Stepson demanded I contribute to his college fund even though he refuses family therapy and says I’m not his family. But when I said no, he revealed his father told him that I’m the reason his parents can’t get back together.

My 39M and my wife Emily, 38F, have been married for 12 years. Emily has a son, James, 17, from a previous relationship with Dan. Emily left Dan when she caught him cheating with a coworker. They shared 50/50 custody of James.

I met Emily about a year after she had left Dan. A year later, Dan married his affair partner and Emily and I got married soon after. James never really bonded to me. I admit that I tried a little too hard initially to get him to like me, but backed off when I realized I was trying too hard and it was having the opposite impact. Over the years, we’ve built a tense acceptance of sorts, if that makes sense.

Emily and I have three kids, 10F, 7M, and 4M. James doesn’t have a good relationship with them either. He bonds well with Dan’s sons, but doesn’t like spending much time with our kids. He isn’t mean to them, but just ignores them mostly. The eldest two now just avoid him when he is home.

Emily and I both have well-paying jobs, and early on, we decided that I would contribute 80% to our trio’s college fund, and Emily would do 20% because she would contribute 100% to James’s college fund. We didn’t know if Dan was making any such arrangements on his end, but we thought that at least this way James would have something instead of nothing.

Emily recently sat him down to talk to him about his college fund. He seemed happy with the financial help he was going to get. He went off to Dan’s for the weekend and when he came back he asked Emily about our kids’ college funds. When he learned that the amount was fairly higher than his, he was upset.

When he asked about the disparity, Emily told him about our college fund setup. He was furious to know that I hadn’t contributed to his college fund. He said that I was just pretending to play family with him all these years, that I really didn’t care about him and was heartless.

Emily suggests that we could take some money out of our youngest fund and give it to James and that she would add it back over time, but she said that it’s my call and she won’t pressurize me either way and would accept whatever I decided.

Quite frankly, I don’t want to do it. James idolizes his father even now that he knows he cheated on his mother. I could deal with his crappy behavior with me, but I never understood his attitude towards our kids. We even tried going to family therapy. He refused to go because I wasn’t his family. Now when he needs money, suddenly I am family.

I know I am perhaps being petty, but I don’t want to give him the money.

Edit / clarifications

I don’t hate that James idolizes his father. I hate that he blames his mother for their family breaking up.

When Emily and I had gotten together, she wanted to take him to therapy, but Dan refused. Later too, therapy was denied multiple times by Dan. Last year when James was 17, he himself refused, saying I wasn’t family.

We never excluded James from birthdays or holidays. He always got the same as our kids. For his 11th birthday, we even stayed home while he went to Disney with Dan’s kids.

The college funds started after our daughter was born. Emily couldn’t start one for James earlier as she was a SAHM with Dan. Yes, he has been shortchanged, and Emily will make up the deficit, but it still won’t match exactly.

Update

This weekend we had a long sit-down talk with James. He admitted many things:

Dan had told him from early on that Emily would come back if not for me.

Dan painted me as the obstacle keeping them apart.

When Dan remarried, he told James it was to make Emily jealous.

When Emily and I married, Dan told James it was to keep her away from him forever.

When Emily got pregnant with our daughter, Dan told James that now his family was “destroyed forever.”

Dan told James therapy was a ruse to send him away so we could have a happy family without him.

James admitted he acted cold with us to convince Emily to leave us. He confessed he knows now we aren’t evil, but still blames me for his parents not being together. He said he will always hate me, and he will never like my kids either because they are mine. He said after he leaves for college, he plans to cut off contact with all of us, maybe reconnect with his mother when he feels ready to forgive her.

Our decision

I will not be contributing to James’s college fund.

Emily will continue with what she has saved for him.

We will stop pushing for therapy.

We will no longer try to force a relationship.

We’ve accepted that we’ve done everything we could. Now it’s time to focus on the children who do want us in their lives, and on our own healing as a family.