Cyronak- You are right-- it's insane to interact with either of them. I haven't had any relationship talk with AH in ages and I don't know what possessed me to start up again. This was a "relapse" I guess. I have to have contact with him bc we have young kids. It's not realistic to have nc. I have blocked MIL's email now so I have no need to be in contact with her either.
Beth- I didn't mean to ignore your message-- I was posting at the same time as you and just now saw it. I spoke to my sponsor AFTER I'd already reached out like a fool to AH. So, by the time I talked to her I'd already done the damage. Thank you for sharing your experience. I need to accept that no matter what I do or don't do, no matter how much it's obvious I am NOT harming her baby boy, I am going to be the bad guy. I guess I thought once he was not here they'd have no more reason to blame me for anything but I was very naive obviously. I was feeling guilty about insinuations from her that I was harming her r/s with my girls and got sucked in to defending myself to her and well, you know the rest. I need to go 100% no contact with all his family and go back to having no conversations at all with AH other than about the girls. It worked for the past several months just fine and I was foolish to think we could have any other sort of conversation and have it go sanely.
Again, thanks to everyone for the warmth, realistic words, advice, perspective, experience. It helped more than you know.