Well... my marriage is not doing so well. Leave it to me to brag about my hubby like crazy, and then stuff falls apart.

We have always had an open relationship. In fact, we have enjoyed swinging in the past. OK, I know that may be offensive to some, but that's the way we started out, and that's been our understanding all along. We were always very, very close, and no one ever came between us.

Apparently, since my accident 4 years ago, when my back got really, really bad, and my health just plummetted, our sex life dwindled and suffered... and even though he said he was OK, and happy and satisfied, apparently he was not. He was still very loving and giving all along, but sex has become more and more problematic. And as my health suffered, I gained more and more weight.

My weight and other physical problems have become unbearable for him. He hasn't done anything to try to help me overcome these things -- like try to find the right doctor for me -- he's just become fed up with the notion that there's really nothing that can be done.

And he's fallen in love with another woman. My friend, in fact. My one close female friend.

We were going to swing with her, in fact, but she was uncomfortable with the whole of our lifestyle. We have always given each other the freedom to swing alone if we chose to... so I gave them my blessing. They were very good for each other -- she's a lot more physically fit than I am, and sex for her is not problematic at all. Plus, she is still coming out of a horrible, horrible relationship -- we have been sheltering her while she has been severing herself from that man, who unfortunately lives just a few apartments away.

My mother-in-law did not understand what was going on, and thought my friend was trying to snake Raul away from me. We finally sat down and explained our lifestyle to her, and at first she was amazingly understanding.

But I have had problems with Raul, because he has apparently fallen out of love with me, and more and more deeply in love with our friend. I have been sad and weepy, and Sonia has become very agitated... strangely enough, she had become very, very needy toward me, and started doing things like following me around, coming into my room while I'm typing on the computer and just staring at me (she stares at me a lot, I don't know why), plopping herself down nearby while I'm in the middle of doing something else, and telling me in her broken English that she's hungry (so I had to stop everything I was doing and make her a sandwich when she was perfectly capable of doing it herself), and in general, just annoying the hell out of me when I really wasn't able to handle it at all.

I finally started showing my annoyance with her. And she has been doing horrible things all along, like calling the little girl in the equation horrible names, telling her she's ugly, etc. She's accused my friend of buying and using drugs, and bringing them home to slip into Raul's food, which is absolutely ridiculous... and altogether causing us all a great deal of hell.

She got in my friend's face, and because she was so sure that my friend was using drugs and putting them into Raul's food, she screamed at her, "If you give drugs to my son, I will kill you!" I told Sonia that if she threatens my friend, I will call the police. She told me to go ahead and call them.

Heh. Then Sonia waited around for 2 hours, waiting for the police to come. She poked her head into my apartment and asked when the police were coming, because she was hungry and wanted to go get food. (She doesn't have any food stamp money on her card at this time, and no money of her own because she blew it all on cigarettes, so I don't know or care where or how she's supposedly feeding herself. I tried for 6 months to get her to eat properly and to not live on just coffee with milk. She can go choke on THAT, too, for all I care.)

I have had to get right into Sonia's face and break this kind abuse up. I have defended her against other people, and I told her I would not permit anyone to abuse her in my house, but I will not tolerate her abusing anyone else. She doesn't get it, apparently. Apparently, she wants the freedom to be as nasty and foul as she wants to be, while having the sympathy and protection at the same time.

I'm not standing for it. Not for a minute.

So she's decided she's going to take her food stamps and spend them at some kind of community center, where they feed people on fixed incomes some kind of crappy lunch. She won't eat my cooking anymore. Fine, she can choke on that crappy government sh*t all she wants to. She's locked the door that connects the two parts of the apartment, and I've ordered her not to go wandering around the apartment in the dark. She gets restless in the middle of the night, and just opens her creaking door, and just paces around. I told her I was putting a lock on my side of the door. She closed the door hard and locked it from her side.

Well, my creepy-ass brother-in-law was right after all. He can't stand his mother, and he warned us that she was manipulative and otherwise impossible to live with. It took a few months for the good behavior to wear off, but he was right. I'm hoping we can get her to go back to the assisted living facility, where they can supervise her, make her take her medication, and get her to eat like a normal human being.

And maybe we will change our phone numbers, because she has this tendency to hear voices, imagine that one of us is speaking to her, and to get nervous about it.

So I'm feeling screwed up on all sides of my life right now. My husband and I are trying to figure out what we are going to do with what's left of our relationship -- we're on good terms, still talking, still hugging and kissing, still caring, but not married in the way I want to be married. His mother has turned the house into an armed camp, and we're a little bit afraid she's going to do something really, really stupid. My publishing life is way more problematic than it should be. And I'm having to keep it together for the sake of my friend's kids, whom I watch all the time while she's at work.

I'm not happy about anything right now. Especially since the worst of the problems I'm facing now, I have brought upon myself... but nothing was supposed to work out the way it has. Raul was supposed to be my soul mate, my forever love. Now he is more in love with my friend than he ever was with me... he does thing for her that he would never do for me before. And most gut-wrenching of all, he's HAPPIER than he ever was with me. He was my rock, my center... now he's not anymore. It hurts... it hurts so, so bad.

I'm not averse to living in an alternative lifestyle / group marriage sort of arrangement. Not at all... but that's not what we've got. I feel like the nanny and the maid. There isn't any intimacy left for ME. I love my friend, I love Raul... heck, I love the kids, but I'm not getting anything from anyone, except maybe the cat. And even SHE is a pain in the neck.

I feel like total sh*t. I don't know how I got through this week so far, and it's only Tuesday. I feel so stupid... I'm sure everyone will tell me to leave Raul... but I've got no where to go, quite frankly, and I'm not sure that leaving would be the best thing for me even if I did have somewhere else to go.

Please be gentle with me, Ladies. I'm feeling bad enough as it is.