Q: My wife and I had been married for over four years.
I have ADD and high anxiety which I'm not taking medication for.
I had a pretty good paying job but was laid off early 1n 2007.
My eyes started giving me problems before the lay off but I did get them checked out while I still had insurance.
Found out this year that both of my eyes have cataracts. I've attempted working at three jobs but my eye sight prevented me from passing the probationary period.
Here's my issue. I had a step daughter that had always found a ways into getting into trouble. Everything you asked her not to do, she went ahead and done. The computer she would stay on Instant messaging, My spacing all her friends till early morning.
I gave her so many chances but she proved to me she didn't care.
Her mother and I constantly fought about her because every time I tried to lay the Law down, the discipline was always to severe.
Even if it was just a few weeks without the computer.
Then she started on the phone..the same thing.
My wifes daughter wouldn't barely do any thing in the house.
And after her mother and I told her we expected more from her since she was 16, like washing clothes, doing the dishes...she made sure she washed only her stuff when begged, ( and if she washed three loads of clothes, it would take over three days and then you'd never find them put away) until I got so tired and fed up with her and the way me and her mother fought all of the time because how she ran the house, I made her move out when she turned 18 and graduated.
My step daughters every other word was profanity, and I don't think that she once told her mother or me the truth.
And Lord if you found her in a lie ( which was always ) she would cover it up with another one. She never admitted to anything she done. From bringing guys over when her mother and I were gone, to finding a ways to explain why she messed around with her best friends boyfriend.
Well, My father and mother passed away with cancer. And I made sure that no body smoked in the house. My wife and I don't smoke.
My wife invited her brother over ( or he invited his self ) and in both houses we used to live in, he smoked in each one, not caring.
And my wife let him and to this day, if he wanted to visit...I'm sure the same thing would have happened.
Well again, on Christmas eve of 2007, her daughter wanted to spend the night with us, to be there on Christmas. She smoked.
When I went down to visit my family in Alabama, mysteriously as it sounds, my wife let her daughter move back in knowing full well we never got along. Knowing full well her daughter never listened to one rule of the house, never helped out.
Then one day out of the many fights that broke out in the few months her daughter stayed there, my wife asked me to leave. And I did.
Amy, was I asking to much? Showing respect seems to be a thing of the past in today's society, but the way my wife handled each situation, and the way her daughter and her whispered and told there secrets, was it fair or justified at the way things were handled?
It seems as though the many things I accused her daughter of doing, my wife finally told me that yes, she did smoke pot, yes she was smoking in every room in the house when she ( her mother ) was in the hospital, yes, she fooled around with boys when we weren't there.
But instead of digging in deep and finally sticking up to her guns
and giving discipline to her daughter, it was easier to let me go.
What are the parameters of a marriage? Just because a person has children, does that erase the morality or any since of any opinion I may have had? I love her mother very much, but would I be asking for more heart ache if I tried pursuing this marriage. I don't want to walk away from this marriage. To me I think the Lord gave her to me, I'll get counseling and change anything I can.
But if I'm going to be the only one who'll attempt to change, will
this be visible?
Thank you
