Oh, honey. My heart is just crying for you and with you. I can see where your worry and fear come from. But in NO way was telling him he could not live iwth you a BAD thing. in my opinion it might just be what makes him into a real man. IF the busybody idjits stop feeding his pity party. In NO way are you responsible for him not having his kids with him. He is 22. You were FOUR years YOUNGER when you became a stepmom. Most moms start with a pregnancy or adoption period to get used to the idea. Then they have an INFANT to care for. THey don't just jump right in with an older child, they have time to learn before the kid remembers much.
Your difficult child has a serious case of revisionist history. He is blaming you for the "worst" time in his life. If the worst is going to school, having someone pay your expenses, parties, dates and no real responsibility, well then he will have one truly awesome life. No way is high school the "worst". Why is he not saying this time of not having his kids with him is the worst time in his life? Because he is NOT a parent. He is a child who needs to put on his big girl panties and learn to deal like a grown up.
Sit down right NOW and write out what your life was like at age 22. How many kids did you have, what was your job, how many parties did you get to go to each week, how much time did you get to do anything alone - even real luxury things like peeing with-o interruptions. Who paid all your bills and told your mom that she should let you move in and take care of you and your kids and teach you to be an adult?? What exactly would your mom say if you had asked her to let you come home and go back to being her little girl that she took care of and took care of your kids while you did nothing or played on the computer or whatever? I bet she would have either laughed hysterically or had you admitted for psychiatric care for being delusional.
We all wear a lot of hats. You are a mom to an adult, mom to two minors, a daughter, maybe a sister, an exwife, an employee, and you are yourself the person. The first big thing is to prioritize these rolls. Yourself the person has to be first. Life is like an airplane. If you put the oxygen mask on the kids first, you may pass out and die from lack of oxygen and then what will happen to the kids when the plane goes down? Who will care for them the rest of their childhood? Take care of YOU first so that you are able to care for others. Your second priority is wife if you are married, mixed with mother of two young children. The needs of your marriage (NOT husband as a person, the marriage) are second because kids are better off if their parents have a good marriage and stay married. Then your minor children are your priority. THey MUST come before the other relatives including your adult son. If you put him before them, it will damage ALL of them AND you and your marriage. NO WAY are you able to in good conscience put your adult son and his kids above the needs of your own.
As for these people who tell you that you must let him come home and that you have somehow ruined his life, they are the reason that we can screen calls and block some numbers. Tell them all to go and live their lives and to shut up. ANY time they start to criticize you for not doing whatever for your adult son and his children, hang up. THey are not htere in person. So hang up the phone. Don't say goodbye. Don't say why. Tell them ONE time that if they want to have any relationship with you they will STOP interfering in your life and your relationship with your son. They are free to have him live iwth them, and to be pleasant and respectful in their communication with you, but you will NOT listen to their opinions on your relationships wtih anyone but them. IF they bring up your son or his kids, hang up. If they are rude, negative, unpleasant, or you feel any anxiety at all, put the phone down and go do something fun iwth your kids, meditate, whatever you want to do that is NOT listening to their idiocy. For they ARE stupid and idiotic in their behavior on this issue.
Your phone is a portal into your life, just like the door on your home and your computer and the mailbox. You are under NO obligation to allow anything into your life except your minor children and husband. the rest of them are NOT crucial to your life. Close the portal. Anyone who has a fit or tries to scold you or shame you should be blocked from your phone and email and home. If they somehow come to your home to get into this with you, call the cops. They have NO rights in htis, and you have EVERY right to refuse to communicate with anyone who tries to bully you.
Star is totally right. get into therapy with someone who affirms your belief that this son needs to take care of his business by himself. period. If the therapist tells you to let your son live with you, walk out, do NOT pay for that session, and get an appointment with a new therapist right then and there. No GOOD therapist would tell you to let an abusive 22yo man move in and sponge off of you. If he is so disabled that he needs something like that, he can get a ride or a bus to social services and they will set him up with low income housing, food stamps, and whatever aid he TRULY needs.
