newbie - mother/son driving me out

[grumpoldman]

I've been struglling with family life for some time. My wife and I are not argumentative people, but we keep having rows about
her son/my stepson. I've felt uncomfortable for some time about how, at 17, she micromanages him, sthingy feeds him and any responibilities he drops, (which are many) she will gladly pick up for him.

A silly example of this is the milk. It was his job to bring it in, twice a week. As usual, he started well and then, as usual, started to get up later in the mornings and engineer 'higher priorities' than getting in the milk. He also caused loads of fuss. After a few weeks my wife was bringing it in.
After a couple of weeks it was too much for my wife to do the milk and all her other morning jobs so she asked me to do it. I refused and we had a row.
When I told her our son should be getting the milk in, she made excuses for him.

This has been a fairly repeatable pattern for some years. Everything used to be OK, but at some point in time, she transferred a significant chunk of her affections from me to him. She started to defend him when he's completely in the wrong. You would have to see it to believe it.

Now he feels strong and powerful and just tries to walk over everyone. My wife doesn't mind, but I do. When he tries to walk over me, I stop him.

Then he causes a big fuss, my wife gets involved, she takes his side and we have a row and I resent her.

I guess as worryingly, she's also damaging his personal development. I've read that she is probably bringing up someone who expects to be very special and will have difficulty in forming long term relationships.

Here's a list of things that get right up my nose:

1) Talking over most of my sentences
2) Wanting to be the centre of attention all of the time
3) Talks over films, despite requests to be quiet
4) Stirs up trouble between other children
5) Will avoid work at any cost - even if the benefit is solely his
6) Is arrogant and really doesn't care about others
7) Knows almost every excuse in the world to avoid work and responsibilities
8) Mother knows every other excuse in the world to support him
9) Takes the direct opposite line to me in order to start an argument
10) If problems occur, mother and son chat it out separately & exclude me
11) Mother hangs onto his every word, with glistening eyes
12) If mother gives me attention, he suddenly has an urgent need for attention
13) Acts like an idiot and then will argue black is white and has 'no knowledge' of what he has said and cannot see the harmful impact he has on others.
14) As soon as something looks like he will need to take responsibilty - he's long gone
15) He will spend an evening winding me up. When I bite, he looks shocked and then over to his mother. She tells me I'm being too sensitive.
16) I want to throttle him. Firstly for being so disruptive in my relationship with my blinkered wife and secondly for attacking me at every moment.
17) I don't talk much when he's around. In fact, if I take my wife in the kitchen for a chat, he follows seconds later. I then have to boot him out if I want a conversation that makes any sense.
18) He is obsessive about a topic, throws himself in and then drops it. This is a repeated pattern of action.
19) At 17, he is almost completely micromanaged by my wife. She applies for jobs for him, fills in forms for him etc.
20) I feel second best. Particulary when he is plainly agressive and my wife takes his side.
21) Extremely sensitive to critiscism. Critiscises others constantly. Has no notion of how this could upset people.

I guess the real problem for me is that my wife and step-son are very much into this and really do put on a good show of ignorance.
Maybe they are completely ignorant about whats going on. My wife says I am just jealous of their relationship (which is true) and
it's just male hormones.

The fact is it's making family life very difficult. Ocassionally this blows up into a row when I can't take it any longer.

The term Covert Incest is very emotive. I'm pretty sure if I suggested that my wife was practising this, she would go into meltdown. Amazing when I think it's as plain as the nose on your face.
My stepson's not about to let go of the additional power he has been given either. Like as not it will be one hell of a fight. I'll have to box really clever.

I've just bought a copy of Silently Seduced and a copy of Sons & Lovers so I'll wait for those to come in the post.

If anyone can make any sense of the brain dump above, I'd be very interested in hearing others views and experiences.

Kind Regards

Steve

[portlander]

It's hard to get a feel for the "Big Picture". Some of it - ie avoiding work - is normal teenage behaviour. Some of it is that 2 people rarely see 100% eye to eye on raising a kid. Some of it is just a person siding with blood over non-blood. But all of that put together explains SOME of it but not ALL of it; there's something MORE going on.

