THE SHOW MUST GO ON

[forward]

Trusting, I sometimes think 2 years is a significant milestone in a R. Seems that people either get married or break up at that point, unless you just drift because you are too lazy and/or uncertain or scared to do anything else, which doesn't bode so well for the future.

It will be interesting to see what happens in your sitch, because the OW has held on for so long. I keep waiting for you to say that OW is gone. And yeah, I wouldn't assume the kiss is about you. I would assume that he was trying to placate her.

I bet he would be in trouble if he didn't get "family pic." Except, of course, the kids aren't hers and don't even like her, if I recall? Can you say "Awkward family photo?"

I just think it takes incredible maturity and strength to forge a step family in general--much less when you helped to break up a M. Figure to be involved w/a M person, you don't have too much maturity or strength. I think the OPs wind up in the position of trying to deal with a lot of emotional fallout they didn't expect. They expect the LBS to just disappear and then they will step into the spotlight and get all the warm fuzzy familiness that the LBS had. But it's not possible to just erase people. The family that will constantly compare them to the spouse, usually unfavorably. Older kids can be downright hostile.

OW in my situation showed up at an event where my D was. And, well, since looked very young, she got stares. I noticed that X was embarrassed by OW. I mean, I figure they had to deal with that staring a lot. And when I was still friendly w/ILs, they told me X never spoke about the girl child.

In your case, he's trying to "go public" with her (although it sounds as if it's been that way for a while) and I wonder if maybe she has pushed and pressured for that.

I wait for the day the OW in your sitch disappears. I can tell you that when OW disappeared, I did feel quite a sense of relief as it is good not to have her around D any more. I noticed X still has pics of her up, and I hope to see those disappear, too.

On some level I actually felt sorry for X as well. MLCers can be so dense and emotionally driven, and then it's like "Hey, this wasn't what I planned." Ahem.