ill add that this started after my saved game wouldnt load tbh, all the ones i tried caused a crash while loading.
Its wierd because i was playing earlier today just fine and i then installed two mods, which i have now deleted to try and solve the problem and it didnt work. This is why i used the steam verify file cache option. The saves still wouldnt load and the launcher still had teh greyed out thing. I have now made a backup of my data folder and im going to reinstall skyrim and try again.