What changed? BM went bonkers!

DH and I didn't live together before marriage, big mistake, you don't know what goes on behind closed doors until you live with someone for a while.

What changed? A lot actually. We dated for a little over a year during which I spent a lot of time with DH & SD together, even vacationing with them. I felt like I knew DH very well & vice-versa. We decided to get married right away instead of living together, mainly b/c we had both lived with SO's in the past & thought that if we felt this strongly about each other, why wait? Neither of us were getting any younger, so we just jumped in without a long engagement period. Also, I admit it had a little to do with BM & not wanting to deal with the craziness which would ensue if we "lived in sin" (she is supposedly super-religious - what DH calls a hypochristian).

Now before getting married, I had a few issues to do with DH & his baggage that I wanted cleared up:

1. Getting a signed custody agreement & CS order (they were never married). He tackled this one right away, but we soon found out that his custody agreement sucked. It probably would have been fine if one is dealing with a normal human, but not when dealing with the hostile, personality-disordered nutjob that is BM. Of course, once you have a CO in place, it is next to impossible to get it changed without significant reasons. That took 2.5 years & is just now finally being resolved. So that is one thing that I went into marriage thinking all was good, but it quickly became the MOST troubling & divisive issue we have dealt with in our marriage.

2. Taking care of his tax debt & some other financial issues. Once again, things started off positively, but about a month after the wedding DH became very ill & was unable to work for a period of time. Then about 3 months after that, he decided to quit his job & start his own business. Of course he discussed this with me before doing it, but I was under the impression that he would be paying himself a salary. If you have ever started a business, I'm sure you know that things don't always go as planned & we had no back-up plan or savings. Needless to say, I quickly became the main (& sometimes sole) breadwinner in our household. So our debt, coupled with CS & attorney's fees, has multiplied exponentially. Again, I was totally blindsided by how quickly "our" future plans changed once we were married.

3. Getting DH to set boundaries with BM. I knew BM was crazy when we were dating & the more serious we became, the crazier she got. So I set down a few ground rules to DH BEFORE we married as to how I expected him to handle her while respecting me as his wife. For instance, I told him she was never to come to our home for pick-ups, drop-offs or any other reason for that matter. Within a week of returning from our honeymoon, she was sitting in front of my house. Of course DH was immediately wanting to give in to her because to him that seemed easier than dealing with me. I would never have guessed in a million years that DH would have disrespected me like that. In this instance, I'm not really sure what changed - looking back, I guess DH was not truly prepared to set boundaries b/c he didn't know at that time how far BM would take her craziness. So essentially he made an agreement with me that he wasn't really ready to follow through on. Again, it has taken 2.5 years for him to even begin to realize that low to no contact is the ONLY way to deal with her.

As far as his parenting is concerned, I think he was & is a great dad. Sure, he makes mistakes & there are a few things we disagree on, but they are minor & nothing that wouldn't happen in an intact family. I've had to set a few of my own boundaries, i.e. getting him to understand that I am not his built in babysitter. But we work it out on a day to day basis.

Anyway, in my situation, all the planning & talking & setting forth of rules didn't really work out because things did change after the wedding. But what's that saying - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" or something like that?