Hi folks,
This is my first time posting instead of just lurking, but I think I've reached the point where if I don't get some help I'll be leaving my husband. I know that sounds rather dramatic, but I've been trying to deal with the same handful of problems for almost three years now, to little avail. I'll start by giving some background on my situation and give some insight on why I have hit this point. Apologies if this is long.

I'm 33 years old, currently living in Ohio, but from Missouri. All of my family, friends, everything is still in Missouri, I am in Ohio because that's where my husband, (age 45) is from, along with his now, 15 year old daughter. He and I met through some mutual friends and dated long distance for almost five years before we got married. In that span of time I experienced several severe tmj flairup that lasted several months each, three back surgeries, a removed gallbladder, major nerve damage, and a couple of other things that have left me a chronic pain chick. Through all of this my husband was with me and very supportive and loving. I managed to keep working, but all of the physical trauma and exhausting pain threw me into a very dark depression that I couldn't figure out how to get out of. Eventually, through careful research I was able to get a solid handle on it and regain a normal life. Partly due to the love from my family and husband, but a large part was thanks to Elmo, my now 18 year old spider monkey. He has been with me since he was eight months old and as far as I'm concerned, he's my son. I've done everything for him that a mother would do for a child she didn't give birth to. He is my boy, and knowing I couldn't be with him was what drove me to do my therapy and everything I could in order to walk well enough to take care of him.
As a side note, my family took care of Elmo while I was down and they see to his needs now.

My husband has known all along that Elmo and I are a package deal. I never once made a secret of it. If Elmo didn't like the guy I was dating, then we broke up. I made a commitment to his care and well being and I take it very seriously. My husband also knew that I had no desire to have my own kids or be any sort of parent to a human. He frequently assured me that I wouldn't have to take on a mother roll with his kid. She has a mom and I didn't want to be one. So, I wasn't terribly concerned about being forced into such a roll since I was told I wouldn't have to be. At this point I think a little background on the kid in question is valuable. She's a 15 year old uber Catholic just like her mother and a polar opposite of me. She is not a self starter by any means, and is unnaturally fearful of anything new. She does nothing that requires the least bit of effort. Case in point, she won't eat fruit that requires slicing unless someone else has done it. Not because she has had a bad experience with a knife, but because it requires effort. I can recall an episode when she didn't want to take her own hotdog off the Forman grill because it was hot. To which I replied, it would feel hot to me as well, but I'm not the hungry one. Now, had she been six when that happened, I would have gladly taken it off for her, but this happened when she was almost 14. The only reason she asked is because everything is done for her by her mother and as much as I love him, her father is just as guilty. If she so much as looks confused or
gets frustrated, the problem is solved for her. And I don't blame her for expecting it, after all it is how she was raised. But, it's long past time to grow up. I think she could do it in spite of her mother if her father wasn't so afraid of pushing her away. His kid has a half sister that is a lot older because their uber religious mother got knocked up when she was a teen, and my husband raised the older one like his own child. Well, she turned her back on him and treats him badly, only comes around when she wants money, and despite my efforts to bring us all together, lied horribly to me right before our wedding, nearly stopping it. So, she is less than nothing to me. At 21 she knew full well the difference between the truth and not, I will never believe she "made a mistake" as my husband says. Which is one of our core problems. No matter how I'm treated by the kid or the older one, it's one of three things; I'm either trying to compete, it's all in my head, or, I'm too critical. Any time I bring up an issue, those are my husband's go to lines and it never gets any farther than yelling and me crying.