What's odd is that I don't see the normal teenage reaction to CI here. I would expect to see a pushback to all that micromanagement and smothering, yet I see a bonding. That tells me that CI is not the core issue but only a symptom of a deeper issue.

If I had to make a wild guess, I'd guess that there was some sort of unresolved traumatic event in your stepson's past and that your wife is going overboard in compensating and/or 'covering' for it. And it may be so subconscious that she doesn't even realize how it's being perceived. I would also guess that you won't get much traction on resolving the CI until that core issue - whatever it may be - is resolved.

You're on the right track on holding your ground on things like the milk, even as trivial as it may seem. And on not letting him walk all over you. Reinforce the concept of responsibilities and boundaries. While it is important to understand the core issue and sort it out, understanding does not mean condescending.

[grumpoldman]

Hi portlander

Thanks very much for your reply. I guess I need to think a little harder then. You're right, there is no push against it and he even asks for a vast amount of help and support from her for trivial tasks.

For example, filling a form in which would take anyone 10 minutes, takes a whole evening, with him constantly asking facile questions like 'do you have to fill this in in capitals'. You look at the form and it's the first thing it says at the top. On and on until you're head's spinning. Gosh I sound angry. Guess I am!

My wife is a bit of a softy so I've always managed discipline. All the usual stuff like making sure they wash their hands after the loo, giving them a small amount of jobs to do, and early to bed if they don't do them (when they were younger of course!).

My wife was always fine with this as she knows she's a bit of a pushover, but about 5 years ago, she started taking my step-sons side, unless he was completely outrageous. Now he does pretty much nothing he's asked to do.

And that includes jobs and behaviour that upsets people.

I appreciate that some of this will be teenage stuff, but find myself completely gobsmacked when my wife makes excuses for him whatever he does. She is so impressed when he actually does something he ends up bragging on and on until I ask him to stop then.... you guessed it - mom to the rescue!

I've written a list of 'significant' events over the last 5 years trying to rack my brains for something that kicked this off.

It's a real pity, because the upshot of this is that my wife and myself are arguing, she thinks I am too harsh, I think she's a pushover and our son is a 'little prince'.

I'll keep thinking and report back, but in the meantime if anyone has any thoughts, I'd be grateful to hear them.

Kind Regards

Steve

[grumpoldman]

Just a little progress on this. I'm 50 pages into Sons & Lovers and have found it very enlightening.

So far Mrs. Morel has been let down badly by her husband. Mr. Morel said he owned the house and had money and neither were true and they were in financila difficulties.

Then later he cut their young childs hair very short, discarding the long curly locks she loved.

Further on, she falls pregnant again and feels an overwhelming sense of guilt at bringing a child into a loveless marriage and an equally overwhelming sense that she should protect the child.

Later it reads that Mr. Morel eventually gives way his place in his wife's heart to the children as all men do.

This made me think about my situation and my part in it. Tired from a long battle between myself and my wife and children, I have found myself giving way from tiredness.

So it's all very well to look at the mother/son relationship, but I also have to consider my part in all this and how I might collude with them to allow it to happen.

It seems to be a common theme here that when aprents suffer, they can look toward their children for support. I can't see this as a big deal in the short term, but when it lasts years, I can see how unhealthy this 'psychological marriage' is between parent and child.

I think what has happened is this; an adult-adult relationship is what I have with my wife. An adult-child relationship is what I have with my children. For my wife, there has been some bleeding between the two.

Now she relies on my step-son for emotional support and currently I am usurped. Thing is, after reading and thinking a bit, rather being angry with them both, I see us all as victims.

What is probably normal human bonding behaviour has tipped our family balance into a situation, where probably none of us are really happy.

Now, how to wiggle that boundary a bit, give my stepson his childhood back and get my wife back.

Onward and upward....

Steve