My wife (33F) and I (34M) have been together for 8 years and married for 5. She has two preteen kids with her ex (36M) and they have shared custody (50-50 custody) of my stepkids. My wife and I also have two toddlers together. Before we got married I knew my wife had a bad history with her ex. He cheated on her a bunch and even gave her an STD when she was pregnant with my younger stepkid. I knew they didn't get along all that well and that they had their arguments over the kids and everything but when we were getting into a real relationship she had told me things were better. I saw that too. Things were calm. The fights had stopped. They were communicating through email for everything and there were no explosive arguments.
He ignored me when we met the first time and he maybe said hi other times we saw each other in passing but that was it. After my wife and I got married he did make a few hostile comments toward me but it wasn't something that got out of hand. But over time it has changed. He was working on making sure my stepkids were against me and they had names they called me and insults they threw around about me. He called my kids names which turned into my stepkids doing the same. My wife was proactive in trying to stop it with talking, discipline and therapy. She went to court to try and make him stop and then to try and change the custody split so he wasn't influencing the kids as much as he was but the judge refused to change the custody split. Her ex refused to be a part of therapy or mediation to try and figure out a way forward where he wasn't influencing the kids like he was.
The behavior in our home has been getting worse over this and it's to the point where I do not spend a second alone with my stepkids anymore. There has to be another adult in the home who they know and trust because there were threats to make accusations against me by the ex. We also keep our kids apart from my stepkids. Either my stepkids get to go to a grandparents house after school or our kids are there when my stepkids are home if the two of us aren't there. When we are I will take over caring for my kids and keep us separated from my stepkids.
It has made our home very unhappy and our marriage is too. My wife is very defensive whenever I bring up how best to proceed because she automatically thinks I am telling her to abandon my stepkids to their dad and never see them again. I have never said or suggested that. I have suggested possibly her staying with her parents on her parenting weeks with my stepkids or me and our kids staying with my parents those weeks. She told me those are not valid options ever because it splits us up and I told her the last time we talked about it that we might end up splitting up for real because I couldn't continue like we have been. She also gets angry sometimes that me and our kids are not showing support for my stepkids at school and their games, etc anymore, in order to minimize contact with her ex and to stop more conflict even with my stepkids because their reactions to us being there were negative and they told me to take the kids and go before.
My wife held onto the hope that a GAL would be the saving grace we needed but the judge chose not to follow their recommendation to limit access between my stepkids and their dad to supervised contact. So 50-50 remains.
I'm at the point of exhaustion and I'm not happy. My wife and I struggle to act like a couple anymore and while I love her I also feel miserable trying to figure out ways to make this work. I worry every day about my kids and what will happen to them if they are constantly bullied by older siblings and their older siblings dad. I fear they could even be hurt potentially and nothing has helped. It's an active and ongoing problem that shows no signs of changing for the better.
So I feel done now with my marriage but I don't even know if that's unfair or not. So I want advice before I do anything. Sadly money has become an issue now too and paying for the kids' therapy has left us without money for therapy for us either separately or as a couple.