My friend (who is in recovery and has absolutely turned her life around) says that if you pray for someone every day for two weeks straight, your heart will heal and it will truly change the way you feel about them.

... she's clearly a bigger person than me because I can not for the life of me get myself to do that. But YOU should def give it a try and report back, please.

Get yourself an iPod
iPods are great
You can listen to music email friends surf the web watch favorite tv shows and block out the noise they will only take my iPod from my cold dead hands

Oh my gosh, that's my worst fear. That SS14 will keep coming back after he grows up! Just posted about it.
I will try go to counseling, but it is very stressful. I feel you. But I would rather divorce than be an alcoholic. Don't destroy yourself.
I wish to go to a hotel too every time SS14 is here. And can't imagine my life with him in my face forever. Will see what what the counselor will say about it. Maybe you should go to one too?

Steptalk.org while the man child is there.

I remember you from before, your DH has walks with SS along the beach doesn't he. They're very bonded. I have similar with my SS22 at the moment, I managed to get him settled into a rental with a local family after he flunked his college course and tried to move in with us. He comes round most days to visit DH when he is not working and is profoundly annoying, but not malicious (at the moment) and therefore it feels mean to try to exclude him from the house. Clearly the answer is a relationship for the young men, but these are hard to come by if you laugh like a donkey I guess. My wish for you is please don't drink, it won't solve anything and is not worth it. I agree with doing Steptalk when the guy is there, this helps me a lot. You could also get a separate TV in another room and watch a movie that they would not like. Or have friends in. I would not move out of the home, that's sending out the wrong message, unless absolutely necessary at these times. Just make a parallel life within it. The notion that he comes to yours for peace and quiet would inspire me in your shoes to have a lot of gatherings with friends or associates at the exact times he likes to come by -- this would distract you and put him off at the same time. If he is using internet, then change your package in some way that makes it difficult for him to batten off you. With my SS I had the excuse that I discovered him private browsing and using porn so it was an easy win with DH, now if he's at ours he has to do his web stuff in a separate room from the rest of us and using his own internet connection on his own laptop -- that reduces the attraction of our home massively.

I have two tips that I've actually used myself. (I used to have a horrible relationship with SD12, but now she's living with us, and I do really love her like she were my own!)

The first is to write down three things you like about him every single day. I did mine as posts on here, but they are gone now.

I know that it will be harder then it sounds, especially if you don't like him much. Some of mine for SD12 were "she has blond hair, and I like blond hair" or "my family accepts her" because it was so hard to find things I liked about someone I didn't like! The more I wrote, though, the nicer I managed to be, and the nicer I was, the more she liked me and the nicer she was able to be.

The second tip, is to try to feel sorry for him. That sounds really lame, but last summer, SD12 went through a really hard time, and she needed someone to be there for her.

She asked me to stay with her, I think because there wasn't really anyone else to be there. Anyway, I uprooted myself for a week, and stayed at SD's other home. At the end of that time, I pined for her!!!

I found that by making a list, perhaps just mentally, of people who are important in my life, my boss when at work, my doctor when sick, my parents all the time, my spouse who has my best interests at heart, my son to loves me dearly, etc. I then consider them a part of my life and everyone else is not. I need not consider what they say or do even if they say something about me to another person I know. I'm just not interested.

If you're not on my list I don't care what you're doing - its just not relevant to me. I'm happy for strangers who reach goals and saddened when others have set backs but someone like your step daughter who has the same experiences is still just as irrelevant as the other strangers. She's not on my list.

I put meditations on my mp3 player.

Marijuana

This is a very good question:

I took a training course here at work called "Leadership without authority".

I kid you not, over 75% of the course was applicable to stepparenting. And yes, a portion of the course dealt with how to deal with people who are difficult, even unlikeable.

The teacher, a human resources director of 30 years imparted this lesson that I think is very important. "Do not expect to change people's opionions". In fact, it is better off to not even try. The moment you try, you will encounter resistence and will lose all trust and respect from that person. I know this is difficult to employ when dealing with children, but fundamentaly speaking, it is better to earn someone's trust first before you start trying to influence them. I actually started employing some of these techniques with people that I don't normally get along with. It actually works.

Now, it may not get you to like a person, but it will make a person easier to cope with. The trainer divided people into 4 character types: Introverted/extroverted, people who make decisions based on facts/people who make decisions based on feelings. Depending who you are may affect how you deal with others. For example, I am definetly an introvert who bases his decisions based on fact (well most of the time). I have a hard time dealing with people (like my director for example) who is an extrovert who bases his decisions based on feelings. Now I do like the man, but I HATE having to deal with him because he just won't listen to facts and take my experiences into account. So I have to employ another strategy in order to get him "on my side".

I can't really explain everything I learned in this course in a blog comment but if you get a chance to attend any kind of communication/leadership seminars, try it out!

Yes, it is called a lobotomy. Some in the blended family opposition could use one. }:)