I have been dealing with this for 33 years. I tried everything suggested here. My husband has two daughters. i have no children of my own. i had to have a hhysterectomy when I was 25. i married my husband when I was 36 and happly single. He was too, after being divorced five years from his high school sweetheart,. She immigrated from South America to his small Southern town, when she was a young teen,. She was exotic and alluring to a naive teen. She had horrific underlying issues that to date have not been dealt with. Her mother was married when she got pregnant by another man and had her, supposedly to get out of the marriage. She left her and her older sister from her marriage, with her parents and moved to the United States. They joined her years later in my husbans’s small town.. Seven or eight years ago, my husband’s ex wife learned via genetic testing she had a brother who had used the same DNA testing service. He was adopted I suppose as an infant. Who knows how many others there could be. this behavior reminds me of a species of bird, the cowbird. They do nor rear their young themselves. They lay their eggs in the nest of other species, usually smaller in size. From the time they are hatched they are larger and demand more food. Very often the legetimate siblings die from starvation or are crowded out of the nest before they can fly and care for themselves. When both parents are not willing to work together post divorce about the children they created, put their needs and wants before that of their children, it is going to be a disaster in some way. Add to it someone with this background above, and a dupisaster is guaranteed. I am a young senior now. I was very idealistic when I married my husband. I also saw two teens neglected by a mother who was focused solely on her career. My husband came from a home of very modest means but well educated. he has a PhD in Engineering. He is an only child but spent his first seven years in his grandmother’s home with his parents and an orphaned female cousin (Depression era). He was surrounded by a very close knit family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. They all went to the same school and church together, gathered together often, and lived by the Golden Rule. I was born and raised in the South too, in very much the same way. The difference being iI lived in a much larger city and I am the youngest of three siblings, We have lost our parents and both of my siblings. My mother and siblings died within the past three years. There never was going to be a way for all of this to turn out well. . When the ex wife retired she had nothing left to do but focus on her children and our grandchildren. We do not understand her and never will. We should not have to. But we have been forced to live with the consequences of her behavior and the influence she has over her daughters and the grandchildren. We have not heard from our children and grandchildren in five years. For many years, while the ex was emplyed, we were in contact continuously, very happily involved. We lived n the same town with the ex and one daughter and her family, the other an hour away up untl Christmas of 2019.. In the beginning I thought it would be good for my husband’s ex and I to have a courteous relationship in order to manage the girls activities and stop the obvious and normal game playing children of divorce do to get what they want. I found out quickly that was never going to happen. I love my step daughters and grandchildren. so I did the best I could. But no matter what I did, I stepped on the ex wife’s toes, Multiply thar by two girls who were starved for what their mother could or would not give them for most of their lives. We got tired of being hurt by these two daughters and their mother. They abandoned us over a flurry of insane activy involving a divorced stepdaughter. She divorced her husband of 21 years in record time. They had accrued a lot of property, lived in a million dollare home. My stepdaughter drove a new Mercedes Benz. Six weeks after the divorce was finalized she got involved with a man who did not make enough money to pay his $350 rent and borrowed money from her. He lived in a hovel, with barely any decent furnishings, his clothing piled waist high in the corners of the room he slept in. He did not even empty his mailbox of junk mail. Instead he let it spill onto the ground and carved a niche out of what was packed into the box. He spent his days hanging out in a cafe, his nights in a bar, surrounded by women half his age. At nearly 50 years old he had nothing to show for his existence other than a short lived marriage that produced no children. He has a Bachelor’s degree in History. When my stepdaughter brought him to meet us he was dirty, unshaven, disrespectful, and talked only about beer and his mutt dogs. All of our red flags went up and have stayed up since. He has never done anuthing to change the first impression we had of him. He has only made it worse. My stepdaughter moved him in on top of her children, devastated by a divorce they were too young to understand or see coming. At some point thay went to the courthouse and got married. We do not know when. They had a coming out party in my stepdaughter’s home, calling it a Christmas party. We were traveling and unable to attend. When we learned of the marriage we were shocked. My stepdaughter had never spoken well of this man to us. She swore to us she had no plans of getting married. But when we reacted the way we did she flew into a rage. This was the beginning of the end. She was estranged from her mother who had desperately been trying to win her daughter back. Suddenly the perfect opportunity arose. Her mother fully embraced this creature my stepdaughter married. Thus began the campaign against us. Cruelty began first, hen alienation. we were so very naive about what was going on. Mockery and amusement at our bewilderment was constant. Then alienation when I confronted my stepdaughters’ behavior. All of this took too much out of us, We spent one last holiday season alone, surrounded by family, and two days later moved from our home of over 40 years. it is not easy beginning a new life at our ages but is so much better than how we were living. We love where we live no, which is on the opposite side of the continent from all of the pain and insanity. If the damage done does not cause us to lose our lives sooner than later then we have a chance at happiness again.

