, it’s an 100% valid reason to leave. Your kids still have a lot of their childhood left, and they could lose that to this person, they may resent you for being with him for 6 years, but they’ll definitely thank you for leaving in the end. I wish my mom would’ve woken up at any point and left. It’s something I’ve had to work through with her for years as an adult. 10 and 11 is soo young to be constantly critiquing a kid, not saying it’s ever good, but a teenager getting in trouble all the time I can better understand, but with kids 4-11? Thats soo uncalled for. Sounds like you’ve given him a lot of chances to be better.
I can’t even keep reading. You’re over 25. Your frontal lobes have developed. You know his treatment towards your sons is wrong.
When your kids cut you out of their lives for letting them get abused by their stepdad, don’t even bother being surprised.
Reddit is full of stories with kids who have parents who tried to force them to have feelings of love, etc., for a parent or step siblings or half siblings that they just can’t feel. I don’t believe we should ever force people to feel things they’re not capable of. You can’t force love. It’s very obvious your husband does not feel a certain way toward your 2 sons that he feels for the others. I know there’s been a lot of damage already done to your 2 boys. You already know in your heart what you have to do.
You suck
I’ve been in your sons’ place and as a result, I barely have a relationship with my mom. If you don’t leave your husband, there’s a high chance you’ll lose your boys once they move out on their own.
You are failing your two oldest children by staying.
” If this is you trying your best, I’d hate to see your worst. “
Please leave. Protect your children.
You need marriage counseling, family counseling and he would need to see a therapist on his own as well for me to even countenance staying with him. He’s being cruel to your children. If you stay and nothing changes, your sons will always remember growing up their mom didn’t protect them.
Yes
Oh no, how about giving him yet another six years to fully ruin the oldest two kids’ childhood?
What are you doing, OP? What are you doing?
I can’t be too hard on you because you were a very young, single mom of three, and I bet your POS husband took full advantage of your vulnerability, but it is YOUR responsibility to look out for your kids. Also, you are fully grown now, you should know better.
Protects ALL your kids, not just some of them.
I had a (ex) stepdad just like this, he didn’t think it was fair either that he had consequences for his own nasty choices and behaviors towards us. He was a massive hypocrite. If we upset him, he would lash out for days and with way more rage than the crime deserved. If he raged on us, we were expected to put up with it or he’d just scream and rage more until we were puddles on the floor (like he could scream and corner us in a room without escape for 2-4 hours… he would not stop even if you stopped).
I had also said the same thing to him a few times (“How hard is it to just be nice to us? You’renice to your clients at work??”– begged him, even). He escalated worse and worse as time passed because he knew we wouldn’t kick him out so he just kept going. I was older than your boys are at the time (young adult into my 20s, lived at home while trying to build a business and help the parents out) and typically very strong-minded against people like this… this man just about broke me in less than 4 or 5 years and I still have C-PTSD over a decade later from the abuse. Still have the panic attacks and the nightmares periodically about him. I have a lot of anger at my mom for letting him be abusive to us. She did nothing about it until he cheated on her.
Take it seriously. Your dude’s behavior is abnormal and nasty. I get that kids can be rambunctious and tough but that’s still no reason to be aggressive (verbally or otherwise) with them frequently. Kids learn by examples—- all he’s doing is showing them that you get what you want when you throw a raging screamy tantrum. As your boys get older, they’re going to start standing up to him together and that’s not going to end well for your family. They might also start resenting you for not protecting them from him by staying in the marriage.
Counselling probably isn’t going to fix what he’s got. He’s using the “I’m trying!!” excuse to manipulate you into not leaving him. He will probably escalate if you don’t leave him because he knows he pushed you and you tolerated it. So he’ll push harder or revert back to the same behavior as soon as he feels “safe.”
I hate to say it but he’s probably been doing the boiling frog tactic on you for years. My ex-stepdad was the best guy ever and we didn’t see a slip in his behavior until over a year later after he moved in. The more secure he felt in the household, the more he’d rage on us. When he became the higher earner financially, he let loose all the time because he figured he had the power and we were trapped with him. (He actively tried to sabotage me and my business and control any money I brought in on top of threatening “what might happen to my pets” so I wouldn’t move out– real crazy stuff. He had us thinking it was reasonable and normal. It was not normal!).
Unless this dude has untreated childhood trauma himself and poor coping skills, (which are still not an excuse for him to drop rage on your kids or you), I don’t think this is a repairable situation.
Consult a lawyer and make an exit plan. If you have safe relatives or friends, ask them for help. Your boys and other children and you deserve a peaceful, happy life without being yelled at over stupid petty nonsense. You are very young, you can make a smart plan for yourself and build the life you want.
If he wanted to stay in it, he should have valued you and the kids enough to treat you with respect, grace and kindness in the first place. That’s on him! You’re not obligated to stay just because he’s trying after he got called out for his nasty behaviors. You’ve given him tons of communication about what you need and want, and he’s had plenty of opportunities to make the effort before now. He chose to ignore your requests for years. He FAFO’d. You don’t owe him a damn thing more.
You chose a man over your kids…
Definitely time for a divorce, and please get these kids in therapy ASAP, both individual and family, because you are going to have a lot of work to repair the broken trust. You are supposed to be their protector, but instead brought someone into their home who was cruel to them.
If he wanted to change, he would. Divorce now.