Well, no one said it would be easy to date a guy in a fresh divorce with a child. Especially with my career at the point where it is. Even so, sometimes it gets to me just how much work goes into this relationship. And I catch myself worrying over whether or not I'm getting enough out of it.

You're not supposed to reduce people to a cost benefit analysis. Your friends are your friends, your lovers are your lovers. Loving someone is NEVER a waste and relationships are not zero-sum games. But all the same, I always find myself counting how many nights I spend with FDH. How much money I spend on flying to see friends' weddings, graduations, funerals or on gifts for their babies. I find myself totally the number of times I've seen these friends, the number of texts I get from FDH in a week. I am, in effect, trying to calculate something you can't measure. No wonder I freak out and cry sometimes.

I'm figuring out when next to go back to the therapist. I would hash it out with FDH, but he'll balk and say "Whatever you want" and then I'll wind up picking the thing I would've picked before asking him. I'm glad to go back because it sounds like things are way worse for him than they were two weeks ago. He brought up the bedtime issue again and this time I cut loose about how has no one to blame but himself.

He cried. He said he didn't know what to do. And with being back in the house, FSD3 has been especially bad at bedtimes. He tried ignoring her by going out to the garage and said she came out of the house to bang on the garage door crying for him. When he locked her in the house, she laid in front of the doorjamb and then on the couch, still crying. Finally he put her in her sleeping bag in the garage with him where he was going to town on his punching bag and she cried some more before finally passing out.

It did not help that FMIL started telling EVERYONE that FSD3 had a dream in which "Daddy kicked Mommy out and she was bleeding." If FSD3 had no memory of having that dream before, she sure has it now. Crazy-ass manipulative woman.

I don't know what to tell FDH. I have no experience here and am not in a position to comfort or parent FSD3 as FDH is keeping me away from her while they settle into the house (I was mad about this -- but it's probably a smart move because FSD3 sounds like a hot mess right now). On the one hand, I want to sympathize and distract and channel FSD3's anguish into something positive (e.g. running her ragged at the park so she passes out right when we get home). On the other, I am a bedtime Nazi. It does NOT matter how crappy you feel; sooner or later, we all need to go to bed. GET IN YOUR FREAKING ROOM WITH YOUR GIANT TV AND CRY YOURSELF TO SLEEP THERE, PRINCESS. It's probably more peaceful there than it is in the garage where Daddy is trashing a punching bag in lieu of crying.

Yeah. Therapy. Getting on it.