I know you said you and he talked and a lot of things came out, but I can't be certain what those things were. I don't need to know of course. I am just concerned for stating any obvious points you already know and have already addressed with him. I'm really glad you had the courage to tell him some things that were on your mind. It is apparent you're bothered, hence the name of this thread and what you have expressed. And, you're right to be bothered. What is more, you're not sweeping these things under the rug, and that is so very commendable because most women do, which isn't good at all. It appears your naivete is working in your favor. Depite your fears, you approached him and addressed your concerns. You're really on the right road. Even if it means he doesn't like it, continue to stand your ground. You know you cannot imagine living this way indefinitely. I know one of the members is very keen on suggesting you seek counseling, and she's right for the most part. You do need counseling because when it comes to relationships and marriage, I think almost all women need counseling, so please don't neglect that. The problem is, all too often, women do exactly as you have been doing, which is to live their lives by their guy's permission and approval and then not addressing their issues for fear of losing him. Where the need for counseling is concerned, I'm saying you are just like most in this respect and while that surely will help with your self esteem, your sense of worth, and, thereby, your confidence, counseling will not provide you with what is needed for your marriage. As has been stated, marriage is a lot of work, and it takes a very unique skillset. For that, you need are a plan and some tools to work with. You're new to some things - those that you missed along the way of not experiencing the usual dynamics, machinations, and negotiations of relationships, so you're at a slight disadvantage and in for sort of a crash course. For starters, his responses to you, as were here referred to as "a line" or "a bunch of crap," are exactly that. They are empty statements, especially to say "just being you" in answer to your question. Empty because it neither defines nor determines anything specific. He said that for lack of anything else to say. I got over statements like these around 16 years old and determined I needed something more concrete. The flattery is always nice, but I want some REAL answers. After that, I want actions to back up those words. You, your needs, your opinions, your comfort level, and your wishes are to be respected. That's where your plan comes in. Determined what you don't like, and list them, then tell him one by one. Your marriage shouldn't be everything he wants, everything he says, and the way he says it has to go. Stop allowing him to be the sole conductor. Determine what you want from him and your marriage, and list them, then tell him one by one. He has to know that you also have requirements he is expected to live up to. If yours clash with his, then the two of you have to work toward a mutually acceptable compromise without you feeling short-changed in the deal because that will be no different than you feel right now. He has to give too. You cannot live feeling the onus for the success or the failure of your marriage is on your shoulders alone. Nor can you live as if you are his child. Tell him what you don't like, and tell him what you want. Be determined, demanding, and intolerant of anything less if you must, but don't settle to be relegated to the background any more. And, on the same note, he is to afford you the respect of way more than a moment's notice when he's going to be traveling and the respect and consideration of a phone call when he is away. It is inconceivable and unbelievable that he doesn't call you when he's gone. He's living the life of a single man, but you have to let him know you are going to hold him responsible to you because that is what marriage and having a wife are all about, and you deserve to be considered and respected as his wife. Don't let him fool you anymore. He has an itinerary and although there may be unexpected changes occasionally, his whole life is not lived at the spur of the moment. Think about it, games are scheduled far, far in advance, aren't they? Honestly, the way he's living, the way he has you living, and what he has you believing is as if he has another wife somewhere. I say that only HALF jokingly. You have the resources to find out, and you certainly should find out. I would hire a detective. Don't be so naive that you will fall for anything and everything. I know you feel like a schoolgirl, in love and infatuated. You can enjoy all those feelings while being wise, prudent, and discerning at the same time. You know it's time to listen to your intuition. You've known it for a while now apparently but decided to swap your gut feeling for bliss. You know it's time to find out what the pit of your stomach keeps trying to tell you even though it's scary. Talk to people that will fortify your resolve, like this forum. Next are the tools you need to strengthen your bond and help you and your husband create the marriage you both desire yours to be. For that, you need marriage counseling (not individual counseling) and/or websites, books, and articles that help you both understand what marriage is all about and what is required from each of you. Following are websites I know about that offer lots of articles on marriage, communication, and understanding. Yes, that means he has to do the reading too. Require that of him. He doesn't get to skate by any longer with you doing all the work however he tells you to do it. It can be fun to read, discuss, and implement the principles you're both learning. They can be read at yours and his leisure, but there has to be a time frame, such as "this particular article (or these particular articles) have to be read between this date and that one" (select an article or two and then give a week or two weeks allowance for reading). Schedule a day for discussion after that time period. Apply the principles in your daily lives together. Then begin again to plan other articles, another time frame for reading, and scheduled date for discussion. Make it a big day of driving or going out to dinner. The 10 Marriage Commandments This is a Christian marriage site with lots of helpful articles, but this particular article will help you both establish some rules in your marriage - the boundaries of respect and consideration that neither of you should cross against the other. You might not devise all the rules at once. Some will make themselves known later when they actually happen. Instead of getting irritated with each other, recognize that you didn't