Sue - I agree with Lulu about the boundaries thing. It takes a lot of mental energy sometimes to come up with boundaries that are fair to all parties and sometimes it's tempting to keep the peace and cave in but ... ya gotta do it.

Due to certain events with DSD recently we have told her that there is no pocket money until her next school report (don't care about her marks but she has to show she's giving it a red hot go by attending all classes and giving in all assignments) so she will have to get a job. She WAS complaining about this because she's about to start VCE and doesn't think it's fair. Well sorry buster, but if you come home with a school report with mostly fails then you're obviously not doing your homework so you have plenty of time for a part-time job and hey, you're going to need one because you're probably not going to uni. The day after DP laid it on the line, guess what she went job hunting! Boundaries work.

I think sit down and work out something you think is fair and then talk to your kids. In some ways, there's no point working out what has caused them to treat you like this from a psychological perspective. That also takes a lot of energy as you know so try to spend more time focusing on how you want the future to be instead.