Thank you both for your kind and reassuring words of confidence in me. I appreciate them more than you can ever know.

This has been a difficult week. My oldest son somehow coped well enough to go through the motions of attending school all week but he is pale, withdrawn, anxious and uncommunicative. He seems very fragile to me and I feel like I am walking on eggshells around him, afraid to say something that will trigger another outburst and send him spiraling out of control. My ex's extended family is in from all four corners of the earth for a holiday reunion this week, and according to both of my kids everybody acted as if I had been erased from the family records or never even existed. How weird was that for them, that nobody even asked about their mother? Especially since I was the glue that held my ex and his family together, always calling everyone weekly in order to stay in touch, never forgetting a birthday or special occassion since he wouldn't make the effort...Both my kids told me that their grandfather (on their father's side of course) has been consistently ignoring my older boy and rudely turned away from him mid-sentence several times when he tried to engage him in conversation.This was, as you can imagine, very hurtful to him, and although it was nothing I haven't experienced first-hand before, I was very surprised that he would take out his displaced anger(?) on his grandson. He even made an announcement at dinner, saying something to the effect that the two remaining spouses of his children (the other 3 are all divorced now too) were going to be treated from now on like "real sons and daughters" since they had proven their loyalty to him (whatever that means!)Boy! were my kids were incensed! I told them that I was sure it wasn't anything personal...that grandpa is just getting older and a little crotchety, but I don't think either one of them believed me. I can't help but wonder what my ex told his parents that has made them both so angry. I'm sure they don't know that it was their son who filed for divorce, refused to go to counseling, and had been unfaithful to me. But then again, blood is thicker than water, so who knows?

The status conference was a bust: my ex's attorney lied through his teeth to the judge and did everything in his power to further incite his client against me and delay a resolution once more, and it worked all too well. By adding fuel to the already raging fire he got my ex so incensed that he now wants to forget about working out a solution and instead have a formal trial. The only person who will profit here is his attorney, who by now must be able to send both of his kids and his wife to Europe for the next 3 summers in a row. This will not turn out well for either one of us because the judge has a horrible reputation of doing things for shock effect and is sure to come up with something that neither one of us will like.

I took the initiative and contacted my ex directly in an effort to make him see how manipulative his attorney was being. When he calmed down enough to listen and we were finally able to talk, I learned that his attorney never gave him the last three compromise-offers we issued, and has been feeding him all kinds of lies about what my lawyer has been requesting. Similarly, it turns out that his lawyer never gave us the details of what my ex was offering us. This is outrageously unethical behavior and I suspect it could be grounds for a malpractice suit. In any case, I have agreed to have my attorney write up our most recent proposal and told him that I will give it to him directly instead of relying on his lawyer to deliver the letter. But who knows what is really going on here? How can you ever trust a word a sociopath says? How do I know I am not being played now, too?

Have any of you been through anything like this? If so, how did you keep your sanity, and after all was said and done, were you able to trust any man ever again?

Foundhervoice-atlast