As for the kids, he is NOT ready to parent. I do not CARE what the others say. He needs to care for himself and work hard and care for them. How can he care for them if he cannot even house himself and feed himself?
I dare you to take a week where you do NOT answer the phone to anyone involved in the mess with your adult son. ESP not him. Just do not answer by sending htem to voicemail or picking up the landline and then putting the receiver down with-o saying a single word. If they call over and over? unplug the phone and machine. It is radical, but you have every right to just not answer if you don't want to. I have had to do it to my own bro. He would call and rant and rave to the point where at times he would leave five or more messages on our cell phones where each one took all the time the system allowed. Nonstop garbage about how I am a bad sister, daughter, mother, wife and person and the same about my husband. Never mind that WE are going on twenty years of marriage in Aug, and he was married for maybe 2 and his wife was MARRIED to someone else when they met and got preg and he was so abusive to her teenage sons that he ran them out of the house and now they don't even want to call their mom or see her at xmas. He has had a full time job for maybe four or five years now and is well over forty. Until then he either tried to run a business and was so bad at it that he was used as an example by business professors at the local major university or worked maybe eight mos a year at the forest service and partied the other four mos a year. He lives in a home my parents bought for him and they even pay his utilities because he wouldn't pay on time. But he can tell ME how awful I am? how morally wrong my life is and how I am a horrible awful person with the rudest nastiest kids on the planet - they are total pcs and everyone who spends time with them tells us how polite and sweet they are. Everyone except my bro and sometimes my mom who listens to bro's opinions of me and ends up thinking they are reality because he says the same thing over and over and over until you agree with-him - won't stop until he has "convinced" you.
With help from a therapist and my friends here on the board I cut tiees with him last year. I realized I was putting my sister/daughter hats before my mother and wife/self hats. My daughter has been in therapy for years for things gfgbro did and said to her and times she saw him hit me and hold me down and scream at me (she was little the last time she saw him hit me because I told him if it happened again he would be in the morgue with a big ole Y incision and his organs in plastic baggies and he would never know when it was coming). My youngest had nightmares and begged his uncle to not be mad over and over. The night I realized how bad it was I told him to never come to my home, call or even say hi in public to us. it took some time and the last time he came here to our home he walked in because the door was unlocked. Both kids were watching a movie cuddling iwth me and went into instant panic attacks. So I could not go throw him out - they had death grips on me and were terrified. I told him to leave and if he didn't I was calling 911. It makes me sad that his daughter was there, but he brought her as a shield thinking that it would get me to let him in. He heard me dial the phone but I hadn't hit send on it yet when he RAN out carrying his daughter.
So I do know how hard this is. And how it isn't fun. I don't see my parents often and never on a holiday because my bro is over there all the time (cannot parent his daughter half the week with-o a babysitter at least one of those nights - but I have always been "selfish" if I ask her to babysit once a month!) esp on holidays. I don't like that, but it is there choice to not put boundaries. They also will never make time to do anything with my kids with-o his daughter. I don't mind if the kids spend time with his daughter, just not him. Not ever. And my mom does NOt want to accept it. So that limits our relationship, but that is HER choice.
It isn't easy, but you do NOT deserve the abuse. In fact, this IS abusive behavior on the part of your son and the ohter relatives. PLEASE go to a domestic violence center and ask for their help. What you have gotten from your son and family IS domestic abuse. He was abusive at hte times he lived with you. He iwll NOT kill himself because of anything you do or do nto do. HIS choices would be the cause of any attempt on his life. Frankly, I don't think he would make a real attempt but uses the threat to get you to do what he wants. A domestic violence center can help. So can a therapist - you need BOTH.
I am sending LOTS of hugs and prayers and support. Cut the abusive people OUT of your life. YOU deserve to be HAPPY. PLEASE also see a doctor for some medical help for the depression and other feelings that you have. A reg doctor can get things started, but you also need to see a psychiatrist as they can better judge which types of medications will help you the most.
