Am I at fault?

We have a blended family. My husband if 20 years came to the relationship with 2 sons, I had a daughter and we have a daughter together.

Recently things have really deteriorated with the eldest son. I have always tried to be a good step mother. Although the second son has never liked me and resent s me being in his mothers place and blames me for the breakup even though his dad and I met 2 years after that relationship ended. Previously the relationship with son 1 was fairly good. There were a lot of things I wasn’t happy about but I kept the peace for my husbands sake. For example when my husband sold him the family business at a massively reduced rate and he never made an effort to make a single repayment. I was upset about this as I saw it as hugely disrespectful to his father but also as the person who had provided the initial start up funds for the business I wanted something back from it. When hubby started the business the sale of it was going to be our retirement funds. Additionally I have been upset that he never acknowledged either sister’s birthday or tried to have a relationship with them. My daughter enjoys pole dancing as a sport, and she has been teaching it and he made derogatory sexualised comments about that. Outside her love of that as a sport she has her own business working in the mental health sector. She started her business herself, with no outside help, that is no financial help from us.

The youngest daughter is on the autism spectrum and has been challenging her entire life. She can be disrespectful to my husband and myself. She has been hospitalised for her mental health and is unable to attend a regular school. She is almost 17 and homeschooled. My step son blames me for this particularly when she has been disrespectful to my husband. I have worked as a special education teacher all my working life and deal with this all the time. I am trying my best to help her with these challenges and for the most part we make progress although it can be difficult to see day to day. I had to leave work 18 months ago when the school said they were unable to deal with her mental health issues. My husband has cut back on his work due to age and health.

My step son would be asked to collect payment for jobs that my husband has done on occasions. When he would collect the payment he would never pass it on. We never worried about it too much although I just never felt it was right. Now that we are living on my husbands part time wage it is very stressful when this happens. My step son has had financial difficulties in the past, due to his wife’s spending and my husband actually worked and let step son keep the money about 6 years ago so they didn’t lose their house, as they had just had their first child. My husband was recovering from shoulder surgery and should not have been doing physical work. He worked unpaid for about 12 months. I was working so financially we had enough for our needs.

My step son would often come to our place with his family and several friends on a Friday and or Saturday night. We would not be given any warning. He would expect me to feed everyone and they would drink. This was not good for me, very stressful. We couldn’t relax in our own home and I struggled to have food on hand to feed everyone. There was never any offer of help, them bringing food to contribute it buying take out etc. We bought take out on occasions when my husband could see I was stressed or simply didn’t have enough food. There was never any offer of money and when asked it was obvious it was resented. I hated those nights especially the drinking. I’ve even had his mates ask to stay the night when they couldn’t drive home. Having a young daughter in the house I wasn’t happy about this. His wife would be angry and stressed as the children needed to go home to their beds. They would often argue about going home. When I finished work this increased to the point where he was bringing alcohol to our place every afternoon after work. My husband was drinking with him and becoming very depressed and I could see personality changes taking place. When I tried to address this with step son he said I was trying to control his father and wouldn’t let him have any fun. I was being treated as the enemy.

My husband was not himself and no longer enjoying the things he previously loved. He was also becoming verbally abusive to myself and our daughter. I could see it was the alcohol. My husband was being to see what I was saying and told him to stop bringing the bourbon around and encouraged his son to stop drinking every day too. His son continued to keep bringing the alcohol and hubby was finding it difficult. He started doing his weights and riding his motorbike and was able to give it up.

I am now being treated like a leper by him and his wife. I used to think she and I had a good relationship. I spent a lot of time with her and the children, often looking after them etc. Now they are both rude to me and I have been told by him I am passive aggressive. He has made comments to my husband that he won’t let me have the house. Hubby and I are great now we don’t have the stress of the constant alcohol and uninvited guests all the time.

I don’t understand why he is behaving like this. He has been very spoilt and it was past time to grow up and I don’t think he wanted appreciated that. But do I deserve to be ignored when we do see them? They hardly let us see the grandchildren, is this right? Is any of this right? Is it my fault?