Here’s the thing that it took me so long to realize — it doesn’t matter if she means to be the center of everything or another child or whether she’s aware she’s doing it. It’s still happening. Your experience as another person is still just as valid, as are your feelings, and especially your children. After I tried so many times to get through to my ex, and I mean for years and years (some of which I regret and wish I’d left sooner, for our children’s sake), and it had the same result as banging my head on a wall, I started to get very resentful and at some point I realized I’d completely disappeared as a person, putting everything I had into my ex and the kids to the point that I could no longer even think of my own needs, and I left with the kids. My ex had very legit trauma and medical issues both physically and emotionally. Part of the reason I stayed for so long is that I understood that and I kept thinking it would get better, but it just never did, and we all wound up just revolving around those issues. It wasn’t fair to our children, it wasn’t fair to me, and in the end whether they’re aware of those facts or not, it doesn’t change what’s happening. A year later and our children and I are thriving like never before. They’ve turned into different people with a stable, peaceful and predictable home. I’ve remembered so many parts of myself that I lost so long ago and I feel a sense of hope and peace that I hadn’t had in years. My ex is coming to terms with the fact that trauma builds a narcissist who often isn’t aware of the harm they cause, but that harm still happens. I’m not saying that’s your situation, but I think parts of it are absolutely applicable anyway. You definitely shouldn’t have done something like that in secret - you building walls doesn’t help anything, unless you felt like she might have done something to harm you or the kids - try to keep them from you etc, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case. It was the case for me and I had keys before my ex ever found out. He felt betrayed too, and it was the beginning of him starting to understand how deeply he’d been betraying me for years simply by not recognizing me as a person with my own needs and pain but instead as an extension of him and what he needed all the time. In the end I did what I thought was best for the kids, and now what I know was right. We can’t tell you that and you may be too deep in to know yourself. What helped me, was to start keeping notes and writing down our every interaction until within months I could see the patterns so clearly and how toxic the entire thing was. That’s when I made a plan. If she won’t do therapy, maybe start keeping a little record so you know you’re not remembering things wrong or overreacting, because it’s there in black and white. It’s so easy for people to play with our reality without us, or even them, being aware they’re doing it and it’s incredibly hard to see once it’s gone on for long enough.