Hello Sno-White,

One of the kindest, most important gifts you could possibly give to yourself at this time is to read up on co-dependency. Your life with your ex is a textbook example of the phenomena of co-dependency and finding out as much as you can about it will help you tremendously in remapping your life. A good starting point is Melody Beattie's original work "Codependency No More". She has written many others since then but this particular one is excellent. There are so many other factors involved in your life which you have so eloquently described but I think that this would be an excellent place to start giving yourself some solid support and at least a direction in which to begin. I wish you only good things in the future.