Should husband try and help 18 y/o daughter?

My stepdaughter is turning 19 in just a few weeks. She lives with her mother about 4 hours away from us. She was in a high school/college program to be on track to graduate high school and also have an AA through a community college which should have happened actually last year, but she kept telling us the counselors didn't know what they were doing and she wasn't taking the right classes, which I highly doubt. We were then told she'd be graduating this summer, which didn't happen because she was still missing a couple of high school graduation requirements. She told us she was going to take a summer class to catch up, but then didn't and told us she'd wait until the fall quarter. Well, turns out she isn't going back to school, at least not this quarter. So not only doesn't she have her AA, she doesn't have her high school diploma! She also got a job back in July, but was only there for a month before quitting, telling us that everyone had an agenda against her. It's pretty much the same excuse she told us when she had another job the previous year and then up and quit after a month.

So now she's not going to school and not working. She says she has anxiety and thinks she will fail at school. Apparently the "anxiety" is keeping her from working too, but she has no problem buying a bunch of expensive makeup and dying her hair from blond to red to brown whenever she feels like it and going on road trips with friends and being on Facebook all day long.Don't ask me where the money is coming for all that. I'm sure her mother is giving her an allowance of some kind.

My husband thinks he can "fix" her or "help" her if he got her away from her mother and she came to live with us. He is so hell bent on getting her up here even though I have told him numerous times I don't want her living with us. She was never with us for more than a few weeks before (and that was at age 15/16) and now he wants a nearly 19 year old to live with us because it will let her "find herself". Changing her geography isn't going to help her. She doesn't have any friends here but he just feels he has to intervene. She can get a job up here, even work with him, and then go to school up here. She can do all that down there as well, but she chooses not to using anxiety as a reason as to why she can't do anything.

Do you think he should try and help her by moving her up here?

I saw in the position your stepdaughter is in, kind of, for 7 or 9 years. I don't even know how many years it was. I stopped going to a low level education, and didn't want to work.

Now I maybe went 'out' maybe 16 times in 9 years and didn't spend a lot of money on luxurities. But I sure cost my parents, and myself, a lot of money. As well as overall stress and regret.

But I cannot say what should have gone differently for me to get out of where I was.

I always thought I was lazy and stupid and avoiding all responsibilities, but there was nothing else inside of me. It didn't help that I felt zero appriation or encouragement from others (mainly because I felt none, though what was there was marginal as well) and had zero incentive for beign rich, succesful, getting status.

I am inclined to project myself on this case, and say it is not simple laziness with anxiety as an excuse. But unlike me, she is having fun with friends. I avoided both the hard work and the fun activities.

The usual argument is tht pampering is bad and the safety wheels should be removed. She should be allowed to fall and fail so she learns this attitude won't get her through life. If I project that on myself, I don't see how it would have 'helped' me. All my parents could offer me was financial support and patience.

Hopefully in your stepdaughter's case she has at least one parent that is able to talk to her about her difficulties. My father used to yell at me "You don't work, you don't go to school. I am mad!" and that obviously didn't help. He should have tried to somehow get me to talk to him about what I thought. About if I really preferred the life I had. And about how he could help me make babysteps. Talk some confidence into me. I didn't see any open paths I could take. Only barriers. Only failures. I remember thinking that I only want to work if I get a really good job. If that's not guaranteed, I won't even try. If I never tried, I never failed. Same with romance.

So it depends on what your stepdaughter wants. Is she moving there against her will? Does your husband have the fatherly abilities to handle this? Or will this just bring conflict and create more anxiety for her?
It does seem that her mother allows her to be comfortable doing the thing she is doing now, which will not be a good situation for change.

By the way, I am not a physics student. In this place I used to add 'top 50' but I am afraid my university had dropped in this year's ranking. But it is still a place where almost everyone is either very smart or every ambitious, or a milder mix of the two. And I am on track to graduate with honours. And that considering I was almost blocked access to normal education after primary school because I was either mildly retarded or had learning disabilities. It seemed in my case a mental health disorder was ruled out.

So education is a strange thing. Becoming an adult is a strange thing. What does your stepdaughter think she can realistically achieve in life? She must have ideas about this. I mean, has she actually given up on the idea of ever being financially independent? I know I have in the past. Maybe very hard to figure out, as it cannot be asked. But do not rule out the case that instead of a lazy teen leeching off parents, she is actually fighting an internal battle. In fact, the two can happen at the same time.

