Where's the banana

[bttrfly]

I ask these questions because it is my hope they act as starting points for you to think about this in a different way.

[Ginger1]

I wrote about 5 responses and deleted them all. I just know everyone is saying the same thing. You know what you need to do but are too afraid to do it. I’ll leave you with this.

Is 2 hours ( and I say 2 hours because of your sleeping schedules) of a warm body next to you worth the manipulation, laziness, chaos, hoarding, pretty much disrespect of your home , wants, and needs, money and schedule) worth it?

I would really look inward to see why a warm body for 2 hours is worth sacrificing so much of who you are, what you have built, and your very own pets is worth having a warm body? Like bttfly said, a warm body can be the body of a cat. Im sure if all you need is a warm body, you can find that in someone else who doesn’t require so much sacrifice of yourself.

I’m afraid that you will chose the path of just dealing with it and pretzeling yourself rather than speaking up, being direct, doing what you know you should do, all because of fear. She isn’t changing. So to make this work, you would have to. And I would hate to see you change into someone you don’t want to be in order to avoid confrontation or sacrifice a warm body.

But of course it’s your choice. Your life. And I wish you all the best

[AndrewP]

Thanks everyone. I'm still stuck - perhaps I should be back over on newcomers

S is understandably taking this all very very seriously and is very nervous and scared.

She came up with a plan which will involve us spending more time together and is intending to make an appointment for us to see her therapist. I give it a 60-40 chance that she'll actually do that. She has a hard time making appointments despite a lifetime of doing that. I'm struggling with how to approach that if we do go. I hate to think that I would just use it as a b!tch-session complaining about all of S's shortcomings while taking no ownership of my own. I am certainly not perfect.

After S13 was done with the online portion of his school yesterday we went out for a bit of an adventure and to reconnect. We had a fight at the very beginning which almost aborted the whole thing. I have a lot less patience these days. I'd ordered something online (using money set aside) from a site where S had mentioned that she might also want to order something. The way I remember it was that she was going to look and let me know so that I could order at the same time. 2 weeks pass, nothing happens, so I go ahead on my own. So - I got the "you should have told me", "you never listen to me". When I tried brushing it off as a "you snooze you lose" (losing patience here) then the waterworks started and the hole got deeper. I have gotten tired of always having to consider if S might want to be involved in anything before proceeding and see an old pattern of me doing nothing resurfacing. A pattern that I know was not good for me.

We did end up having a nice day out, accidentally found a restaurant that had a very good gluten free selection and then went back and spent some time at a waterfall we had had one of our first dates at.

When we were out there she did ask if I still wanted to marry her and then said that we needed to wait until we were sure now. I did say - perhaps inappropriately - that we also needed to wait for her to get divorced which got no response. I do think that S is now giving more serious thought which she perhaps had not previously, to the possibility that this may end. A story we can presume that she's had play out numerous times in the past.

If this does end - which the consensus view here is that it should - then at least we'll have been open and given it a solid try rather than me blind-siding her (could be argued that she shouldn't have been surprised) and booting her out. I certainly owe her that along with a commitment on my own part to do my part to see if this can be salvaged.

In other news, S13 has asked his Mom if he can have a changed custody plan and stay with his Dad 50% at 2 weeks on / 2 weeks off. I'm presuming that this sort of thing by a teenager looking for the place with less rules isn't unusual. S didn't seem very perturbed despite the fact that his Dad isn't consistent or attentive in his parenting. Which I just find bizarre. Historically his Dad could only take the boy for at most a weekend here and there due to his out of control behaviour.

S is off now with S13 to go baby-sit. I picked up some plywood yesterday to to some paneling repairs in the front porch and want to try to find enough of S13's wall and floor to set up the ladder and get to some much delayed plaster repairs. S18 still hasn't started his own classes as of yet - he has at least 2 grade levels to complete to get his high-school diploma and is I believe going in an adult learning stream now.

And yes. S is not going to fundamentally change. She wants even more storage to be installed as that is her answer to the clutter. We can probably pick up an extra large used dining room hutch for cheap that will replace the large buffet cabinet. She says that her van is full of things to donate today and that is quite probably true. I am actually pleased and slightly surprised that she is able to let go of things and from the reading I've done on hoarding (thanks to the person who passed that on), having her own the process is about the only way that it can work at all. She is talking about specific larger items now that she also wants to give up.

I still have some clean-up from Thanksgiving to do. There are about 4 containers of open food in the dining room that I was told would be consumed as left-overs but after all this time, they are going to be compost. A fair amount still in the fridge that I can't get a straight answer from S on how she's intending to use it. I expect that there is no actual plan and that in time it will have to be tossed as well.

Even though I'm technically on vacation I'm also putting in a few hours of work to keep on top of things. Getting my books up to date, sending off my ex-wife her monthly cheque. A little bit under 1/2 done those payments now.

