Things have been going pretty good around the house, but last night we ended up addressing the 'elephant in the room'.  There's so much more to the evening, but I won't hash it all out here.  I've been processing it all this morning and looking to Brene Brown for a bit of clarity and inspiration.

“It’s not about ‘what can I accomplish?’ but ‘what do I want to accomplish?’ Paradigm shift.”

~ Brene Brown

 My husband (of  1 year) was chose to go on a trip to Alaska. It is a trip of a lifetime. He can only take one person with him. He chose his youngest daughter(17 ) to go instead of me. But she Is in school and cannot go. So now I am elected to go and I am feeling very sad. This is not the first time this has happened either. I never had kids  and I’m not good at dealing with them. He has four kids with his first wife. Only one of the four pretends to like me. The other three Do not hide the fact that they do not like me.

I knew something big was coming with SD17 (SD16...she had a birthday) and so did many of you STalkers following my blog posts. If you called it....consider this story an affirmation of your perceptive awesomeness and ability to stop BS in it's tracks.  If you didn't see it coming and are still giving your self-destructive teens the benefit of the doubt...well, let this be a cautionary tale!  If you don't have time or energy to read this long post in its entirety, jump to the bottom for the MORAL OF THE STORY. 

Here we go...

My boyfriend and I have been together a year and are planning for marriage with the appropriate prenup as we both have been married before. We are compatible in many different ways and more so than any other man. He is retired military. He has 1 child, a daughter and she is 30. He and is first wife divorced amicably. He was a career military man. Good provider but not really totally involved with her raising.

I guess I deleted the post about SD14 getting her own way and she's been staying at her mom's for the last 2 months, which is fine by me except that it's breaking my husbands heart. 

I was glad to see I'm not the only post deleter - sometimes other people in the family use my laptop and it would be a total nightmare if SD11 saw any of my posts about her sister, she would hate me forever. 

So here's the situation:

Nothing has really changed since my last post. SD goes back and forth from being sweet to being a turd. DH and I haven’t gone over our expectations with her still but she also hasn’t been with us much. She spent her 2 week Winter break with BM and has been a Negative Nancy since. Even to the point that DH has mentioned it to her and doesn’t enjoy being with her when she’s like that. 

So my DH gets home on the 23rd of December around 7pm. Of course we'll be getting monster and princess the next day because he hasn't seen them in a while. He agreed to take them for 8 days and didn't tell me. Now I understand that it's been a while and he wants to see them, but I can't stand the way that he doesn't talk to me about anything!! We were supposed to go out and get a motel room for new years eve (no kids) and spend a nice night in the quiet together and now we'll have skids instead.

My Dh is out of town for the next month for work. He'll be home before Christmas. I didn't realize how much stress my ss3 and sd2 put on me until he was leaving. I was very sad because I love Dh so much, but on the other hand I'm fucking ecstatic because i don't have to be terrorized by his toddlers for A MONTH!!!

Much has changed since my last update.

There's been a bit of a family emergency. A longtime family friend has finally reached the breaking point in her abusive marriage and has run away to our state. She's currently living with FH and FSD for now and they're both glad to have her around both "for her own safety" and FH thinks there should be a live-in woman around now that FSD is getting older (and who better than Aunt M?).

She's currently in one of the guest rooms.

Everyone's thoughts about the living situation have made me think.

Hello everyone! I am new to the site, although I have been reading others post for several weeks and let me say how good it feels to not feel alone in being pushed past the breaking point with SK. Its a breath of fresh air knowing I am not the only person who feels like this! That being said, there's a topic I haven't found much reading on and I'd like some advise so here it goes: