FDH is on the road now, on his way to get SD for her next visit and neither of us are ready. We had a pretty crappy February - we didn't connect like we had hoped we would and we got in a lot of arguments about the relationship. It all boiled down to he wasn't doing the work because he was feeling frustrated, I was taking on the work for both of us, and resentment was growing between both of us. We got to an agreeable spot yesterday where we both have acknowledged what is bothering both of us, but, now, today, SD is going to be here until the end of April so we don't have a chance to start working things out without the added work of a teenager being in the house.

Yea, two months instead of one because SD and GUBM suck when they're together and we can't trust GUBM to take SD to a standardized testing appointment in the end of April. And now we have to work out our relationship balance while SD is around, so even more of our attention and focus is going to be drawn off of our relationship. But, this is what happens when kids are in the mix. Bright spot is that not only do FDH and I have two set date nights coming up over the next two months, but, we also have a trip the first week of May so we can have a week to kick-back and relax without SD around. Hopefully we can carve out more time for date nights, and hopefully FDH can plan some of them as well. We've already agreed that when we have our time together that we're going to be more engaged - to avoid FDH sitting down and picking up his damn cell phone and zoning out every night.

It sucks, though, but it's the way things are. We've long known that we have to work on our relationship just as much when SD is here as when she's not; just because SD is around doesn't mean our relationship ceases to exist. I'm kind of looking at it as training for when we have our own kid, we'll have to be able to balance it all then, too, and it will be every day, there won't be breaks like we get with SD. And I'm lucky because not only do I have you STalkers, but, I also have a friend here in PGH who is in a step situation (she has a stb16 SS) with a crappy BM as well. So I have places to vent my frustrations and get feedback.

But, I'm still not ready for it. I'm going to blame the lack of days in February for a bit and delude myself into thinking we'd be more ready if February was longer. And I'm going to blame the fact that I felt like such complete garbage yesterday that I couldn't get in one more counseling session pre-SD visit. But, this week will go quickly and I'll be in counseling again next Tuesday and I can hash this out there, too. So, if I post anything desperate or out of utter frustration, please bear with me, lol.