I love this woman, and she loves me. The idea of divorce absolutely and completely breaks my heart into pieces. I’m so incredibly sad thinking about leaving and not having her in my life…and even more about how she will feel and how she will break inside. I’m in tears writing this.
Her 10-year-old daughter is extremely troubled.
Unfortunately—being objective and truly honest—my wife didn’t raise her properly, and now both of us are dealing with the fallout. And this little girl has deep seated emotional problems. She is behind in her emotional development (but way ahead intellectually) and cannot control her emotions. She acts out abusively (emotionally and physically) every day, and it’s too much. Our lives are utter hell specifically because of this.
We have taken her to multiple psychologists, consistently over the course of the past two years, and it hasn’t helped. All we’ve received is this feedback:
* She probably has ADHD
* Change your parenting style
* Ignore her when her behavior is bad
We have worked hard to change our parenting style. My wife and I have come together and consistently issued both consequences for bad behavior and given her rewards for good behavior. We also spend time with her and as a family, and we are present I her life.
We show her love and tell her we love her every day. Nothing helps. We are work thin, and it has destroyed our marriage. We cannot cope.
We believe she has an extreme case of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD). We are in the process of getting her formally and properly diagnosed. However, the psychiatrist is against medication—for anyone—and refuses to prescribe anything. We’ve explained that she has violent outbursts, and still, nothing.
At this point, I personally am at a real crossroads. I love my wife, and we could make it if it wasn’t for her daughter’s behavior.
I am at a point where I have decided, to protect myself legally and emotionally, that I cannot be around this child anymore. I cannot take part in discipline or enforcing rules, and I cannot even interact with her. When hear her saying “f*** you” and calling my wife a wife a “b****,” I cannot accept it, and I can’t handle it. The other day she poured a bottle of juice all over the kitchen floor simply because she refused to brush her teeth, and then she started hitting and kicking her mom. I just about lost it. I literally had to leave the apartment because I could not control myself.
There have been times where I literally had to physically restrain her. And then she screamed as loudly as she could and said I was hurting her, but in fact I was being very careful. Fortunately the neighbors did not call the police…but all it takes is one time and her lying to the police, and I’m in jail with a record. I really don’t need this.
I cannot decide what to do. I need help deciding. Here are two options I’ve arrived at:
1) I rent office space. Leave and go there, every day at 2pm before she gets home from school, and come home at 9pm after she goes to bed. I do my work in the afternoons and evenings, so this is feasible. My wife works part time as a teacher, so she and I would have time together several hours each week. Basically then I would completely avoid interacting with my step daughter. I don’t love this, as I am her step dad, but there is tension during almost every interaction, and she doesn’t know when to stop escalating. For my mental health, I, unfortunately, can no longer participate in her life.
If we are able to get her medication and her behavior improves, I could try being part of her life again. We believe medication, unfortunately, is the only way that positive change may happen. And I’m generally not in favor of medicating a child, but believe me, we have tried everything. This is an extreme case, and this is our last resort.
This option would be on a three-month trial basis. We would agree to divorce at the end of this if things still didn’t work out.
2) My wife and I rip the bandaid off and simply divorce. Again, this is so incredibly hard, but maybe it’s for the best.
I appreciate your thoughts and opinions.