BBK, you say he is using the girlfriend - no, it sounds to me like she is using HIM. She's certainly getting her claws into him exclusively. He's not on any free ride.
However, this is his choice. He could always choose to walk away and say, "I may be fond of you and I may appreciate the roof over my head but it is costing me time with my kids, all to accommodate your petty jealousies."
And of course, he won't do that - he is weak.
Interestingly, Norma (remember her?) sounds very passive-aggressive; little miss helpless but still making everyone else jump through hoops to HER tune. People like that often get given jobs where tasks have to be accomplished because they are so good at making other people reach the goal. I've met a few in my time and generally I've learned to avoid getting caught in their sticky little traps, although it does still happen sometimes. It's where they get their claws into your kids, that you get trapped more easily - easy child had a dance teacher like this, she decided that the children were going to make the costumes and paint the sets for the upcoming "Lord of the Rings" extravaganza. Of course, the kids couldn't do it all - they didn't know how, they often simply couldn't cope with the amount of work - so parents stepped in. The really annoying thing was the way everything was so disorganised that you could put in a lot of work to find she'd changed her mind and that bit you had done was no longer needed, or now was being made differently. Her motto was, "It is good for the kids to do all this, they need some sense of ownership and working as a team," but the reality was, she was trying to save money and put something together without the faintest idea of how to do it, and was hoping someone would rescue her (and the production) along the way. And at first, we did, thinking it would save us more time in the long run; but all it did was encourage her to ask more of us, even though we made it clear we could not take on any more. I was pregnant with complications and supposed to be on bed rest, and she expected me to do a lot of running around on her behalf; when we called her on it, she would say, "Oh, YOU shouldn't be doing this, it is the KID'S responsibility," which is crazy because at the time easy child 2/difficult child 2 was only 6, difficult child 1 was 8 and easy child was only 10. I would refuse a task firmly, only to hear her ask me next lesson, "Have you got those mittens made yet?"
I would AGAIN tell her, "I am not doing them; I cannot. The last lot ruined my sewing machine which is still in for repairs."
Then next lesson - "How are those mittens coming along?"
"I'M NOT DOING THEM!"
And she would be most insistent that she had given them to me - each lesson I went through this. In the end I gave up, took the darn mittens and paid a friend to make them for me. All the while my friend muttered darkly, "You should send her the bill for your sewing machine - and take your kids out of her dance class."
easy child was working for her - I know she was only 10 years old, but this teacher had easy child and another student helping to teach the tiny tots. They would be paid, she said. Then reckoning time came - the show was over, time to pay the next term's fees, time to pay costume hire (for costumes WE had made, although she supplied the materials - cheap ones, at that) and she DEDUCTED easy child's 'wages' from the account. So easy child was never paid, by her. And when we looked at the bill - we could see how she had padded the bill to not only get out of paying easy child, but to also still get money out of us.
That's when we left.
Classic passive-aggressive, deliberately helpless when she needed to be, to get people to help her out of sympathy, using people up until they've had enough and eventually moving on to a fresh field of new victims. For a dance teacher, kids get older and move on, there are always fresh new young faces with innocent parents.
Is Norma at the place you're leaving, or the place you're going to? Because I really hope you can give her a wide berth when you no longer need her.
Marg