I guess I’ve always known I’m not going to feel grounded unless I get out of the toxic situation. I want him to love me enough to stop drinking. Al Anon teaches that it isn’t about us. But I’ve told you my controlling nature. I could change this. I could fix it. Only I couldn’t. Anyway, I have booked my one way ticket home. It tore my heart out yesterday and that’s why I went quiet. I have a few close friends and wonderful family that has been walking me through this all week. But it hurts. Worse than anything I could have ever imagined. It feels worse than when he left.
Would you want a close relationship with his children? Those books and studies about step parenting are real nice and all… all very intellectual. Not sure it helps us with our raw feelings and emotions.
You talk about you not enabling your son to do anything that is morally bad. I get the impression that you think you think your H enabled his children to do morally bad. Do you think that he has done something on that level? I’m not sure about the car, though. I mean you don’t agree with one another on that, but morally bad? No, probably not. I think that incident bothered you more from the standpoint that he chose his children over you. Not that you’re wrong there, but I’m trying to understand where your differences are in the actual parenting of your stepchildren.
“I'm not suggesting that I check out in everything. I'm suggesting that I check out when he and I can't agree on something regarding his children, which is a lot unfortunately.”
^^This. “Which is a lot unfortunately.” I mean it sounds to me like the more you both compromise, the more you both alienate yourselves from one another. Would you agree? He’s set in his ways. You are set in your ways. So you have compromised to continue to cut one another out more and more. I want to be quite careful in my wording here as I don’t want to sound like anyone is wrong or anyone is right but trying to get the lay of the land.
