Horrible Weekend
This might be a little long but good god I've got to vent but I'll make it as easy as possible:
Thursday - DH goes to get skids, I purposely went to bed by 830 and was sound asleep before they got home
Friday - I go to work all day while DH stays home w skids and my ds. Came home to kitchen a mess and I keep my house spotless. so I decided right then and there I was not going to clean up after them, not do laundry not do dishes except my own. My ds knows to either wash his or put them in dishwasher. So to come home after working all day I was irritated. Well had to go to grocery store to get food for Saturday....we are not even in the store for 5 mins and dh and I are fighting cause he doesn't want to listen. This is so stupid to even mention but I say "well this other store has better subs" his response "well im not going to so and so", so right then and there i was irritated cause none of the kids or myself are going to eat the subs he is buying. so we walk on and i was just like get whatever it is you want to eat and lets go...needless to say i got so pissed cause all he could say was hurry up hurry up, i left the cart and went and waited in the car....he checked out and came out about 15 mins later. so we argue half way home, cause im going off on him. get home i do whatever i want, i ride bikes w the kids, not speaking a word to him about 2 hrs later he is apologizing to me about being selfish and rude..ok fine lets move on.
Saturday I wake up to peanuts all over kitchen table, peanut shells on table and floor. couch pillows on kitchen floor...i was livid!!! he put them to bed and didnt make skids clean up their mess!!!!!!!!! and then just leaves it for me the next morning. Ok so we are fighting again great. I finally make it thru the day and it turned out ok since we stayed away all day long.
Sunday we go to meet his family, his mom is just dying to see skids, so we meet at a park eat sandwiches and going to go play in the creek. Well not even 20 mins into the day his mom is acting like i dont even exist telling dh how he should make sd7 put on a shirt, oh dare we neglect her by not putting on sunblock...omg it was the end of the world to her....sd7 is barely red she did wear sunblock. so i talk to sd7 i said do you want a shirt on, she said not really, i said ok no big deal we will put sunblock on you again and then solarcaine when we get home you will be fine....omg mil is like dh you better go get her shirt now and put it on her.....dh goes gets shirt comes back and i say dh i talked to sd7 she is fine w/o a shirt i will take care of it..tell your mother to stay out of it, i'm the step mom and i can take care of it. I get so annoyed being left out like that, it's not like i would of let her fry in the sun...come to find out we are in the shade all day anyway.
So then dh and sd15 are next to each other and mil thinks its a good pic..ok great...then she says sd7 get next to dad....ss13 take ur pic with dad then she calls my son over..take your pic w ur step dad...omg i am 3 steps away she never once asked me to be in the picture! Totally got my feelings hurt so i sit there a few more mins and decide to just go for a walk before i start crying. well dh comes to find me i tell him what happens he says "im not doing this right now" and walks away...why do i even exist? low and behold the entire night sucked, i went to bed w o speaking to anyone, so im just about asleep when i hear laughing...he actually let sd's come into my bedroom while im in bed and pick out a movie to watch...i freaking couldn't believe it! totally woke me completely up, NO RESPECT AT ALL! I was so freaking pissed, we fought for hours after that. it got so out of control i told him to leave he wouldnt, i threatened to call the cops....it was so bad and I never wanted it to go that way...just wanted them all to respect me. I don't even know if I got thru to him at all. we ended up just stopped talking and went to bed around 2, well he did i couldnt sleep for hours after that.
Monday was fine i was with my grandparents, well we all were. I cooked dinner for entire family and then skids left to go home. I laid in bed all afternoon after dinner and went to bed early. But today i just feel so lost and have no idea what to do anymore. so tired of the fighting, just cant take it emotionally anymore. Like I'm emotionally wrecked and ive had a migraine everyday almost.
