Hello all, I have only posted in the home forums before, but I found this one through googling around and I needed to vent....

First the history....I have been married to my wife for 6 years and we have been together for 8 years. My Stepson's Dad has lived several States away throughout this whole time and though loving, has not been present physically very often. As a result I took on the day to day role of Dad. Personally I don't believe that psycho mumbo jumbo that a StepParent can't Parent a child. IMHO, if you are a custodial parent, especially in my case where it was 300+ days of the year, and you provide for that child and care for them....then you are absolutely able to parent them.

All went well for most of the years. My wife and I have sacrificed tons for him, staying in a town we both haven't wanted to be in for years and years, buying a house in a neighborhood and part of town we didn't want to live in (so he could stay in the school district), and even put off having any more children until he was 16 so as to make sure he was always our focus.

I did tons of things with him to show him my love, fishing, biking, took him to every sports practice, went to every school open house, did it all. Honestly I consider my relationship to be much closer to that of an adoptive parent than a step parent because of the physical absence of Bio Dad and the relationship we had.

He was always lazy like most kids are but all in all things went pretty good 90% of the time. Then these last couple of years started and the teenage boy idiocy began (which I remember well starting at age 15). More rebellious and mouthy, but nothing most of us didn't do at that age. Then this last year, things really ramped up. He became very vocal about his unwillingness to do chores or go by rules, etc, became much more sneaky and underhanded.

I work from home, so I am the one that usually catches him with his various inappropriate computer activity, etc.

Well, in the course of the last year we've had the "adult content" on the computer (this began at 14 and despite tons of warnings/groundings and monitoring software, he kept at it), Skype-ing underage girls who were doing inappropriate things and saving those pictures on our computer, and fairly heavy marijuana use.

As all of this played out, every time he'd get in trouble there would be some emotional outburst, about his Dad's absence, about me "picking on him too much", or something else. Just like most of us, I do cut up and tease, but never maliciously or harmfully. So we got him a therapist to talk to and at her advise, I backed off of him for say 6-9 months, somewhere in there. Despite my better judgment and instinct, I did not give out any chores or do anything at all "parenty". I'm also the cook and still prepared dinner every night, bought him his special requests-including the newfound vegetarianism (select veg at that), etc. Then about 2 mos ago when we find the marijuana, he decides to take that as his chance to tell everyone in the family how I have ruined his psyche and he's "broken" because of me.

He's spewed this to every member of the family repeatedly. He has even told his Mom that she should "choose" between he and I. It literally sounds like something a 2 year old would do. But it continues to play on and the emotional wear and tear on myself and especially on my wife. No matter how hard we try, we can't get past or understand how this child that we raised and provided for very well (and we did not let him run free like many parents these days do) has turned out to be so evil and hateful.

He's so ridiculous with this that he won't even get out of the car if he comes to our house with his step-Grandmother (oh yeah, he's moved out to his Grandparents house too).

I've loved this kid like he was my own for all these years and though I know my bond with my 3 month old daughter is different, my love for him has always been as close as you can feel for a child you didn't raise from birth.

And I know we have a variety of "real" factors at play...the Dad's "abandonement", the drugs, the new baby, etc.....but at 17 years old, even with the lack of brain function that occurs at that age, there should be some level of respect and perspective. This has taken on a ridiculous life of its own and it's getting to the point that my love has gone to dislike and I'm starting to feel even worse than that. I honestly am hoping someone hurts him as bad as he has his Mother and I at this point. He has even acknowledged to her that he knows he is hurting her emotionally and financially and he doesn't care. I'm really starting to think that he has just somehow decided to be a bad, almost evil person, and that's absolutely terrifying.