I'm looking forward to the day when my feelings about stuff like this fade into apathy. Right now things are still too fresh and raw. This new phase only started in September with him getting his house and moving out of the nasty trailer. Before that, I had limited contact with him. Now I have to deal with him a lot more, and it's been hard.
And yes, people DO believe it. His family is so enmeshed and dysfunctional, and I know for a fact that his mom has been desperate to bring him "back into the fold" because his dad has been having health issues. His family is ALL about appearances and tends toward denial. For a while they seemed to have good boundaries with STBXAH and understood the nature of what was going on with his addictions, but that is no longer the case. They're back to enabling.