Maybe I'm having a parimenopausal moment (Hah) but I almost cried this afternoon reading all your comments and thinking that you're all people going through a similiar situation and you know know me from adam but you took the time to read my posts and write something to help me. Thank you so much. I'm so glad I found this site. I think right now i'm trying to frame things in a new way. I just dodged a major bullet! it's called PreTeen Stepdaughter! also the ex who has issues (I'm being nice). I've been given permission, no actually our counselor told my husband to stop bringing me into this mess. He told my husband to handle it himself and to get my input when it will really effect me otherwise leave me out of it. Thats actually kind of awesome considering the mess that's been happening over these last few months. I guess what i'm saying is I went from feeling sorry for myself to feeling sooo happy that I get to get out! I can do nice things for myself, contribute to my stepdaughter when I want and the rest of the time I don't have to deal with her or her mom. IT's actually kind of amazing and I plan to enjoy it. My husband just sent me a long email telling me that he's looking forward to it too, to more 'us' time and that he was wrong to expect me to stay involved in the same way when the whole point is for him to handle things. So he's obviously been thinking about things too. He made me laugh too. HE said basically it used to be '4ever does everything and knows nothing' (about the ex) and then it became '4ever does everything and knows everything' and then the counselor said '4ever should know nothing' and now my husband totally gets why it can't go back to '4ever does everything and knows nothing' he said it should be '4ever does what she feels like doing and knows nothing' "about my lunatic ex wife" He actually wrote that and called her a lunatic! I responded and said that all sounds good and left it at that. He's not going to draw me into a bash session about her even though I don't think he was trying to it's just old habits. Anyway I'm rambling and I've already taken up enough space. I'll take a break for a while. I jsut wanted to thank you for all your advice and for helping me see my situation in a new way.