Letting my husband lead is super easy almost all the time; he's a very competent and doting man.

But in the first year of marriage, we had many tearful arguments about expectations for my 12-year-old stepson. He truly has some of the worst manners I've seen -- from embarrassing behaviors at social gatherings (i.e. shouting/reaching over people, complaining about a gift instead of saying thank you, being mean to little kids) to rudeness at home (i.e. calling his dad stupid, calling me a "hideous old hag") to really poor hygiene and life skills (i.e. wearing the same clothes without showering for a week, refusing to do basic chores like dishes).

The reality is that probably 80% of his behaviors at 12 are things my 4-year-old knows better than to do/say, so if I held him to the same rules as our other kids I would literally be correcting him 80% of the time. My husband literally doesn't notice his behaviors, or thinks they're funny, etc, stepson argues with me domineeringly, husband doesn't back me up, tension ensues.

So I finally decided to surrender discipline and parenting of my stepson entirely to my husband. I focus on being warm and gentle and loving and I ignore any bad behaviors. I try to appreciate and compliment my stepson, bake treats, do little acts of service, etc. Things have been better overall....

But it's hard. The problems are

1) I can let things go and let things go, but after five days of listening to my stepson steamroll everyone, demand things, and refuse to clean up, my warm gentle feminine soft lovingness is just gone. I end up just sitting there avoiding speaking so I don't snap and WILLING myself to be light and sweet and feminine.

2) I can keep my mouth shut and ignore everything I can, but to truly follow my husband's lead I would have to align with him. I.e. sometimes my stepson will say something that is super rude and insulting, but my husband laughs as if it's cute/funny. I DO NOT find it cute/funny, I find it appalling (see examples above) but I try to make myself smile as if I find it funny too. It feels so fake though and leaves me even more angry inside than before. But it feels horrible to emasculate my husband by showing him even with my nonverbals that i disapprove of his parenting.

Either I ruin the mood by being the one person to set a boundary (bitch) or I bite my tongue and instead end up having a cold distant tone without anyone knowing why (bitch) or I somehow MAKE myself be enthusiastically warm/loving/sweet when in reality I feel mad and disrespected.

HOW do you surrender around something that feels super charged and that's really negatively affecting you?