I had the same problem. It was horrendous. We were harassed by a nut who lived below us for 4 years in our apartment building, and who called our walking "stomping". We are an older quiet couple, don't entertain at home, have the entire apartment covered with 2 layers of rugs and walk in our bare feet. Like the above, we go to bed late, but our main habits are reading, TV at low volume and getting bedtime snacks. But this was not good enough for the neurotic man below us who gradually escalated his complaints every time we tried to be even quieter, and we were already quiet - nobody in our entire lives had ever complained about us and we have lived in apartments all our lives. We never play loud music, and we as I said walk in socks on two layers of rugs, wall-to-wall rugs. In the end as we decided to consult a lawyer and fight back, he moved out! What a relief! And the strange thing is, this couple actually caused US problems beyond their harassment of us through emails, verbal complaints and trumping up complaints to the Board. Ever since he moved in, the bed we slept in had strange sensations running through it. It's hard to explain but the only apt analogy is Havana syndrome. There were odd sensory movements coming through our mattress, and interfered with our sleep on a daily basis. A couple of months before they moved, my husband finally got the nerve to question him about if he had any electronic equipment right under our bed that might be causing these strange sensations. He completely denied it and showed us their bedroom which had a work area (hidden) not quite directly under our bed. I know this person had a background in science and don't know what he was up to with his computer under our bed. I know this sounds absolutely nuts, but after they moved out these sensations abruptly stopped. I'll never know what caused these weird sensations in our bed, but they were extremely disconcerting. I never complained publicly because how do you explain this? One more thing, I was always wondering when we lived there if he was trying to intimidate us, as older people, out of our apartment, because we own one of the prized top floor apartments in the building.

Dear lovehadley, I've never posted to this board before but I felt compelled to send a message to you. I'm an experienced stepmom of three. My stepkids have two different mothers. One BM is reasonable and helpful. The other is unstable and narcissistic. We have had to work very hard to keep this brood together - and I've learned a lot. I can tell you from experience that unless you set some boundaries and take control of your life, you are in for rocky ride that will definitely include an unwanted divorce. You are correct that most courts now favour 50/50. It's fashionable and it doesn't require anyone to make a real decision. However, it doesn't work for all children or all families. It won't work in your case. The BM is set on making trouble and the child is out of control. The current situation is bad. Moving to 50/50 would be better, but you'd still have an obsessive BM harassing you and a child in your house that you can't manage. Just imagine this child in 5 years, when he's almost as big as you are. Furthermore, your quality of life is just not good enough. You are very young, obviously articulate and you clearly have a compassionate nature. Yet your day to day life is all about your stepson and this crisis. You are going to wake up very soon and find that you're 40 years old and have wasted your young years fighting a battle that you can't win. You need to take control of your situation. It's not working and your fiance's proposed solutions aren't going to make life any better for you. He can fight for sole custody of this child, but he most likely will lose. Even if by some miracle he wins, the child will be opposed to it and he'll be unmanageable. Furthermore, the BM will get very liberal access which will be just the ticket she needs to harass you every minute of your life. It won't be much of a victory and it won't last long. I can pretty much guarantee that this child will end up living fulltime with the BM. Either he will demand it, or you will demand it, or you will leave and your fiance will have no choice but to relinquish custody. How you get to this place is up to you. You can continue to live in this nightmare until you walk out, or you and your fiance can figure out a reasonable schedule whereby this child can live with his mother, and spend ENJOYABLE, nonthreatening visits with you. Believe me, once the BM has this kid on her hands fulltime, she'll be VERY EXCITED about these access visits and she'll make sure that the child is as good as gold every minute. And, best of all, once she's dependant on you for the occasional break, her behaviour will improve dramatically. It's too bad that this child has a lousy mother and behavioural problems. But you can't solve this problem and ruining your life won't make it any better. All you can do is set boundaries for you own life, and then enforce them. It's tough, I know. But, trust me, it works and you will be much happier. The child will be happier too. It's bad to have an unstable mother. But it's much worse to be caught in the middle of a war and be swatted back and forth between two different worlds twice a week. Let your fiance read this email. Good luck.

