jits50,

I feel your pain. But, it does get better. I practice the spider exercise every time I pick up the guitar to practice. It's the first thing I do to help warm up the fingers as well as develop dexterity. I also practice with a metronome, picking a string with every tick of the metronome. It's better to start out slow and accurate, than fast and jumbled. I still have issues with it, but it's better than when I started. Pain is a bad thing, so you might want to try higher up on the fret board, where the frets are closer together so you're not stretching your fingers too far apart, or contorting your hand to make it work. Then, work your way back towards fret 1 as your fingers and hands get used to it. I've seen that tip for other things and thought you might want to try that for the spider exercise. Good luck!!