SS16 is out of town with his mom this month for summer visitation for 5 weeks. We have him the rest of the year. It's been kind of weird around the house. There are no other kids, just me, SO and the dogs. I feel like SO doesn't know what to do with himself, he spent an hour last weekend polishing a 3 inch area of chrome on his motorcycle. I've never seen him do so much busy work around the house.

And SO keeps telling his dog, awww, you miss the boy don't you. So I know this is really SO missing his boy, understandable.

But it feels weird between me and SO now. When SS is here, SO and I are always cuddling in the bedroom in the evenings. That's our time together. But we haven't done much of that since SS left. First of all we don't have to hide in our bedroom to escape clingy SS. We can actually sit and watch a show in the living room without SS being intrusive and talking through the entire show.

It's almost like we don't know what to do with our freedom. Clingy step kids are actually very controlling people. And SS is very controlling with SO, he acts like SO's wife. At least that's how I see it.

What do we do now that SS isn't here to be up his dad's butt all the time.

Oh well, I guess I feel guilty that SO and I should be making the most of this time alone to get closer and bond and all that stuff, but SO is excited about his brand new motorcycle and I'm excited about possibly buying a new-ish car. That's all I've been doing lately is car shopping.

We do spend time together, but we also spend a lot of time doing our own thing. I just worry that's all. But nothing majorly wrong is going on, certainly not like what other posters are dealing with right now.