I continue to be torn. I think when I was talking about my ex-wife here I described her as that donkey who starved to death between two bales of hay. Simple answers require hard choices but also a lot of pain. If I was the only one being hurt then this would be a lot easier. How will all this play out, doubtless that tale will be told but has not as yet been written.

[kml]

I wonder if S13 is just looking for a place without rules, or looking to spend more time with his father (not unusual in teens of divorce) OR if he's picking up on the tension at home and seeing the old familiar pattern play out and wants no part of it?

Also - if he goes to 50:50 custody how will this affect S's child support? If she loses child support for both kids how much income will she have left coming in?

As for the ordering thing - I do detect a certain passive-aggressiveness to your actions. She said she wanted to order, you gave her time to come up with her order - fine so far. But then when she didn't follow up you went ahead without her instead of just saying "Hey, I'm going to order my thing now, have you got the info on the thing you wanted?" . It seems to be part of a pattern, you wait for her inaction and then get mad about it instead of reminding her. Granted, I'm sure it's annoying with someone as disorganized and forgetful as her. But I also see a little of CMM in your behavior. He might mention something to me - something I might forget about because I'm really busy and have numerous irons in the fire between work and my kids and him and the house - and then be mad at me weeks later because I didn't follow through on it, because I completely forgot about it. The better approach would have been to remind me at an appropriate time - "hey, remember you said we could switch those pictures in the dining room, would today be a good day to do that?" I don't have ADD but stuff DOES fall off my radar because I'm juggling so many balls and my priorities are different than his.

And with S18 - here in the US you can take a test called the GED and get out of high school. It's a knowledge test so you still have to know enough to pass it, but it's a way to move past high school without having to wade through all the classes. If he aspires to college he would (here) have to go to a community college first and do well there to be able to transfer to a 4 year university - they're not going to take someone with a GED unless they had an extraordinary background, like a computer genius or something. But if you have something equivalent there, it might be the best route for S18 - pass the GED then go to community college or trade school of some kind. Just a thought.

[bttrfly]

Boys usually separate from Mom and gravitate towards Dad during pre-teen/early teen years. Also, perhaps the kid is trying to get some semblance of stability.

Why her reaction should surprise you is mystifying to me. It seems she pops out kids and decides they, like pets, are to be self sufficient way before a reasonable amount of time/rearing is done. This response is par for the course with her.

While I agree with Kml about your behavior here, I also want to reiterate that you are ONE YEAR in. ONE YEAR. If you feel like this now, when the dew should still be on the rose, what do you imagine it will be like a month, three months, six months or another year from now? You owe it to YOURSELF to take care of yourself and be true to who you are. You have given this woman and her assorted pets and relatives a roof over their heads, major slack financially, and whenever you raise concerns it is turned around so you are on the defensive. Having lived like that myself for way too long I can tell you it isn't going to get better. Consider this your "honeymoon" phase, and project the result from here.

You will, in the end, do what you want, as we all do.

[Dawn70]

Bttrfly beat me to it, but I too am totally mystified as to why S's reaction to S13 wanting to move in with his dad is in any way surprising to you. She seems to have no regard for raising her own kids, taking care of her own pets, or even really much to do with herself. You said you give it a 60-40 chance of her actually calling the therapist to schedule an appointment for the 2 of you. Can't you see how lazy and irresponsible that makes her sound. Worse, it just makes her sound apathetic about life in general. She sleeps, eats, spends your money without checks and balances and does whatever she d@mn well pleases while her kids do the same and you are now surprised that S13 wants to go somewhere else at least 1/2 the time. I suspect that it has more to do with dad not having rules and the fact that he's 13 and detaching a bit from his mom (as is typical for young teen boys), but I'm not sure he was ever attached to her to begin with.

You started your post saying you are still stuck. No, Andrew, you aren't stuck. You are scared. Scared of hurting her, scared of her reaction, scared of "letting her down" and her kids in turn. You are scared to admit that you couldn't rescue this one, though you have tried valiantly to do so.

Again, bttrfly beat me to it, but if this is how you feel now, while most things should still be all wine and roses, how are you going to feel 3 years, 5 years, or more down the road? How is she going to react when you do have some sort of health issue that requires her to take care of you? Is she really the person you want responsible for your care and helping you take meds and such when she can't even remember to take her own?

Like bttrfly said, you are going to do what you are going to do, regardless of what any of us say and I can assure you that despite the varying levels of harshness, we are all saying the same thing. Interestingly, we are saying things that you seem to agree with. I think you have a heart of gold, but I think you are selling yourself way short, my friend, by not ending it now. You are going to keep dragging it out and it is going to be ugly when it finally does happen. Don't let it get to that Andrew. And, most importantly, take care of yourself FIRST!

