I did get teary at each HS graduation....the speeches, etc just bring that out. Where I broke down was saying goodbye at the college dorm. With DS 1....he went to our state U less than an hour away...his first choice school. It was hard but I told him he was not allowed to come home for the first six weeks unless it was an emergency. I had heard stories of too many kids coming home every weekend and never immersing themselves in campus life and I wanted him to get involved, meet new people, and have the same experience as if he were miles away. He was rooming with best friend since toddlerhood and lots of other HS friends there as well so plenty of support. We all survived those six weeks just fine. With DS 2..our youngest...I felt somewhat guilty shoving him out of the nest since he was our homebody and the most likely to get homesick. I think he would have been happy to stay home and go to junior college, but his major was unusual and not offered by many schools and you had to take prerequisite classes freshman and soph years so off he went...12hours away not knowing a soul and a roommate from our area who never returned his "get to know you" calls and turned out to be 24! Roommate was a deadbeat and I worried all first semester about whether he could cope with everything. (Fortunately he was able to switch roommates second semester). He blossomed! He spent a semester in Bangkok. He formed a campus organization for a cause he became passionate about and works in that field today for a major non-profit. Hardest might have been DD....for 11years it was usually just the two of us going to practices and competitions for her sport. She went to school 6 hours away...I drove home alone as DH had to fly out from there for work. I sobbed all the way home. Was so distraught I missed an exit and didn't realize it for 20 minutes. I think I even pulled off to a rest stop just to cry. The upside was she loved the school, made great friends and it was a joy to see her come into her own after a not so great high school experience. She still lives there. Fast forward....they are all grown and gone....and we love having the house to ourselves!!! The boys live close by so we see them regularly, one is married. Of course we love seeing all of them and having them over and although it was an adjustment, we love the empty nest too!

We have been on COBRA several times...the thing to understand is yes, it is retroactive, HOWEVER, if she should need health insurance during that time, it is useless to go to a dr. or worse, be in an accident or incur some urgent, severe medical costs and say to the admissions department, that you will need to apply for COBRA. They will treat you like you are uninsured (even though you are COBRA eligible), and you will be treated as a self-pay patient and charged the full freight cost of your medical care instead of a reduced, discounted amount health insurers pay. Have you ever received a bill from a medical lab and it says that the price of a test is $100, but for your insurance company the discounted price is $12.00 and your co-pay is $3.50? I'm making those numbers up, but it's kind of like that - you really would be shocked at the amount charged to uninsured people versus those with insurance. With COBRA, if you do not present a valid medical card, you will be charged and treated like you have no insurance. Once you apply, pay your retroactive premiums, then you will need to go back and sort through the bills -- GOOD LUCK! Most doctors, if you can't provide proof of insurance at the time of service, will make you pay up front, the full fee. I doubt you would be able to get them to reimburse you what you overpaid several months down the road. Also, it can take up to 6 weeks to apply for COBRA and then get your medical cards. My neighbor is a lawyer and worked on the origianl COBRA regulations. I had a discussion with her one day about these kinds of points and she was amazed, they had not considered how people are actually charged for and pay for medical services under the "limbo period." I've been through this, and it was a PIA big time. The concept of retroactive coverage, imho, is not a good one. Try to find some kind of continuous coverage for her.

Hi Taunia, I can relate with your heartbreak after being there myself. I found comfort and the ability to express my emotions by creating miniatures of all the past events and family history that were noteworthy or memorable. The process found me journaling my thoughts as a short explanation for the various symbolic "treasures." The accumulation eventually found their way to a miniature Christmas tree of "the family" and an ongoing wreath that displays the symbols of current events and feelings. It was very therapeutic and brought me a great deal of serenity when coping seemed an impossibility. I pray you too find a way to "feel the feelings" as a way of climbing life's mountains to reach peace.

