This is not looking good! (Long post...)

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Time and patience Mab1. WRT friends and family, they will give you bad advice, they don't want to see you in pain, and not having walked in your shoes, they'll think the quickest way through is to give up. They simply cannot empathize or sympathize unless they've been through this.

It can be helpful to talk to *someone* about your sitch when you need to -- particularly when you're tempted to reach out to W. Just choose wisely. Choose someone who is a good listener, and doesn't keep telling you what to do, just commiserates. Tell them you're not looking for suggestions, just to be heard.

I had an old friend visiting me last weekend and he knew some of my sitch and wanted to understand more of it. I spent some time talking to him about it and his immediate response was "you should leave, you can do better."

I said "wait a minute -- I have 3 kids. If I leave, all three of their lives will be worse. Mine may be better, or it may be worse, there are no guarantees. Is it fair to trade my potential happiness for 3 lives of unhappiness?" When he thought about that, he saw my point. They don't get it unless they've done it.

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