I'm sure that's not all that
I'm sure that's not all that happened over the weekend but those were the major ones, so basically they all add up and I can't seem to get this off my chest to dh, he never understands any of it anyway. Maybe he does after we are fighting, but why do we have to fight in the first place, can't he just try to understand my feelings in the beginning
I'm seeing you guys fighting
I'm seeing you guys fighting over minor issues instead of attacking your underlying problem which is you're tired of taking care of his kids.
Search this site using the key word 'disengage' and learn how to stop caring for his children when they visit and by extension stop worrying about how his mother wants her grandchildren raised.
Basically at the end of the kids weekend visits the house should look as if you were not there the whole time. Any cleaning that needs to be done remains undone until he cleans it up.
Here's what I did:
wrote this a long time ago and I hope this helps with your problem. It may not reflect your exact situation but you'll get the idea:
The situation with my step-kids finally got to the point where I decided that my efforts to raise them was futile.
First I told my wife in private what I was going to do and why.
Then I stopped investing myself, time and money in their upbringing. I realized that by conscious choice I could cease being responsible for them or their actions. Neither would I take credit for how they turned out, good or bad. I simply stopped interfering in their lives. This is not to say if they would start a fire on the living room floor I would not intervene. But if they did not do the laundry as scheduled I ignored it. Nor did I do any of their chores. If the trash overflowed in the kitchen - well tough. Mom dealt with it when she got home.
You will be absolutely amazed at the look on a kids face when s/he realizes you don't care enough to even tell their bio-parent they did something wrong. And you'll be amazed at their future behavoir and attitude towards you.
I stayed friendly enough and taught one how to drive when she was old enough. But they could no longer blame me for the consequences of misbehaving just because I saw the misbehavoir. I never told. If they were caught in a infraction it was not my fault. They began to realize that they were responsible for their actions because of what they did not because I caught them.
I would talk to my wife in private if I had issues, but once she made the decision I backed her up 100%.
Once the kids realized I was no longer the ogre they thought I was their attitude changed. I was not their friend, but neither was I the enemy. They came to realize that I had not done those things to irritate them. They in fact missed the things that they had come to depend on me doing. Permission to go to the mall when their Mom was not home? "Sorry, can't do that".
Their mother slowly came to realize that I wasn't overreacting to their actions. In fact I wasn't reacting at all. She came to understand that she would have to control the situation and she did.
With that things got much easier around the house.
Billions of kids grew up in the world without help from me and turned out just fine.
It sounds like you are
It sounds like you are passive aggressive. Start standing up for yourself. Why not just tell the mil, "Hey, we got this, ok?" Instead you say nothing, walk away, and end up in a fight w/ dh.
Same with pics. Did you have a camera with you? Why not hand her the camera and say, "Can you take one of me with the kids/dh/skids/whatever?" If you didn't have a camera with you, then having pics wasn't too important to you, so why get upset about it? That's the way some MIL's are. Don't take it personally, just rise above it.
I certainly don't think YOU are the problem, but a lot of what's upsetting you is caused by insecurities you have. Perhaps you need to lower your expectations of everyone. The only reason people EVER get upset is because our expectations are not met. You didn't say you asked dh to have the kids pick up the kitchen. Did you just expect him to know better? Stand up for yourself and what you want/need. They are walking all over you because you let them.
Yea I should of said that the
Yea I should of said that the house rule is to always pick up after yourself. Even it that means to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher etc. I only clean up when I cook dinner for everyone and thats very rare anymore. I think your right about the dh and pictures situation. I wanted to take pics but forgot camera at home, I guess I just got my feelings her cause she wasn't making me a part of the pics...it really pissed me off when she included my bio son with his step dad, it didn't bother me up until that point. I understand the pics of dh and his kids no big deal to me but I try so hard to be a part of the family and I think she intentionally leaves me out. And the part w dh I really just wanted him to listen and just comfort me but instead he ignored as usual. He thinks everything I have on my mind is a big issue, and well it usually turns out that way cause he chooses to ignore it the first time...does that make sense? Your right about the mil issue, I should have but I'm always afraid I'm gonna say something ill regret.