Hi Everyone,

My situation is pretty complicated and I’m not legally a stepparent but I was one in every other way.  I had been with my boyfriend for 2 years and we lived together for 8 months.  He has a 6 year old son from a previous marriage.  The boy’s mother was not involved in his life much because she was addicted to crack cocaine and was bipolar.  My boyfriend and I were in a committed relationship and were saving to buy a house together and planned on getting married.  Because we are older (36 and 37) and I wanted to have a baby we decided to try to get pregnant.  I did end up getting pregnant.  My boyfriend’s son was neglected by his biological mother when he was an infant and now has behavioral problems (aggressive assaultive behaviors towards others, self harmful behaviors such as scratching himself, banging his head, punching himself in the jaw, etc., constant lying, stealing, manipulative behavior, trying to harm my cat, feces smearing, and revenge seeking).  I insisted on him getting mental health treatment and it was soon after the treatment began that I discovered that I was pregnant.  It was a Saturday and his father and I had taken him to an appointment with his therapist and the appointment ended up being an hour and a half. During the appointment he was trying to steal a bouncy ball that he found (the room is full of toys to play with) and when confronted about the stealing he lied multiple times and ran out of the room.  When he was brought back into the room he proceeded to repeatedly kick his father.   His therapist felt that his problems needed to be evaluated more intensively than she was able to do and recommended that he be evaluated inpatient at a hospital for 24-48 hours to ensure that he received the right treatment.  My boyfriend seemed to understand the importance of this at the time.  When we got home from the appointment things were pretty calm for a while and I made lunch and played board games with his son.  I asked my boyfriend if he thought that it would be ok to give his son a cookie (I didn’t want to reward him that day because of his behavior at the therapist’s office so I wanted to run it by his dad first) and he thought it was. We had a plate of cookies from a family party and I let him pick the one he wanted.   Being pregnant I was pretty tired and decided to lay down.  While I was laying there I heard his father tell him that if he behaved that he could have a cookie.   And then proceeded to hear him say “no ____, why aren’t you listening _____, don’t do that _____” for the next 20 minutes.  Soon after my boyfriend and his son were leaving to see my boyfriend’s parents and I heard him say that he was going to go say goodbye to me.  I got out of bed and went into the living room and said to my boyfriend “please tell me that you didn’t give him a cookie, he wasn’t behaving”.  And then his son walked into the room with a cookie.  His father said that he felt bad because I had told him I would give him a cookie and never did.  I asked if that’s what his son told him and he said yes.   I got down to his son’s level and asked him if I had given him a cookie after lunch and he lied and said I didn’t.  I gave him a second chance and asked him again and still he lied.  I told his father that he was lying about it and his father told me “fine, just take the cookie”.  I put my hand out and told his son to give me the cookie.  He immediately turned his upper body away from me, shoved the cookie in his mouth, and made a fist at me with his other hand. I put my hand on the back of his neck and reached in his mouth with my other hand and pulled the cookie out of his mouth.  He then started saying that I hurt him and his father ran over to him saying “you poor thing, are you ok?   Are you bleeding?   Let me get a tissue.  Let me look at you in the light to see if you’re ok”.  After this a couple of minutes passed (there was nothing wrong with his son) his father took the cookie from me and went into the kitchen to throw it away.  While he was doing this his son was standing about 5 feet in front of me.  He looked at me with anger, started to back up and ran at my stomach full force with his fists out aiming for the spot where he knew the baby was.  My instincts kicked in and I pushed him away from me so that he couldn’t hit my pregnant stomach and he went flying backwards on his butt.  Again, he was not hurt.  Despite having already promised me that if there were any issues with him attacking me when I was pregnant that my boyfriend would have his son stay with his grandparents until we could find him the treatment that he needed he changed his mind and was planning on bringing him back after visiting with his parents. My boyfriend’s mother agreed to keep him for the night because of what happened.   I set up an appointment with the county’s crisis team to help us.  Pretty soon, my boyfriend started freaking out saying that his son wasn’t going to go to any hospital and that I was trying to take his son away from him.  It was a rough night.  The morning of the appointment with crisis, my boyfriend said to me that he was planning on telling the evaluators that he never saw his son attack me but saw me attack his son.   I was devastated that he would say such a thing, as I didn’t attack his son.  I only defended myself when he attacked me. He has since said that I abused his child and that there were other ways that I could have handled the situation and that his son was only defending himself when he came after my stomach.  My boyfriend’s parents sided with him and also don’t think that it would be ‘fair’ to his son to go to a hospital.  My boyfriend ended up packing a bag of week’s worth of clothes for him and his son and went to his parents house.  He told no me that he and his parents would figure out what to do with his son.  Mind you I had been taking care of his son for over a year, taking him to doctors, taking care of him when he was sick, buying him clothing, going to school meetings (by myself), etc.  I was very much a mother to him.   I can’t believe that my boyfriend would say that I abused husband son and cut me out of any decisions about him.  And clearly my boyfriend isn’t concerned about his son hurting the baby that is on the way.  I did end up moving out and am now almost 7 months pregnant.  My now ex boyfriend has never apologized for what he said to me and how he treated me abs sees it as me abandoning him and his son.  This so insane to me.  I can’t believe that he still doesn’t see what he has done and how he wrongfully chose his son over me when all I wanted was for husband son to get the treatment that he needed.  Has anyone experienced anything similar?   This situation blow my mind.