Please... if any of you out there know anything about blended families... I need help. My husband has enabled his daughter (23 with 2 kids, not married) for the past 5 years. He lies to me... after agreeing to do things a certain way, he goes right ahead and does what he wants for her... usually handing out money that we don't have a lot of.

Recently I found out he has been paying a good part ofher rent for a THREE bedroom apt for the past 8 months... and he told her to LIE TO ME. We haven't had a great relationship and this just put the top on it. I am done.

We have done counseling... Christian one who asked me if I was done... it has been five years of the same thing... she thinks it is an integrity issue... and told his she didn't htink he was going to change...

Welcome to MB, kemss.

What are you looking for help with? It isn't clear from your post because you said you are done.

Blended families have a poor success rate because the spouses tend to protect their own children rather than the marriage. Your H is demonstrating this problem. If you could persuade him to use Dr Harley's Policy of Joint Agreement, where he learns to take your interests into consideration before he makes any decisions, would you consider staying with him?

Have you been married before? Do you have your own children? Any children together? Who do the various children live with?

Why did your previous marriages (yours and his) end?

Dr. Harley says POJA has to be the key in blended families.
Listen to these raddio clips on blended families.
Radio clips on blended families
Segment #2
Segment #3
Segment #4
POJA

I mistakenly thought you were new here, but it seems you have been here since 2007 writing about this exact issue - your H enabling his kids and disregarding you. You have been advised about POJA before. This is not new to you.

Why are you in exactly the same situation 5 years later? Have you done anything to implement the MB advice that you were given before?

And why delete all your posts? You start a thread with the same problem and then delete all your posts.

What a strange way to behave.

kemss: You should answer Sugar Cane's questions.
But I am going to simply express some of my experience in a 14.5 year blended family marriage.
1.) Parental love in unconditional. It is impossible to change that. What you see as enabling (and you may be correct), he doesn't.
2.) It sounds from your post like money is the trigger issue here. Lying comes next (lack of honesty) and then disagreement on how to parent.
3.) In my experience the Policy of Joint Enthusiastic Agreement on all decisions is the ideal solution.

Usually (statistically) your situation eventually erodes the marriage until divorce happens.

YET... it does not have to.
First off, have you been honest in telling your husband what you have learned? Have you been honest in telling your husband that this circumstance is a deal breaker for you. Have you asked your husband why he has been lying to you?
What other needs of yours (one of your needs is honesty) have not been met by your husband?

Have you read the book His Needs, Her Needs?

Have you filled out the free emotional needs questionaire forms available on this site with your husband and talked about them?

Sometimes it is best to start with the general issues of your and his needs before tackling the jumbo issue.

Instead of dictating to your husband how he should manage his daughter have you asked him what he needs in the way of support for him for his actions towards his daughter?

In my case, eventually my WW and I came to a POJA where we each allow one another to make the decisions we feel is best for our children not of our marriage. We just tell one another what we are going to do. I don't advocate that as your solution, but it is one of a very few things we have enthusiastic agreement on. Do I like forking over $14,000 a year for my 19 year old step son's college (my WW does not have an income as she is a stay at home mother)? Well, what I like doesn't really matter. Did my WW she like it when I wrote a huge check to my 28 year old ski bum son to get him out of jail when he was arrested? Well, it really did not matter. It was my call to make but I did not lie about it to my WW and she did not try and force me to do something else.

Do you remember what your wedding vows were? Did they include language about your children outside the marriage? Ours did. We agreed to care for them as our own. Sometimes it makes me unhappy. I have to deal with it.

I am no shining example. My marriage is hanging by a thread, but the kids issues are minor. I would happily swap with you.

Please, print out the emotional needs forms and consider going over them with your husband, each of you honestly filling them out.

Blessings
Hurting Turkey
Me: BS 57
WW: 50
Hers: 23, 19
Mine: 30, 28, 23
Ours: 12

Trying to use MB concepts whenever I can... Someone has to try

But if he refuses to POJA, what can she do other than stop letting herself be upset by his behavior (which might help but is unsatisfying)?

What can any spouse, who has learned of and is sold on the importance of POJA and who wants in her marriage, do, if the other spouse refuses to POJA?

This spouse is face with the same option that any of us face if one spouse refuses to put the other first above all others. If, after trying diligently to sell the benefits of POJA, and indeed of any and all MB principles, the other spouse simply will not countenance using it, she will have to consider leaving the marriage.

What other answer can there be?

Separation of course. If she separates she won't be upset. If a spouse refuses to POJA about anything, that thing will eventually break up the marriage and cause divorce. Better to first separate before resentment destroys all the love in the marriage.

That's essentially impossible. The things that please us and the things that frustrate us are a deep part of our makeup; the causes of this are mysterious and are probably a combination of genetics, hormones, habit, background, upbringing, and other totally unknown factors. Dr. Harley says it is essentially irrational!

One of the fundamental core tenets of Marriage Builders is that it is easier for someone to change their behavior than it is for their spouse to change how they feel about it. As an example, a few months ago we had a discussion here where a guy asserted that men should basically find a woman who accepts her husband using porn. There are probably a few such women out there, but most women absolutely do not feel that way, and cannot change how they feel about it! The only solution for a man who wants to have a happy marriage is for him to change his behavior to accommodate her feelings.

That's why the heart of Marriage Builders is the Policy of Joint Agreement: never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse. It helps men and women learn to live together by setting up a rule that requires them to not get what they want at the expense of each other's feelings.

Daisy, you have no idea the unhappy women I've seen who have believed that they should change how they feel about their husband's behavior. I have seen women literally destroy themselves, wreck their health and their lives, and nearly go insane because they believed that they should accept whatever their husbands do, that the problem lies with them and that they should change how they feel.

Dr. Harley's fundamental insight is that everything a married person does has an affect on his or her spouse and that if there is a problem in marriage, the problem is not with the person who has the bad feelings, but with the person who is doing whatever the other person feels bad about.

Of course a person can't change how they feel about a behavior that upsets them, but they can learn to react without demands, disrespect, or angry outbursts. But that's not the same as "not letting yourself be upset."

I have heard Dr. Harley tell men "You are likely to be on antidepressants for the rest of your life if her behavior does not change or you do not get away from this." Interestingly enough, I have never heard him tell women this. I have heard him tell women "If you stay with this your health is going to decline, your immune system is going to be compromised, and you may very well have post traumatic stress disorder for the rest of your life." He sometimes encourages men to take the ADs and tough it out for a few years for the sake of their children or because there is still a chance that after a certain behavior (like an affair!) is over they will be able to recover their marriage.

But women have much less stamina and are much less successful in pursuing their husband and trying to win him back, and women suffer much more horribly when they try to do so for an extended period of time. So he almost never encourages a woman to try to "tough it out." Men and women are different (Dr. Harley has literally examined and displayed male and female human brains in academia and discussed the differences in classes he used to teach and in some of his articles) in a multitude of ways, and this is one of them.

I agree that with some of the posts...It sounds like you are enabling him to enable her. If you are stuck in the same situation something has to change. My wife had to take drastic action and seperate for some things I did so I was forced to deal/change ...and change for me.