My husband or my kids?

Hello everyone. I'm new to these forums and I need some advice. Both my husband and I are in our early 50s. I had 2 sons from my first marriage and he had a daughter from a previous relationship. My sons are 26 and 28 and his daughter is 26. We've been together some 20 years or so and married for the past 11. We seem to but heads a lot these days over our kids, specifically my sons. Here's the deal. My youngest son is in a relationship with a girl and they are constantly fussing or falling out. Every time they have an argument he wants to come move back home with us but then a few weeks later he's right back there with her. He doesn't' work but does food deliveries for money. My husband says that he's tired of him using our place like it's got a revolving door on it and every time him and the gf have a falling out he wants to move back home. Earlier this year they had a major falling out and that ended up with my son being arrested for a few days. As a condition of his release he had to wear an ankle monitoring device and stay away from his apartment. Within a few days he and the gf were back hanging out together. She didn't go to court so a bunch of the charges were dropped especially the restraining order so he moved back in with her. Several weeks ago he comes here saying he's tired of her, yet again, and he wants to come back to our house. My husband looked him square in the face and told him "this is your last time coming back here." Every time he comes back home my husband demands that he pay something in rent. I just don't think you should be made to pay in a house you grew up in. My husband has this saying, "you have to pay where you stay." My youngest loves weed and my husband hates it. Even though it is now mainstream he doesn't want that smell in our house so every time my son comes and he smells like weed he tells him to leave.

Now my oldest son has had troubles since he was a teenager. He started running with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble. So much so that by the time he was 16 he was already a felon. He now has two kids by two different women that he doesn't support at all. His youngest child's mom won't even let us see the little girl who is now 4 years old. And he doesn't have the best of relationships with his oldest child's mom now either. Earlier this year was his oldest child's 6th birthday and she was having a party and one of those indoor family play places. Video games, ball pits, activities, etc. And surprisingly his youngest child's mom agreed to bring his other daughter too. So we were excited to finally see her again. My son got angry with his youngest child's mom because she was a little late getting to the party so when she got there they were sitting on one of the tables in the eating area and exchanged a few words back and forth. When he got up to walk away his other child's mom said something to the effect of "you don't be talking to your baby momma that way." So now he and his other child's mom are now exchanging words. When the girl's new boyfriend saw what was going on he got up into my son's face. My husband jumped in between them to break it up but someone threw a punch and an all out brawl started right in the play center. The managers of the center called to cops and we managed to get everyone outside in the parking lot.
When the cops got there they put my son in handcuffs to calm him down. Some kind of way he managed to get close enough to his oldest child's mom and he spit on her right in front of the cops.
So at that point they had no choice but to arrest him. My husband seemed to be siding with the girls instead of with me and he was going around to everyone asking if they were okay and even went to the managers of the place and apologized for my son's behavior. It was like he had no concern for my son and how he was treated. He even asked one of the cops "had he not spit", the cops turned to him and said "had he not spit we would have just let him go since we didn't see what happened inside the facility." He said at that point it became an assault which we witnessed. So now the oldest child's mom is now refusing to let us see that little girl. We haven't seen her since May. And this was a little girl that we have been getting every other weekend since she was about a month old. Again, she's 6 now and we love her to death.

My oldest son has been renting a room in some guy's house and he doesn't work either. He sells drugs on the side to make money. A few weeks ago the guy's daughter came to the house and told everyone there they had till the end of the day to pack their stuff and leave because her mom was getting released from prision and she was coming back to the house. Sop that threw him into limbo too as to where he was going to go. He said he found another place but the guy he was going to rent a room from kept dragging his feet as to when my oldest son could move in. This past Sunday while my husband was at his parent's house my oldest sone came back to our house. We have a 3 bedroom house and when all the kids moved out a few years ago we converted one of the bedrooms into a room for the oldest granddaughter and my husband's daughter's child. She had a baby a little more than a year ago so in that one bedroom is a bed for the 6 year old and a crib for the 18 month old. It's fixed up for two little girls. The other bedroom because our junk room. We just throw stuff in there and keep the door closed. Now that the youngest son moved back in he went into that room and straightened it up and put a big air mattress on the floor to sleep on. So both the boys are sharing that one room. When one son is here the other one sleeps somewhere else for the night and they sort of alternate nights. My husband feels that if you can find somewhere to go a few nights a week then you can find somewhere to go 7 nights a week. Not only does he want the boys to pay rent to live here he also wants to give them an end date to get their stuff together and get out and leave.

But now here's the kicker. Back when his daughter was pregnant and nearing the end of the pregnancy he allowed her to move back in with us "temporarily" because her child's father wasn't living with her and he moved out of state. She had her own place with a roommate but the roommate doesn't drive. My husband's daughter has a car and works but she didn't want to take the chance of going into labor at home and not being able to get to the hospital. So, my husband was going to be responsible for getting her to the hospital when it was time to deliver. She came and within a a week or two she went into labor. She was supposed to stay about a month after the baby was born just to recoop from delivering and for us to show her how to care for a baby then she was going to go back to her place. But her birth was not natural due to some complications so she had to have an emergency c-section. So that meant she had to stay with us a little monger until she was able to go home and take care of herself and the baby. My husband didn't require her to pay rent but he expects my sons to pay rent. How is this fair?

As a mother how can I explain to my husband that he is being too hard on my sons compared to his daughter? Sorry for the length of this.

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

Well, I'll try to be gentle, but this is what I think.

His daughter was pregnant, her roommate didn't drive. She might (or might not) have made some poor decisions, but she had a job. And was living on her own until she feared for her pregnancy. Once she was able to, she moved back out.

I'm sorry, but for me, that's nothing like your sons. I know you love them, but there's loving your children, then there's enabling poor decisions and bad behaviour. I am far from perfect, but I would have been far too afraid of my mother's disapproval to behave as you've described- I'm older than you, and if my mom was alive, I'd still be just as afraid of disappointing her as if I were ten. I doubt she would have tolerated anything like what you've described. Doesn't mean she wouldn't have loved me; but she wouldn't have put up with that kind of stuff.

If I were your husband, we'd be having the same fight- or more. Those young men need to start taking some responsibility for their actions; they're adults. Sometimes those you love make bad life choices, and until they're ready to stop making them, then there's not much you can do. I've had to watch people I care about slide into all sorts of trouble, but until they're ready to pull themselves out, I'm not going to subsidize bad choices that they know are bad. I'd gently suggest that letting them live at home isn't helping them, it's just enabling them to not become better men.