Dyinginside, Your husband stated that it will end in divorce because of you and his daughter. one thing: HE SHOULD NOT DEFINE HIS MARRIAGE TO YOU ON THE BASIS OF HIS DAUGHTER . PERIOD. BIg red flag here. and to top it off he's not interested in going to counciling now????? I agree with sweeby, you have leverage, use it. You are in your parents home. If your husband thinks that is where its heading and he has made the decision to not change this direction, because he's the one who can change this or at least put his foot down and say to his daughter, she is my wife i love her , stop treating her like Sh*t, then there is only two things you can do. 1. Tellhim counciling now and work it out while being at the parents house. Cause counciling does cost and financially you'ld be in better position to do this... 2. If he insists on no counciling and stays.....tell him to leave with his daughter. My feelings on this: If i were under my parents roof, in this situation and my husband said, well i've spoken to my daughter and she still doesn't like ..and i guess if that is the way its going to be between you then i guess i'll have to divorce you....I would tell him, pack your bags now and leave with your daugther please. I would tell him , i know you love me and you love your daughter but if this is the way you think then its obvious you have chosen your path and you want your daughter and there is no sharing of you between me and her. Please have a wondering life and take care of yourself and yoru daughter...Give him time to pack up and go to a relative until he cna find an apartment. WHy muddle through a situation when your husband has obviously made a decision not to act and to pick his daughter? I know you are in love with him but maybe he needs to be alone with his daughter to form a relationship with her and he can't handle the both of you.ITs sad. unless you all go to counciling i dont think this will work. You will be left alone and resent not acting faster.

Justmetoo actually said it better than I could. I know & I have thought about how drama follows me & have wondered how that is. I LOVED the peace and quiet the entire week SD was gone... a boring life with no drama. I enjoyed the Easter party... even though I was surprised to see my son show up with DIL when he told me he was going out of town the day before. (Again, it felt like they are sneaking behind my back) I know it must be things I do that cause drama to follow me. If I had more time, I would figure it out... I may go back into counseling because I do agree with that. Just for the record.. no, I don't support them being together. I support them both having a relationship with their son ~ separately. They are horrible for each other and if they get together, I'm more likely to have DGS LONGER or forever. Their "marriage" happened because she broke up with him & he decided to "prove" his love for her by taking her in the middle of the night and marrying her. I got countless calls from him in the middle of the night to come get him, she threw him out at the beginning of the marriage. Then calls telling me not to come get him when I was in my car. Finally, after a couple of times, I told him he's married to her & work it out yourself when he called. She was hitting him. He did not want to leave. Within a couple of months, he told me she was pregnant and he had joined the Army. He came to see me one day after they had a fight. She called him repeatedly, telling him that she was going to abort DGS & he would do whatever she said. Just recently, he told me that she really wanted to abort their son but he insisted she continue the pregnancy. He says it was HER idea for him to join the military, not his. Then she used it against him and was angry that he "left" her. While she was pregnant, I took her to birthing classes... trying to be helpful & get along with her since she is going to be my DIL. The question came up, "what do you hope to get from the class?" and she answered, "get this out of me!" referring to the baby. She never rubbed her tummy & showed any excitement like most pregnant ladies and they moved into my house just before he was born because they were planning to move to Georgia. Her parents wanted nothing to do with it. He took her and DGS (just after he was born) to Georgia before he was deployed for 6 months. During that six months, there were several incidents of domestic violence, MP's arrested her & he was disciplined for her behavior. DGS was taken to the ER three times for "falling" when he wasn't even rolling over yet. They destroyed a moving truck when he moved her back just before his deployment (because the military kicked her off and banned her from the base). The truck's transmission was gone... I can only assume she grabbed the gear shift while he was driving. She used to have emotional outbursts over anything... and she has never been "loving" toward my son. They stayed with me for a week before he had to fly back to be deployed. We were going to look for housing for her. She beat him up (put nail marks across his face on one incident that he didn't report) but on Halloween, she got upset with him & started beating on him while he was driving. They had DGS in the car & witnesses called police. She was arrested. A few days later, she was out & they talked before he left. He insisted on her going to the airport so I agreed. After we dropped my son at the airport & returned to my house, where her car was... she told me to keep DGS so she can go look for a house on her own. I didn't see her for days. Weeks passed & I still had DGS so I found an apartment for her (because she said she couldn't take DGS until she had a place to take him) but even after she had the apartment, she left him with me. She had him a day or night here and there. On one of the night visits, she had brought home a guy & at some point during the night she left the apartment (either drunk or got drunk), rolled her car into a ditch and was arrested. She did not tell police she had a baby in her apartment with some guy she met. Fortunately, the guy called some of her friends to come stay with the baby so he could leave and I found out the next day that she was in jail & I went to get the baby. That's how I ended up with Guardianship. She has gotten better with DGS, the older he is but there is no real bond and she doesn't seem to mind the lack of bond. My son does. He wants a bond to exist but I believe it's his lack of maturity to think it's automatic... and doesn't seem to have a desire to put in any time toward it. But, DIL has so many problems... she has been in rehab so many times, she is bi polar, and she recently was diagnosed with an eating disorder.. which is why she had a meltdown over the cake pop. And the only thing I can say is that I made the cake pops because DGS asked me to and he loves them... and I didn't think it was fair for anyone to say no cake pop as they are being handed out to the rest of the kids. Would it kill him? no. Would he get over it? sure. But, the basket of candy he ate.. DIL unwrapped for him and sat with him as he ate didn't seem to bother her. It wasn't out of concern for his health... maybe a power struggle or an unrealistic fear because of her eating disorder and mental illness. Rational parents know a cake pop (not even two bites of cake) is going to cause a disease like diabetes. When she threw the fit, I did not respond to it... other parents seemed to ignore it & walk away. It wasn't given any energy and she ran to her car where my son followed to console her. The questions I posed were because I WANT to include them in events but I do not want to have her outbursts... jeez, one year she started crying hysterically when my son got a plate of food at Thanksgiving. She has mental issues & I get that, but I don't want to walk on eggshells when I plan an event. I got tired of SD causing drama with her grandma and the grief it cause me, so I don't have parties when SD is here anymore. No SD, no drama. With DIL, it's only events that are focused on DGS but those are events that also include kids he's in daycare with & their parents that I know. It's embarrassing. DIL may or may not have a meltdown at any given time over any given thing, which is why I backed off at the birthday party. I realize now that it was a mistake but it was also the first thing she's been to for him. I let lots go & roll off my back to keep the peace for DGS. DIL has given me lots of reasons to want nothing to do with her.. but I have let so much go. As JMT said, they are welcome to plan things for him but they barely spend time with him.. and yes, it bothers me to have my son live less than a mile from my work & not see his son more than a few hours a week. He came over last night & saw him for a couple of hours. Yet, he will drive three hours to see his wife.. and a little more insight into their "marriage". All the time he was gone in the military, there were guys in & out. One of her friends told me she was prostituting from the apartment. He had a girlfriend in Georgia that he dumped the day he moved back here. This "reconcilliation" came out of left field for me, when I envisioned my son coming back & being a dad to his son. DIL told me she wanted nothing to do with him and from the outside perspective, she appears to be torturing him... acts like they are reconcilling and then dumps him. She's done it several times in the last few weeks and he has been very emotional, depressed and suicidal. Then they get back & he's happy. IMO, she's playing games with him. She has emotional detachment problems (I think based on her childhood) and them being together is bad... not ever going to be good for DGS. (unless she deals with her mental issues and he grows up!)