Trish, it was mentioned that the father should be the one caring for the son. I wonder about the background in this situation. If you've been with the mother for five years, he's been with you for three, and that leaves two years. That means he was 11 when you got together? What happened for those 11 years? How was his academic set-up prior? What was his mother's relationship with him? How long prior to five years ago did his parents divorce/split up? It sounds to me that he started failing his fifth year right around the time you two got together. (this is not blaming you) Yes. You nailed the timeframe. She and his father divorced when the boy was 2. When we met, it was revealed to me that he had just failed 5th grade and he was living with his father. He had moved in with him, at age 8 mid way through 3rd grade. From what I was told, though I wasn't in his life to witness to any of it, he had issues with school right from the very beginning and they only proceeded to get worse. In third grade he really began showing signs of defiant behavior; throwing books at his mother, knocking over a dresser, hitting her and running away. At that point she took him to see a doctor who diagnosed him with ADHD. The boy apparently begged her to go live with his father and given her frustration level of not being able to control him, she discussed it with the father, who at the time had just remarried and the new wife, who both thought couldn't get pregnant thought it was a grand idea to "have a son" come live with them. Now, they live in a rural area of South Carolina; mostly woods and not much to do. His behavior calmed down for about 6 months. Then, the wife got pregnant and at the same time, this boys behavior began to reveal itself at his father's, the same way it had at his mothers. Someone else here mentioned ODD. I think that's entirely possible too, though when I mentioned it to his mother, she reminded me that his behaviors had only been toward her at the time. Now these behaviors have "evolved" to include all adults, most of the time. I understand the separation you are trying to make re: woman/mother. Good, because that's all I meant by saying that I hope one day she'll realize that she should have done more to remind me less that she's a mom and more like a woman. I don't think that was too much to expect. Children are by nature self-centered. Boys mature much later than girls. I try to stress to my dd that I have feelings, hopes, needs as well as she does. I point out those needs pretty consistently. Last night it was "Mom, come play with me". I had made her dinner while she showered, then she ate while I cleaned up, then I ate (a grilled cheese, and pretty much standing up-one of those crazy get home late days) I had just finished, and I was ready for a shower. I asked her what we had just done. Well, she said, you drove me to activity, got home, made dinner, cleaned up... and I looked at her and said, yes, and I love doing things for you and with you, and now I need some "Mommy time". When I get out of the shower we can play. She understood, and we continued. Same with bedtime. She has a set bedtime so that "mommy can go to bed" at a certain time, and it's set up that way so that DH and I have time alone in the evenings.My point is that I understand. A mother has to have "personal time" as well as "spouse/lover time" and has to balance those times with "mommy time". A mother wears many hats and it is really difficult (for me, anyway) to know where to draw the line between me as an individual woman, me as a love interest and me as a provider. Ideally they would merge, but more often than not it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. Every time I take "me time" is time I could spend with one or another of my loved ones. Every time I relax with my spouse as a lover is time I could be with my child, and v.v. This conflict is painful at times, and the mother is the monkey in the middle. It's nice to be popular but sometimes I feel everyone wants a piece of me. Our therapist kept trying to tell my partner from the beginning that our relationship needed "adult time" and that it was encumbent upon her to provide it. Her daughter was 8 when we met and she didn't do a whole lot to get a babysitter just so we could go out once a week. I should have known then that this was an issue but I tried to ignore it. My partner's personality is very introverted and isolated. She has no friends to speak of. I'm it. She does'nt like being around people and she has extreme body image issues. I don't understand it because she's a very attractive, very pretty woman. She looks like Julia Roberts with blond hair. She's gained weight since we met, but that's never bothered me and I've tried to tell her that it's not a big deal. It bothers her tremendously but rather than do something about it ( I bought her a gym membership) she doesn't do anything. It was revealed in therapy that she has Adult Attention Deficit, inattentive type. If any of you have this, it reveals itself in ways that are frustrating to normal adults. There's an inconsistency that is enormously overwhelming. There's no organization to people who have this and they tend to be incredibly forgetful. I remember when we met and she burned dinner a few times, and paid a bill to the wrong account, but I didn't really think twice about it. These people get really overwhelmed by things we don't. This is why her son runs circles around her and gets his way. Because she can't deal with it. When the police brought him home another time, he went to the refrigerator and rather than tell him to get his @ss to bed at 1AM, she told him what she cooked earlier; "I cooked porkchops earlier". I found that to be an absolutely absurd response to the situation, and she knew it; but she told me that she has placed a wall up to him so that what he does, doesn't effect her. She can't do the same with me, so when he acts out, I have a visceral response to it, and she can't put an emotional wall up to me and she's told me that she feels pulled between the two of us. On an airplane, the instructions are to place the mask on your face before helping your loved ones. If you have no oxygen, you will be of no help to others. I get the feeling that's what's going on right now. Your lover/wife/girlfriend/mate/partner has placed the mask on her son first and asphyxiated the relationship. This is a fantastic metaphor. I think we both asphysixated the relationship, but I kept telling her that she was neglecting it with her inconsistent attempts. We could never get the time we needed and all conversations evolved around children. She doesn't have any friends or hobbies nor does she do anything other than work so she really doesn't have a whole lot to talk about. She loves techno gadgets though. I like politics and discuss current events quite a bit. I also worked on and completed my Master's degree while we were together despite the escalating problems in order to try to shield myself from the behavior but eventually nothing could help this. So now I'm sitting here in a rather empty house. Where do you want to go from here? Do you foresee a future with this woman once her son is no longer in the house? She does, but I'm not sure. She told me over and over, that she wanted to save the relationship and the only thing she could do was to remove him from my house and that this was the last chance to save what we have. She simply disagreed about sending him back to his father except if he quit school; which I see coming. I'm not sure if this will help or not. Sure, I'll finally get some peace and some perspective. The problem with this is that I'm not sure it will help. It may, but you know, we never got a chance to adjust to each other after we moved in here. The boy came a year later and that was entirely too soon IMO. I'm just not sure what other problems his behaviors overwhelmed to the point where we never got to deal with anything else. We've discussed moving back in once he's gone, but now, were both so overwhelmed at what just happened. It's an amicable separation though. We're not fighting and I didn't scrutenize what she took out of here as she's told me she does intend to come back once she's done with him and is keeping a lot of her things here. Our yard is a gardner's paradise. She rented a place with no yard so that she could take care of this one. We're very much trying to heal and doing alot of talking and she and I and her daughter went to dinner last night. I am just so relieved he's out of my house though. So relieved...