Thank you, everyone, for your support. I did have a good cry (several, in fact) and am feeling more calm and accepting, I guess. SS is doing pretty well right now. It ended up being mostly just the usual; he came home filthy (he hadn't changed his underwear, bathed, or brushed his teeth all weekend), hungry (he had chocolate milk and two pieces of pizza as he wasn't allowed a third piece all day Sunday), exhausted (he's allowed/encouraged to stay up very late -after midnight- until BM goes to bed and then she takes him to sleep with her). Also as usual he was pretty much ignored except when dragged around on Sunday to be shown off to relatives (and we think used as an excuse to get invited to dinner). He tried to discuss some of his concerns re Christmas with BM; fortunately she didn't scream but also apparently didn't listen/ask questions/express concern. She again told him there was no money for presents or "a Christmas"; he finally told her that he didn't want to come and she just said "You are". Our attorney has told us that one withheld visitation occurring after a mod petition has been filed almost certainly will have no effect on anything custody wise and at most might result in a fine. Make of that what you will. :-) SS is feeling better since he was informed of a certain decision that DH did not make lightly. He requested to speak with his counselor again as he's been very upset about it all. I spoke with her briefly as we're always trying to make sure that the right thing is being done, and to be sure that we're not inadvertently influencing SS (it's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a poker face when tales of BM are being recounted). She agreed that it is possible that BM has something planned that doesn't involve ruining SS's holiday out of spite - but she didn't really believe that any more than DH, SS or I do. SS was convinced that not only will she not get him anything, as she told him, but that she will deliberately stay up very late so that Santa does not come to bring him anything either. His other concern was that since Santa has never left him any presents there, nor is he mentioned, obviously (to him) Santa does not bring his BM anything because "she's bad". So he also worried that if Santa brought him presents but left nothing for BM that she would scream at him. He said something very concerning to me on the way to counseling yesterday. He told me that sometimes he wished he were in heaven so he didn't have to see BM. When I questioned him he said his main concern was that what if it was all wrong, what if "bad people" were allowed into heaven and then he would still have to see her anyway. He has promised me if he has more thoughts like that to discuss them with me, DH, counselor, teacher, anyone. Unfortunately he told Sunday school teacher that BM was mean to him and screamed, so they discussed in class about honoring thy father and mother, and it was explained to him how he should behave better so she is "not so stressed". I cannot fault the woman because I am sure that she was imagining a typical "I asked the kid five times to shut off the TV and come to dinner and then I yelled" kind of thing - but poor SS. It really makes me wonder how many kids who are sexually or physically abused are asking for help and the adults are just not hearing it. We also confirmed other suspicions this weekend. BM's BF is in prison for parole violation; he's a career criminal. But as soon as he gets out they'll be married and live happily ever after, with custody of SS, and both of us paying CS. Anyway, that being the case in fantasyland, BF's mother is often over visiting and SS is encouraged to call her GM. (Strangely not step-grandma, nor "my mother's future husband's mother". Huh.) Anyway, we found that, well, her record is not quite as extensive as her son's. The years of drug possession charges (in addition to others) are not particularly surprising to either DH nor I due to the fact that SS had already told us that she is "funny" because she always thinks that "bugs are on her skin and in her hair". We haven't even started to figure out what to do with that mess yet. To wrap up my very long update, the pet may/may not be doing better. She's on steroids; vet said she might show a brief improvement for a very short time and then it's rapidly downhill. She is showing improvement so DH and I are holding out hope for a miracle (or a misdiagnosis; we opted out of the $1500 tests so it was more of an educated guess to her condition). Meanwhile we are taking advantage of the fact that everyone at the moment is feeling OK to do holiday stuff together; if we could just freeze an evening in time for a while I think I'd be happy.

lolauren, your law enforcement contacts said exactly what I was trying to say, and the term "false sense of security' is at the core of my message. My experience was such an eye-opener to me. Up until that time, as a young woman living in a city, I'd collected tips and techniques to be used in the event I found myself in a dire situation. I walked away from that horrible time thinking, "Yeah, none of that would have worked," That's when I came up with my polar bear analogy because I think it's a good visual for people. Just ask yourself how effective a particular technique would be against a polar bear, and that's probably close to the truth. I use the polar bear as my visual not only to depict strength but also because there was absolutely ZERO human connection between my assailant and me. Our eye-to-eye contact was like NOTHING I had ever, or have since, experienced. It wasn't actually like looking into the eyes of an animal, as my analogy suggests because I always see truth, empathy, a desire to understand, and to be understood when I look into the eyes of animals. It was more like a robot, I suppose, or an alien maybe. I have always found it difficult to describe, but I recognized instantly that it was something I'd never seen. My absolute takeaway was the realization that the only real defense is to prevent the situation. We cannot prevent every situation, of course. But we can prevent more than we think. A quick trip to the ATM at 9pm can probably be squeezed in on the way to work. Going out on a date with a fellow, even though we feel a 'little weird' about something, can be canceled. Etc. In this case, I do think the fact that the young man seems to have been warned off by the police is very good news. And it sounds like Lynn's daughter is staying vigilant, which is excellent.