Which brings us to the present times. Currently, I'm working only part time while I wait for my full time job to start but I'm keeping my days very full as to not think about Elmo. Because I don't have Elmo. Because the laws in this horrible state changed, and it is no longer safe to have him here. Which works out for my husband, because his ex decided to throw a huge hissy fit when his kid whined to her that she wasn't sure she was ok with him being in the house. Never mind the fact that the year before we got married I couldn't pry him out of her arms. Suddenly things had changed, and despite telling me she was ok with it and excited to have him here, she told both her mom and dad that she was worried and didn't want him here. I couldn't believe it. I was hurt, badly. I thought she and I had a decent, honest relationship up to that point. It all happened right around the time I learned that despite me being able to legally keep him in the city, the tiny suburb we are in changed the law without public knowledge. I was beyond crushed. I had been working for a full year to get a room ready for Elmo and get all the right licenses squared away. And now there's a room ready for my boy, but he isn't there. I fell into a darkness that I had never known. For the first three weeks, my husband was there for me as I did little but cry. He was very kind to me for a while, but when I mentioned that it really hurt me that his kid lied to me, he said she would never lie and was protecting my feelings. But she told me something she knew she didn't feel was true. A lie. But, if you ask my husband she never lies or manipulates. To which end, I bottle it up now and the end result is a growing resentment. Not only towards her, but towards my husband as well.
So, when I was going through the worst of my depression, I started avoiding his kid. I didn't feel like I could trust myself not to yell at her, and I don't believe in lashing out at someone for nothing. I was ok with that way of dealing with it and I was trying to work out what I wanted to do about the situation, butaafter a few weeks, my husband wasn't. I will never forget being at work and getting a text from himin rresponse to what I planned to do after work. I told him I just wanted to be alone, and his response was,"get over it, it's not our fault. "
That was very tough to take as he was unwilling to move somewhere I could have Elmo in two instead of four years, and despite him suggesting that I could move back for a year or so, when I decided that was the least horrible path, he changed his mind and lost it. So I'm here. Completely devastated on the inside. Not to mention the chronic pain, and a handful of other mountains I have to climb.But, I never talk about Elmo and I never yell at her.

Which brings me to last night. I was sitting on the couch watching Mad Men, my husband was already home, so he knew I was really watching it, when his kid came over. They both started talking loudly about her day, while I was straining to hear the tv. Then, my husband tells her to go get one 9f their games, they set it up right in front of me on the floor and began reading the instructions loudly. I couldn't believe how rude it was. He knew I was into the show. She has an entire room they could use, but I might as well have been invisible for all the politeness I was shown. It wasn't until I picked up my knitting and headed to our bedroom that he said,"we weren't going to play till your show was done" And, I replied with,"it's cool, you're already set up". And I went up to our room. Which sucks, but she has no limit on tv time, and for someone with a lot of nerve damage and easily over stimulated, a lot of noise is impossible to handle for long stretches. The logical thing is to ask to turn the tv off, as no one needs tv from the time they get up till the time they go to bed, but that doesn't work. The handful of times I've tried that, I get the excuse parade from my husband. She had a lot of homework today, she worked hard (yeah right!) today, and so on. So, it's just easier if I remove myself and fill my needs. Plus, I've always been of the mind that if someone has something first, then you wait your turn. When I do this when it's just my husband, he either doesn't notice right way, or he's busy too, so it's ok. But, when his kid is here, and it happened last night, he comes flying up the stairs and asks me what's wrong. I was a little hurt and angry that they had been so rude, so I told him they had been very rude, and they had pushed me out. Because that's his other go to fight point with me; if I say I don't feel included, he tells me that I'm the reason I feel that way. Never once has he ever taken responsibility for the actions Itell him make me feel left out. Because I'm not like the two of them in a lot of ways, it's my fault. So, I feel trapped. He tells me I can be myself, but he doesn't pay me much attention when I'm over 110 pounds, he doesn't like my curly hair, he doesn't want me to be honest with his kid about anything because if she gets upset she might pull away, he doesn't like the two ferrets I've acquired to try and fill the need for animal companionship. He doesn't seem to have much good to say about anything that's truly me. He doesn't like the music I like, he doesn't like my taste in clothes. So, I find it hard to believe I'm allowed to be myself. I can't say anything I really believe to his kid, as she has gotten extremely worked up over nothing in the past. So, why does he think I would want to be in that situation? Because he thinks I am supposed to want to mother his kid. He flat out told me last night that if I didn't want to be a mother, I shouldn't have married him. But he told me I didn't have to be. I don't know what to do.