Thank you, Anthony. Reading over yesterday's post, I can tell how angry I felt. I can see how reactionary I was and that I "knew" the answers to most of my questions in my gut (like his tendency towards being sick more often than most). I guess I just needed some reassurance from those who've been there. It wasn't fair of me to ask a bunch of relationship questions when no one knows the whole context of our bond. Pretty ridiculous of me. My apologies.

I talked to him last night and it seems that he has had a particularly bad recurrence of his kidney stones and in no way is trying to avoid meeting my son. We spoke again about him getting some help - he says he's called around to find a therapist. I'm seeing that as improvement.

I think a large part of making this work will be to define (and redefine!) boundaries and try to live within them. I see a long trial-and-error process in my future, but a day-by-day approach seems to be the only doable option for us right now.

Again, I can't thank you enough for your calm and sensible response to my irate ramblings. I feel a little embarassed and selfish about getting so worked up. Thanks again.

Mary, you are quite fine in getting worked up, because it is an emotional response to an action. All of us often need another perspective on situations before making decisions, especially based on emotions and not logical and factual knowledge. It is great that you made a phone call, and you found the answer, being what you knew was already a possibility, was the problem to the situation, and not that he just didn't want to meet your son.

We can only believe what is factual, and not what we tend to presume or tell ourselves. This is human nature though, and this is why all of us do need support from anyone who can provide a logical opinion, not to sustain and reassure an emotional one.

We can often relate this to a spouse who thinks another spouse is cheating on them. In that suddenly one partner is late home, is making excuses, is doing things out of the ordinary and so forth. Sometimes it may very well come down to a spouse cheating, and sometimes it has more logical answers such as stress about a topic within the relationship, maybe organizing a surprise for an upcoming event, a change in work has created more work, thus more time is needed to be applied, and the list goes on.

It is great that you made that phone call though, because now your stress and anxiety levels have decreased, no rash decisions made on presumptions, and a great outcome to possibly a great future relationship. Well done mary.