know it would be something the other person did not or would not like. One rule you might consider establishing is that he call you (at least once a day) while he's away. Another might be that he gives you a copy of his itinerary a month in advance. I'm sure you have other rules you would like to establish. He, no doubt, has some too. Again, compromising may be in order. Read and put into practice the other articles at that site too. There's are lots of articles on Communication and Conflict for you each to improve your communication skills. The 5 Love Languages This book is extremely valuable to help you both become familiar with your own and each other's love language. As the aricle explains, love language is the "primary way of expressing and interpreting love." For example, it seems your love language might be Words of Affirmation since you gush and melt when he says things that make you feel special. His love language might be something different. There is a questionnaire - a kind of test - you each can take to learn your profile type. Once you both know each other's preference, you can begin communicating in that language. If you find that Words of Affirmation truly is your preferred way of interpreting love (or whatever you learn your love language is), he is to make a habit of expressing his love to you in that manner. Whatever he finds his preferred method of interpreting love is, you are to make a habit of expressing your love to him in that manner. This can help make your life together a wonderful dance of love and mutual reciprocation. MarriageBuilders.com This is my favorite site and is a treasure chest of informative articles (and books) and priceless information. You will literally have dozens and dozens of Ah Ha! moments. Begin with Basic Concepts and move on to the Love Bank and so on. Many of the articles also have a questionnaire at the end. Print out two copies of the questionnaires after you both read the articles as scheduled (as suggested above). You each complete a questionnaire and then schedule a day to sit down and discuss each other's answers. You have to make the effort to stop doing the things he says irritates him, and he has to make the effort to stop doing the things you say irritate you. This way, you avoid getting on each other's nerves, while applying the principles you learned in the articles. There now. You both will be very busy working on yourselves to build a healthy marriage, create a stronger bond, and learning the best ways to communicate. See the kind of work that goes into marriage? A heck of a lot more work than picking his socks off the floor, isn't it? LOL Truthfully, couples don't normally do all this work. But then, look at the divorce rate and consider how many truly are not very happily married. You look at couples and from the outside, you think they are happy. Those who know you would never know of your concerns either though. No one can tell from the outside looking in. Most don't know they NEED to work and don't know the work to do. Lucky for you that now you do know. Incidentally, this will also help in the area of your confidence. It will be a lot less required that you have to build up the confidence to broach these subjects with your husband since the articles are prompting and directing you. You won't have to worry that he will feel criticized or questioned by you because it's all laid out for him in black and white (most of it anyway), and you don't have to worry that he might leave you for making such an effort to please and be pleased.

FD, yes, I am estranged from my mother. That is now, not then, when the situation I'm talking about occurred. And like I said, my dad didn't just out and say "man your mom is one annoying SOB" or anything like that. It came up, in a civilized way, years later, as part of an adult conversation about relationships. Nothing more. All I was trying to get across by sharing that experience was that the "Bio-parents" who are acting as a "Couple" for events with their children are often doing just that.... ACTING. Ulrike, I think you are caught between a rock and a hard spot. Yes, preempting her announcement may be a little embarrassing, but it's embarrassing ON YOUR TERMS. Rather than hers. And yes, it's polite to introduce someone who just barges onto the scene, regardless of how idiotic and bumbling they appear. Drunk uncle John fumbles his way up to you at a dinner party where you are standing with a couple you literally just met..."Mark, Sue, this is my uncle John... Uncle John, this is Mark and Sue. We just met." Sure, now Mark and Sue know you have a drunk uncle John. Most likely they will sympathize with you and admire your tact. Same with Bio-Mom. Just smile, and introduce her "Oh hello BOP (Bio-Obnoxious-Person), let me introduce you to Mark and Sue. Mark and Sue, this is BOP, Jane and Josh's mother. She lives in Richfield and makes a career of annoying us and sucking my husband dry." Except more tactful than that. If you can ;) Don't say she was DH's first wife. That's not pertinent. What is still valid is that she is the parent of her children. If she says "nice to meet you, I was her DH's first wife," she's the one who looks like a ninny, not you. And leave it to Mark and Sue to ask who the heck Jane and Josh are, and why the heck their mother just crashed your conversation. They'll figure it out, or they won't. Either way, it's BOP who just made the awkward impression, not you. I would not expect BOP to catch the hint that Shannon is dangling simply because she doesn't care, she has her agenda and that is to make absolutely sure she gets credit for her mother badge. Give it to her upfront. Take the higher ground. Someone who is your friend would understand the sub-context and keep personal things personal, but someone like her would most likely keep pushing through and ignore the subtleties. Or, because you just met them, be even more inclined to make sure they know the history right away. I also agree that if a person (ANYONE) is invited to an event where they are not directly involved, and they are treated with respect, they should not complain. But Ulrike is not complaining. She is asking how to deal with awkward situations. I think she should be invited to all functions as long as she behaves herself as an honored guest. She is DH's wife. It comes with the territory. Whether BM likes it or not. And, lest I be raked across the coals, I have BM and SM issues, and I am a BM and a SM. Every situation is different and has so many facets it's IMPOSSIBLE to judge the situation of another. Who knows if any of us is really a whack job and the BM's are really the sane ones? LOL. Or V.V.? The only thing I can do is say what works for me in awkward situations.