I have to admit, her father hasn’t been in her life a whole lot. A lot of that is due to her mother trying her best to keep her away from him (of course now that she’s 18 her mother doesn’t care anymore). But a lot of it is also that her and her father have had a lot of screaming matches and a lot of time where they didn’t speak to each other for months. There was a really bad fight 2 years ago where someone called the cops. She didn’t speak to him for nearly a year after that. That whole phase seems to have ended last year, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested in her life until he finds out something is going wrong and then feels he has to fix it. He doesn't ask about her classes, if she's seeing anyone, if she has a job. Conversations on Facebook are pretty much kept to "We should go see this movie" or you should check out this video game". She hasn't ever even visited for more than 3 weeks since I've known her but he thinks at 19 she should move in?? I mean he hasn’t seen her since late May. Keeps telling her he’ll come down and visit but then never goes. Has only talked to her on the phone once since that and that’s when she called him on Father’s Day. There’s a bit of back and forth on Facebook, but that’s it. There’s no fatherly effort on his part until things go badly on her end when she says she’s not working or going to school and then he thinks he has to intervene and get her away from her mother and say how wonderful it would be if she moved up here and worked and she could “find herself” and paints this great picture, but in the end, it will be the same old thing. He’ll sit and play video games all night while I go nuts sitting on the couch with her while she plays on her phone for hours on end. Just like every visit. He will have a 5 minute talk with her about how she needs to get her life together and she will promise she will, but will do nothing about it and he won’t push her. The only thing that will change is now we have another person in the house to provide for.

And she isn't asking to move up here, never has, so it's like he's trying to ply her with whatever he can to get her up here. I almost think it's more about showing the mother that he should have been in her life all along and she would have turned out differently so now he wants to stick it to her and go "see how much better she's doing with me in her life?".

I also don’t want my house to turn into a war zone. I don’t want to have to wonder who’s going to explode at who. I like the calmness that is there now. Plus I would insist that she pay us some rent. I mean our bills total nearly $2500 a month and there's no reason she shouldn't pay about $200. She won't be paying for cable or internet or utilities or food so that's a steal. Even if she decides school over work, I still insist she pays that amount. If she can't then she can't live there. If she can afford makeup and hair color at the salon and getting a tattoo, she can afford to pay us something.

My husbands son came to live with us he had barely graduated and was flat lazy !

My husband and I sat down and agreed to rules that were to be followed and agreed to be a united front, period.

Long story short he got his shyyt together, now married has a great job and our grandbaby just turned 1 .

There is no way I could tell my husband " no your son can't come here " Had he not worked to straighten his life out then there was going to be given time limits etc .

Had I told my husband " NO" there would have been so much resentment between us , our marriage would have likely ended.

I hope you and you're husband can agree to whatever happens ❤️

Yes that is why it is so hard for me to just stand my ground and say "No I don't want her to live with us". I feel I should have the most say in it seeing as he only gives me his share of the mortgage (most months) and that's it! And sometimes he even needs for me to give him back $100 so he can make it to his next paycheck! He doesn't give me any money towards the phone, utilities, internet, car insurance, which adds up to another $600-$700 a month. Oh and then there's the $485 a month we have to pay the IRS because he stupidly took money out of his 401k not realizing the penalty on doing so. He does give me a couple $100 for that most of the time, but god knows why I'm paying any of it much less half of it for his mistake! I do all the grocery shopping which runs us another $300-$400 a month. I do all the cleaning and all the yardwork while he sits and plays his video game.

So I'm paying an extra $1200 a month, when it should only be half that because of no help from him and I'm doing everything around the house and HE gets a say on having his daughter live with us??? Great so then I can also pay for her!

May I ask .....since your basically paying all the bills anyway ... Why is he with you ? What qualities does have that is worth you staying with him ?

Just because I've been with him so long. Sure, he makes me laugh and he can be fun, he's just not responsible in the least.

Tough decision. I like the monthly amount that you'd like to ask her for. And I like the suggestion of having a serious discussion establishing rules and time frames.
If he feels that all she needs is to be away from her mother and to find herself, then give it a timeframe for changes to occur and if nothing changes, then no reason for her not to find other living arrangements.

I'm pretty sure asking her to pay $200 in rent would give her reason enough not to come up here. She's not paying anything living with her mother and mother's boyfriend. Of course, I can see H saying that I'm being unreasonable asking her to pay any rent when she has no job. So how did she pay for her tattoo? How about gas in her car? Getting her hair dyed from blond to brown? All that makeup she has?

And getting her away from her mother has nothing to do with her well being. Her mother doesn't have a fit when she goes out with friends until all hours or spends the night somewhere. Her mom pushed her so hard to have this degree at 18, yet she didn't accomplish that and her mom hasn't pushed her any further nor has she pushed her out of the house. I think her mom wants to be her buddy and doesn't want her buddy to leave.

I believe, from what you say, that you should maybe think about therapy for the two of you before you agree to this...