[kml]

You know, thinking about the child support question got me wondering. You said she never availed herself of any government support programs because she was "too proud". That doesn't make any darn sense. So it makes me wonder what the REAL story is. Too ADD to go through the application process? Never manages to get unmarried so she could qualify? Always figured she had another guy on the hook so she didn't need to?

And I do agree with bttrfly - whatever she's putting into the relationship and the household now, this is as good as it gets. I know you're still hopeful for change but honestly, at this age, few people are capable of that kind of significant change - and if she was, you would have been seeing a lot more of it by now.

As for the therapist - you're right to think just going in just with a laundry list of things for her to fix won't do it. BUT - only own the things that are really yours. You can own that you're not very direct about stating your needs and desires. That you're too vague about your expectations. But then also be very clear that you didn't expect to be living with a hoarder who leaves food out to go bad and doesn't wash their dishes or take the dog out to poop.

As for that van load to be donated - check to see how much comes back, or what she buys or brings home to replace it.

And what exactly would the bigger hutch be for storing? Surely the buffet and kitchen cupboards have enough room for dishes? Now if this is for her mom's china I could understand - but you might want to wait a couple of weeks until this all pans out before making any new purchases.

[Ginger1]

Is there really much more stability and rules for S13 with his mom? She sleeps late, needs S13, to get her up to start school. You say he doesn’t do much of anything around the house and his mother enforces nothing. Feeds her kid nothing but Mac and cheese yet you say how much he likes your chicken. And you say he is painfully underweight?

I too, think he wants to be with his dad to have more sense of security. She left her 16 year old on his own to be with a man. Her other kids lives with their olde siblings in their minor years.

This must tell you something .

That kid is not going to his dads house so he has less rules. What rules does he even have now?

[Ginger1]

I really apologize if that came off as mean. But I feel like you might not see some of the obvious. Although I really do think you see it, it’s just hard to grasp.

[AndrewP]

Thanks again everyone. My heavens we are burning through this. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the rallying around even if it is mostly telling me to grow a pair.

I agree with you bttrfly - I lived with a strong, dominant woman who used her temper to keep me in line for 26 years. It doesn't get better other than that she got better at it and I required her to use it less.

There's a quote from a favourite author - I sometimes wonder how many of his books I've inspired people here to pick up. Possibly the number is over 1

The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.

I'm not suggesting that either my ex-wife or S are / were doing this intentionally or it could also very much be my own imagination that I was being managed and controlled.

Oh - and kml - you are absolutely right. It was a bit of petty passive aggressiveness on my part. In my mind, something that "I" wanted to do was being co-opted by S again. I was also worried about the fact that the costs on this site were high - unique items by a very talented artist - and S was viewing it as "some Canadian stuff to send to her son in Australia". He still hasn't gotten last year's Christmas gift, nor a birthday card. As a minor story, everyone perhaps recalls that I go see my friend for a scone every Saturday. S is a friend of this person too and used to work in the kitchen doing dishes once a week (I know, I know). I'd pop in, say "hi" get my scone, hand over $3 and move on with my day being happy that I'm supporting a friend, local business and getting a tasty treat. Now S needs me to check with her before I go and comes along. She would then order probably about $15 of treats which I would pay for as she never would bring any money then stand there and gossip for 20 minutes while I am relegated to a background character. I did try going on my own once and that got me the angry "you don't listen to me" speech. So now when we go, I hand her her weekly pocket money just as we go out, order my treat, pay for it while she's chatting and she can pay for her own darned treat. Passive aggressive - yes.

I need to learn better skills at coping with such things. As I told S repeatedly yesterday, I need to make sure that things don't sit inside me and fester. That only builds up poisons.

kml - the new hutch I think is mainly intended for her grandmother's (great-grandmother's?) china plus "stuff". We can probably pick one up for a couple of hundred tops. Those big pieces go cheap. As an aside, I was horrified that she and her daughter had unpacked all the dishes and cups and stacked them up like normal dishes. After I washed the plates etc, I wrapped them up in paper and suggested to S that we get proper containers to store them in. That hard edge touching hard edge was not a good idea with fine china - something I don't think she knew.

---

Just popped in briefly. A work email came in that I need to look at more closely. I had a productive day. The rotted paneling in the front porch has been replaced. It would have been easier except for the stuff packed in there which I had to shift around. I was surprised and not surprised that there is no insulation in the walls. There is in the ceiling. I then did some other stuff in the workshop, gave the stairs a good sweeping which they've not had since April and am about to go in I think for a soak in the tub. Not sure what I'll be doing for dinner. I expect S to be home perhaps around 9:00 or so. Tomorrow I'm having wings and beer with my best friend I hope and I'll get an earful of the same messaging you all have been sharing.

((DB family))