Jon, I understand what you are saying. This has however been fairly helpful for me as I've allowed my W to define what constitutes normal behavior during our relationship and it's nice to hear from others that no, I'm not crazy, her behavior is out of line. In this case, it was helpful to put a frame of reference around what W is asking of me in regards to how I interact and treat the kids. The fact that she has basically abandoned them is just a place of hypocrisy.
Jen, I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I feel like a single Dad except that I'm doing a poor job of things. I have my good days and my not so good days. This week has been tougher as our nanny had her last day last week. W has been here every day for a couple of hours and the kids play next door and the neighbor kids' mom provides some adult supervision, but, the short of it is that my house is exceedingly trashed and that gets me going.
We have our MC appointment tomorrow and I haven't the slightest idea of what to say or where to go with things. I'm back to vacillating between hope, and wondering why do I even want to keep working on this, why do I even want to be with this person. There is an awful lot of pain in a warehouse full of mental boxes that cannot be denied forever.
In either case, I've been following along on both of your adventures and I must say they are encouraging.