Well, I don't know this for a fact, but whenever I read about a saintly person, I suspect that there must be SOME place they can go complain about their washing lepers' bandages, giving everything to the poor, ha! And Allyssa, you are in a very challenging situation fraught with emotion that will indeed call upon you to be a bit saintly - but the results down the road could be very rewarding. This little guy is probably going to go through harder times before things get better. To your great credit, you sound very wise in understanding that he's been through some awful stuff and he's going to have some acting out. I agree with the other posters - counseling for him and maybe the whole family would be a great start. About your baby-to-be, I don't think there is any supernatural reason why that isn't happening, but stress can supposedly make it harder to conceive. Whatever you can do to take care of yourself and to feel more at peace couldn't hurt, both in getting pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy. And whatever it takes to feel like your daughter isn't getting the short end of the stick in any way. And how are you and your DH doing? Is there a strain between you at all? One other thing strikes me about your post - your sense that you don't want to overstep the mom boundaries. That is very sensitive and perceptive. I would say that your basic stance with SS right now could be "I know I can't replace your mom, but I am a mom, and I'm here for you." And down the road, the mother-son bond may well grow. Bottom line, don't beat yourself up. You sound like you have a lot of wisdom and understanding about what your SS is going through, and the challenges to your family. Having someone to talk to is so important! Hope you get some help here. Best wishes.

Yes, disengaging... ignoring... letting it go... is very very very hard to do. As far as assigning things for each person to buy ... that unfortunately does not work... we have tried that He talked to her about the dress before I took her out to buy one ... and at that time she didnt have any money... She never has any money (probably because she gives away all of her shifts for work and only works when she absolutely has to) No matter what the occasion or the item needed it is always... oh well I dont have the money for that right now... But when they come back from her house or when she picks them up from school she all of a sudden had money to buy random crap that they dont need. We end up in the situation of we either stand our ground that she is the one that has to buy these things and the kids end up without or we dont punish the kids because she is useless and buy the things ourselves... it's kind of the same deal with sending clothes to her house ... we NEVER get back all of the clothes that are sent over to her house... it usually takes at least a week of back and forth "I know the shirts and shorts are at your house I sent them over there and they did not come back with them" Her; "there are no clothes here I've looked" A few weeks later the the kids wear the clothes she didnt have home but alas we are missing more now. OR the thing that really bugs the crap out of me.... she will let the kids wear their good clothes or school clothes outside to play in which case they get stained and/or ripped. There goes that outfit yet again.. We have asked her to buy clothes to keep at her house so we didnt have to bother but ofcourse ... no money ... or that sounds like a good idea and it never happens. It's come down to us buying more cheap clothes to just stay at her house so we dont send over and lose all of the good clothes that we have at ours. I make a point never to say anything even remotely negative about their bm and to not make it a competition... hmph I am the person who has stepped in when the hubby has lost his temper over her antics and started to say something neg. about her to the kids... I dont have a problem with them calling me by my name I have a problem with the Ms. part of it... I am not a stranger and its just a way for her to put some sort of boundary between us. I just get so frustrated with this constant nonesense... do you know that when she is dropping the kids off with me ... she wont call me to tell me she is on the way... she will call my hubby (usually at work) to tell him to call me to tell me she is on the way.... it's just all so ridiculous.. To make matters worse ... I am now getting dirty looks from her boyfriend as well... woo hoo... if those two had any idea ... I am the person that told hubby he should take the kids to get her a mothers day card... I am the person who had told hubby about how to take certain things when the kids complained that the boyfriend was "being mean" ( which really came down to them adjusting to a new adult figure in their life) it's almost comical that the one person they seem to have a problem with ... is the one person who is trying to make everyone's life easier.