I think you need to take a breather from kid issues, sounds like it's bringing you down.
The kid issues are fine -- it's the ex-spouse issues that do affect me, but not like they used to.
My exW is the poster child for people damaged by their own parents' divorce. Much to my never ending chagrin, I watched my spouse change almost overnight from someone who despised how her own mother abandoned her family and three different husbands into someone who not only embraced this wayward parent but also eagerly accepting her kool-aid regarding the "virtues" of D. xW has become a carbon-copy of the very person she had begged me to never let her become like. She has always loved her mother (much to her credit), but until just before the bomb, xW has always expressed great disappointment and hurt from MIL's utter selfishness.
I am saying this for two reason. One is that my xW tries very hard to convince herself and others that our D was necessary for her "happiness" and her very survival -- and the corollary is that her H (me) was not only a hindrance to these goals, but wholly unnecessary for parenting our kids. She now buys into MIL's long-standing sentiment that husbands and fathers are totally unnecessary. Two, this all means that my xW really does have delusions that her life and the life of our S's would be all the more better with me out of the picture.
Now I am not saying I buy into this insanity. Quite the contrary. I know she can never do that.
But I do have to keep these things in mind as I can never really trust xW or her ulterior motives. As long as she is still dating OM she will continue to have her fantasies about getting me out of the picture -- I know her enough to know that's precisely how she thinks. This exactly matches MIL's own MO and history.
But I am sorry if I seem so down all the time about this. I know I always seem too intensely fixed on this, but it's like having a rattlesnake coiled up in the middle of your living room -- you really don't want to take your eyes off of it even if it is not rattling at the moment.
The positive part of this it is training me to be both more patient and more diligent. I'm learning to be a snake-handler. LOL.