What you describe is domestic violence, with an emphasis on economic abuse. National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) from: http://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence We define domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.... Emotional Abuse: Undermining an individual's sense of self-worth and/or self-esteem is abusive. This may include, but is not limited to constant criticism, diminishing one's abilities, name-calling, or damaging one's relationship with his or her children. Economic Abuse: Is defined as making or attempting to make an individual financially dependent by maintaining total control over financial resources, withholding one's access to money, or forbidding one's attendance at school or employment. Psychological Abuse: Elements of psychological abuse include - but are not limited to - causing fear by intimidation; threatening physical harm to self, partner, children, or partner's family or friends; destruction of pets and property; and forcing isolation from family, friends, or school and/or work. Domestic violence can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. Domestic violence occurs in both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships and can happen to intimate partners who are married, living together, or dating. Domestic violence not only affects those who are abused, but also has a substantial effect on family members, friends, co-workers, other witnesses, and the community at large. Children, who grow up witnessing domestic violence, are among those seriously affected by this crime. Frequent exposure to violence in the home not only predisposes children to numerous social and physical problems, but also teaches them that violence is a normal way of life - therefore, increasing their risk of becoming society's next generation of victims and abusers.

Thanks, dsg, I will carry on, though I take it you've now bowed out of the discussion. I don't use the term RWNJ when I speak of extremists or conspiracy-theorists, who I consider mentally unstable. I just repeated what was in the thread. But I'm not going to get fixated on a word like dsg does instead of addressing the bigger issue, which is that a segment of our population thinks they're going to fight off some group of people who are coming to take away their liberty. Maybe that sounds sane to some. It was shocking to me to read that in Beagle's post. Beagles left off the "fun factor" of owning assault weapons. Read about who buys and collects these weapons--for example, former military with a love of guns, young adults who grew up playing video games, where violence is entertainment--and I think this is a much bigger problem than people afraid of the bogeyman, and therefore harder to enforce a ban. The NY Times has several good articles.

The Swiss do more of something like I think the founders imagined. Every male who is mentally and physically fit for military service gets called up for training upon turning 18. Not sure how long it lasts, maybe 6-12 months, and then they get issued a gun which they would then bring with them if they were called to defend the country. Not sure about the ammo. But anyway, you can buy a gun and ammo in most of Europe, but the restrictions are a bit tighter, not sure if they have the gun show loopholes like we do. I think Europeans are not as bothered by this because they don't have this really strong fascination with guns. Some people are big into shooting sports just like here, but I dunno, Europeans are just more world weary, war weary maybe, I mean they've been having violent uprisings for way longer than us. I met a Swiss man once who talked quite a bit about Europeans attitude towards guns and he felt Americans were immature about it. He felt the Swiss had a better attitude because they got training in responsible gun use from their military training. Of course he was a real Teutonic type of a guy, not at all loosey goosey, very formal in his manners. He found a lot of American behavior unruly, lol! The Constitution is built upon "natural" principles which means they are build upon reason which we finally agreed applied to all humans. What could we reasonably expect a reasonable person to want to do. Yes, the founders wanted citizens to have the right to bear arms. But they were also educated men and lovers of reason, so I would like to see some of that come into the current gun debate. I don't know what to do about this violent culture that is escalating here in the US, but I do think as smart and reasonable citizens we can come up with some solutions. If we are at least allowed to research and talk about it and discuss it without absurd and untrue slogans being substituted for sincere efforts to learn about the causes and get something done. I'm like most posters here, I'm getting sick and tired of this being business as usual and acceptable. Some modest reforms might help, but so will addressing many aspects of this problem. There are clearly lots of alienated people here and abroad and we've got to figure out ways to make ourselves less vulnerable to the negative gang mentality that people get swept up in. We've chipped away at a lot of problems here in this country and made progress so it can be done. I know that young men in violent and unstable situations are very vulnerable to lashing out. Here in the US they join gangs of various ilks. But then again, Mateen had every chance to settle down and become a solid citizen (education, jobs, marriage, etc.) and he just couldn't do it. Lots of cases like this, then add this inflammatory rhetoric that is so easily accessible . . .