It seems to me that your financial decisions (not you personally, but how things are split) are not quite right and you have some resentment for that, in addition to how the house chores are split.
You also should maybe figure out if he's doing this simply to prove a point to his ex-wife...I think that needs to be brought to the forefront, too.

How will you make her pay her portion? Will you both agree on what is to be done about consequences?

This is, indeed, difficult. I can see both his point and your point as far as having his daughter live with you. And, no offense, but you do see how this marriage is affecting you, right?

Your house, your rules

I hear you about how she's spending currently.

The whole point is to stop her from even coming when we tell her that she needs to pay $200/month! He'll say that she has no way to pay it and she can pay it off by doing chores or cooking dinner. No, I want to do the housework so that it gets done right. I actually enjoy cleaning and I am thorough at it.

Having her here isn't going to change the way she thinks. It isn't going to mean they spend more time together. Just like it is when she comes up to visit for a weekend and he'll sit and play his video game for hours, coming out to grab a beer or see what's going on and then go back and play some more. Then come out to cook and keep going back and forth between the game and the kitchen. Finally he may turn off the computer and come and hang out, but he's not going to spend anymore time with her if she's living here full time than he would on a visit.

This post leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Sorry, or not so sorry to play devil's advocate.

I think you're selfish to attempt to intervene in a relationship issue between a father and daughter when he's trying to help her. And you haven't even given him a chance to help her.

You entered into this relationship knowing full well he had a kid. I don't care how long she has, or has not lived or interacted with him.

It's his flesh and blood.

Period.

It would indeed be a constructive step to support him by reminding him kindly that consistently interacting with his daughter would likely be of immense value to her.

Why are you married to him?

I agree under normal circumstances. But in this situation she is the only one paying bills and running household while he drinks and plays games. Under these conditions it's too much to bring another adult for mapper to take care

And they're married for richer or poorer

That's true. But those times when women had to stay with abusive or cheating or neglectful husbands are over.

For richer or for poorer doesn't include financially supporting adult family members. It also doesn't say in the vows that husband will hold no responsibilities and everything will be on wife's shoulders. This is kind of sexist.

I think he simply wants to stick it to her mother that if she was with him she'd do so much better. She has not asked to come and live with us, nor has there even been an inkling that that's what she wants to do. It's like he's trying to bribe her to come up to show her how awesome it would be here. He even said that he wants to have over his coworker and his girlfriend who were over when daughter was here earlier this year. They are both 25 (way younger than us) but daughter immediately LOVED the girl because she was hip and older than her. H even says to me that maybe he can ply his daughter to come up here by telling her that this girl would come over one night!

We have been planning this long weekend for the two of us for 6 months now. We are leaving in 10 days, airplane tickets in hand. Last night he tells me (after a few drinks) "I was thinking of asking her to come with us, but it's kind of last minute so it probably wouldn't work out". Why on earth would you all of a sudden decide that she needs to join us simply because she's not doing anything else like going to school or working? Yes, let's reward her for not doing anything with her life! And let's rework all our own plans to include her! How is taking her on vacation helping her?

He's had PLENTY of chances and then always blows them off. I don't know how many times he's told her he'll come down and see her, but then never mentions it again or says something came up and he'll go next weekend, and never goes.

When she came up on a fairly regular basis when she was 14/15 he'd spend a majority of that weekend off doing his own thing. When she was 14 we went to pick her up and came home and as soon as we walked through the door at 11AM he said to us "I'm going to be downstairs in the garage working on my motorcycle most of the afternoon so you girls can entertain yourselves". Wow, really? You get less than 48 hours with her and you are going to work on your motorcycle and pawn her off on me? Then he finished up with that around 4PM, sat with us for about 10 minutes before going and taking a 1 hour bath. Didn't come down afterwards , but went and laid down for about a 3 hour nap! I had to send her to go wake him up at 8 so we could go out for dinner. Came home and we played interactive video games for a bit. He started drinking and drank all night. The next day he couldn't even get off the couch and take her back to her mother's. I had to do it!

This, not always to this extreme, is what it's like when she visits. He has her come up for a weekend, but he's got to work on Saturday (so why did he ask her to come up knowing he'll be gone for 10 hours?) so her and I get to hang out together all day while he gets the free pass of being at work. Then he comes home and has to chill on the computer and maybe spends 2 hours on the couch watching tv with her. So if he can't interact much with her when she visits for a weekend, then how the hell is he going to change her life if she moves here????

It sounds like you have an enormous amount of resentment towards your husband, and particularly about the concept of having his daughter at your house. And it must have been extremely upsetting to you when she came regularly 3-4 years ago, considering your detailed recollections of those days.