Her reaction was/is bizarre, KK. That is how she is, very irrational and wacky. You would think SHE wouldn't want to be around me anymore than I want to be around HER. If I were in her shoes---I would personally be really embarrassed/ashamed and would NOT feel comfortable being around the person who has a restraining order on me. I think it's also a stubborn child reaction. She is angry that I don't want to be around her---because it "hurts her feelings." I am guessing (in her mind) that she feels she's changed and that she has "made it up to me" by sending me that stupid card, etc. I think, as always, she has this weird hate/jealousy/like thing with me. She genuinely wanted to be friends with me for a long time, and I did try to be kind to her. It got out of control, to the point where she was calling me all the time and chatting about personal stuff, and asking for support/advice. I tried to give it, but then issues w/SS and DH would come up, and BM would get angry if I sided with DH, which I always did. It finally became clear that I couldn't have ANY kind of relationship/friendship with her, so I cut her off. I just told her the boundary was too blurry, that I could no longer be so chatty-cathy with her and that any communication between us needed to be at a minimum and needed to be pertaining to SS, NOT any of BM's personal drama. Well---I guess this really hurt her feelings---because that night in April when she showed up, she cried in my kitchen about how she didn't have any friends and she thought I was her friend, and I had hurt her feelings so badly....ughhhh. She is just wacky. But then, of course, she showed me just how "hurt" she was and how much of a "friend" she wanted to be by punching me! So--my point is--BM has a love/hate thing going on with me. DH has said that for years---it's like on one level she really wants me to like her and be her friend, but on the other hand, she is just so threatened by me/jealous of me with DH and SS, that she can't stand it. It is honestly scary to me---her feelings about my presence in SS's life are SO mixed up and strong. IF ANYTHING her strong reaction yesterday just underlines the fact to me that she is still capable of violent, unpredicatble behavior. So it reminds me more than ever that I CANNOT let my guard down with her. Her comment about the past being the past and me needing to get over it shows me she is NOT in recovery from alcoholism. If she truly were, like she claims, she would understand that her actions have consequences, and she would respect the fact that I am uncomfortable around her.

"if it weren't for me, DH and BM would have had very little contact over the years. I do have to take responsibility for that." That actually wasn't my point, I don't think there is anyway to tell (how much contact anyway) would have happened or not....which is my point. They weren't given a chance to establish a coparenting relationship on their own and make it a stable one before introducing more characters. I think there is no way possible to tell how it would have ended up. I look at when my ex and I separated and if anyone had made a judgement on how we coparent even a year after separation --- they would have been very, very wrong. I know we talked about it on another post, but even 14 years ago there wasn't very many good resources on blending families. Counselors, in my experience, varied wildly and even now, I think most are pretty uninformed about stepfamily issues. And yeah, we went to family counseling when I was a child and it mostly made issues worse. Most (again ime) go with the popular thoughts of every child wants a family, so stepparents act like parents etc. The problem I see with that advice given to you is that it only works if the BM is on board with it. And you can't make her include you in every single little thing. It also makes it sound like she was the OW that had a child with your husband and you need to protect your marriage at all costs from a threat, not an ex wife that divorced your husband for a reason. To me, dropping off a picture at work is small potatoes -- so she sounds fairly normal. Now if she was insisting on holidays spent with DH without you, you got a big problem and there would be a need to treat this like a bigger issue. And on the flip side, I'm sure there are issues that she would've liked to resolve differently that happened. I also can't imagine many BM's going along with include new SM in everything in saying that, it sounds to me that she is more on the reasonable side than most after a divorce. With my BM hat on, I'd think it was just downright strange. I didn't have a kid with SM, I don't really care what they set up for their marriage, its their business! Not mine. Whatever they want to do in their home, great, why are you insisting I act your way though? When people get married they dont start going to work for each other or calling their bosses about important work details, why any different for ex's? Its like when wives say they write their husbands emails for them, I can't wrap my head around it. Why? So if they are a horrible writer, why not give them the tools to become a better one? (I should take my own advice here lol) Instead of doing their homework for them?