Reply to Our home is a mess. I am thinking of leaving

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You are just as responsible for how your kids behave as your husband. [/quote]

I think OP and I are sister wives—I was married to this guy. Our situations were a little different, as XDH and I worked roughly equal hours. Also, my XDH only actively undermined our younger kid, after the eldest got into a top Ivy. I think he was threatened by both of them. Or something. I’m not sure even XDH knows why he did it. It seemed to go beyond “different values.”

It’s not so easy as saying, hey OP, you’re just as responsible, so step up your game.

People like OP’s DH and my XDH set up a “good cop, bad cop” situation where I was the OCD enforcer and XDH tried to be the BFF. So for example, when younger DC had D’s in a class, I told younger DC to study for a big test the next day—and XDH secretly texted younger DC not to bother (DC told me this little gem). XDH also smoked pot with younger DC and refused to help pay for DC’s ACT test prep. XDH left the house in the fourth quarter of DC’s junior year and made DC move his mattress the night before an AP test. There’s so much more, but you get the picture.

XDH gaslighted me constantly. Because I told DC to work harder at school, XDH told DC that I was “obsessed” (a word he kept repeating) with DC’s grades and constantly tried to paint me as unreasonable.

Try having any kind of influence on your kid when your DH gaslights you. Plus DC as a normal teenager sometimes wanted to hear XDH instead of my harder recommendations. My life was miserable for about 4 years, as I navigated between XDH and DC, but I stayed with it partially because I was terrified of DC living with only XDH for even part of the time. There’s a good ending: after XDH left to have his midlife crisis, DC chose to stay with me for 90% of senior year and complained to me constantly about XDH’s lack of structure and poor role modeling. But in the thick of it, I was often powerless, as is OP, and I totally get it.[/quote]

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