Dear Dan,

I haven’t noticed it before, but now that anita brought it up, I also feel that you don’t really know what was your wife feeling and thinking when she asked for separation. You don’t understand why it happened and are only guessing, because it seems you didn’t really have an honest and open communication with her.

You say that you had a good relationship with her son, until something happened, but you don’t know what. You asked your wife and she told you her son was going “through some stuff” but didn’t tell you what that stuff was. You didn’t ask further because you didn’t want to”pry”.

Actually, it wouldn’t have been prying because it was directly related to you, and he is your stepson. Prying would have been if you wanted to know intimate details about a neighbor, but not if you are worried about your stepson pulling away from you for no apparent reason. I think you deserved an honest conversation with your wife, but it never happened.

Also, you say that you don’t know why you slept on the couch and not in your stepson’s room. BTW I thought that you started sleeping on the couch only when your wife’s mother moved in. I thought that in Sept 2021, when you wife complained about your snoring, you moved to your stepson’s room and that you basically swapped places with him. But it seems this isn’t what happened?

I think it would be important to answer this question (if not here on the forum, at least to yourself): Why indeed did you sleep on the couch and not on the bed, in your stepson’s room, which was free at that time? Was it because his room was “off limits” and you wouldn’t be welcome there? Or it was you who didn’t want to intrude? Or no one offered you to sleep there? Please try to answer this question as honestly as you can, because it may reveal a few things about the dynamic between you and your wife, and about your place in this blended family.