Wedding Bells

     In 2 weeks, I'm getting married to Beau. We are legally married already, but I don't consider it official until after the wedding. But I feel scared for the future of our relationship. Beau is actually pretty immature in a lot of ways. He is like a stuck teenager screaming out "Don't tell me what to do." He takes everything I say to him as judgment instead of an attempt to help. Mature people take correction so they can learn and grow. He gets upset by any correction I try to give and takes it as criticism.

    Most of our conflict has been about his daughter. Stella is 15 years old now, but this has been going on since she started going through puberty. Her mom has abandoned her completely, but her dad just isn't present. It's partly his ADD and poor sleep, but primarily it's his avoidant nature. He avoids most interaction with her unless it can be completely positive. I feel disrespected and hurt because he isn't taking me seriously. I'm in the mental health field and I've raised 4 kids successfully. I believe I deserve credit for my knowledge in this area. He has never once asked me what I think he should do with his daughter. In fact, he's mostly told me to stay out of it and he has it handled. 

    What I see in her is a child who is failing and screaming out for attention. She doesn't eat properly. She doesn't get enough sleep. She is failing or doing poorly in almost every class. I told him awhile ago she needed someone to check in on her every day, ask her what she ate, and what her homework is. Then she needs to be supervised while she does her homework. He allows her to come home, toss her bookbag at the bottom of the stairs and check out. She often sleeps all evening, which screws her sleep up even more. Her labs show she isn't taking care of herself. 

    Beau claims not to intervene because he says the more a parent tightens their grip, the more kids rebell. He has no grip on his kids, but yet Stella is still doing things to rebell. For example, I found a vape in her purse. I gave it to Beau while he was working on Adi's car. He sat in on the seat next to him. Stella came out to talk to him, saw the vape, and snatched it back and ran to her room with it. Beau did absolutely nothing. He told me it was empty. I really thought that was going to be the thing that launched him into action, but I guess he felt guilty about his own vaping and didn't want to say anything. I ended up texting her an article about nicotine's harmful effects on the teen brain and told her I expect her to get rid of the vapes.

    My pattern in relationships is to lower the bar, drop my expectations, and just take care of stuff myself so I can avoid being angry. I never really expect change. However, maybe I should expect change. Kay says I should at least expect him to care about my feelings. I don't like expressing my feelings because I've been told since a young age that being out of control with emotions leads to destruction and annoys the hell out of everyone around you. I don't want to annoy Beau with my feelings, but he sees it in my face and my lack of affection. He draws it out of me, but doesn't like what I say. 

    This morning, he asked me what was wrong. I told him it really upset me that he expressed ignorance about doing our vows again at our wedding. All wedding ceremonies involve vows, whether they are written by the couple or the officiant asks the couple to repeat what she says. To me, it seemed like he didn't want to say them again because he isn't feeling it. I'm sure all the bringing up Stella is pissing him off.

    Another big point of contention is that he has not looked for another job. He says he is going to, but then doesn't put a foot forward. He told me he was applying for a day shift job at his company recently. I kept reminding him every day to apply, which annoyed him. Finally, I'm pretty sure he lied to me that he already did apply. The job got taken and he was never interviewed. I really doubt he applied.

    One thing that I tend to do is do more and more things on my own without expecting more of my partner. I usually just get let down and disappointed when I have expectations of someone else. He tells me not to worry about it with Stella, but I'm very worried about it. I'm a mental health professional and I'm watching his daughter decline. She has some ups and downs and maybe she will figure it all out on her own, but she could also end up with chronic health conditions from not eating and sleeping properly.