I hope that you are finally on terra firma and are feeling good about the new direction in your life.  I think your tips above will be VERY helpful to those who read them.  This sage guidance came at significant cost to you, but take comfort in the fact that you are helping others with your wisdom.

Although you may be looking back and thinking the past nine years were pointless, try not to dwell on that too much.  It is important to chew over it for awhile, but don't choke on it.  You've already "won" by getting out of a bad situation, acknowledging where you made mistakes and vowing to not make them again.  That's a win, in my book.

Hang in there and keep hanging out here on ST.  We all can use some Fairy dust from time to time! 

"Trust your instincts and if your SO seems defensive or unreasonable then walk away because if these issues are not dealt with at the start they may eventually cost you your relationship and chances of any happiness in the future."

This list is great!

I would also like to add: 

As bad or 'small' as this sounds, if you do not know for certain, it is worth your money to check SO's background and finances.  Unfortunately I didn't.  Omissions are lies in disguise.  If they have just graduated college or changed careers, give them time to build their career before marrying them.  DH led me to believe that his new career as a chef had a lot of promise.  If I had waited and checked this out I would have found that this is not always true - you have to be really aggressive to be a 'top chef', not conflict avoidant.  I know DH loves me now but I will always wonder if he married me for his own financial comfort and.security.  A pre-nup is your buddy!

Also take it slow.  Unless the biological clock is ticking there is no reason to rush a second marriage.  This will give you time to observe how they relate to their adult kids and to you.  For instance, if someone (skids included) is rude to you and SO doesn't offer support, attempts to manipulate you or tries to discredit you in any way, walk away as soon as possible

A person suggested on another post:  Don't move into his house.  Either let him move in with you or buy a house together, specifying that the house will go to you in case of death.  This way house rules will be easier and no one will be laying claim to any property.

Hard won wisdom.
Thank you for posting it.
It should serve a guideline for people who get involved with divorced people with children.

I am so happy to see this update from you,  fairyo. My own journey to freedom in many ways co-incided with your postings and I followed your posts closely. Well done on finding the strength to move on from steplife and emerge victorious, flourishing and happy. I have also seen your other post in the blog section and you have every right to blow your own trumpet, toot your horn! I am very happy for you!!

This page has not been book marked...  I actually printed out this sage advice and placed it in the physical diary / note book I carry with me. After being seperated since the end of Feb and divorced in June, I need these words of guidance in evaluating any future relationship. Thank you for taking the time to share this. 

To your happiness, fairyo!

I know what you mean about developing your relationship as a couple, but personally, I would never wait 6 months to meet the kids. Seeing how my DH was with his daughter and how he parented was a big part of knowing that our step situation would work, because he treated her as a daughter and he did not treat me any differently when she was around.

Six months is enough time to fall in love, but then, if he has some weird relationship with his kids that you didn't see because you had never met them, never seen them interact.... I just think it would be harder to walk away and easier to ignore any red flags.

Rules and guidelines can be great but we all know that we do not always stick to them when we think we are in love and sometimes things change and we can't control that. People change. Well, not change so much as they don't reveal who they really are right away. It takes a long time to TRULY get to know someone. Unfortunately, we may not like who that person really is.

Definitely, we should trust our instincts.

Thank you for posting these guidelines.  

After 39 years,, the best relationship I have among my grown STEPKIDS are the ones where I kept my distance and never bonded with...My stepson.

Stay here with your progress.

((((Hugs)))))

I'm meeting my man's children tonight for the first time. We have been dating a year.  They are boys.  12 and 14.   I know what I'm getting into.  I've been around the block.  The OP's advice could even apply to meeting teenagers for the first time. 

I read somewhere that when meeting the kids, be like a cat and not a dog.

Cats are aloof.  They hang back.  You have to earn their affection. 

Dogs are in your face and try too hard.

Tonight we're going to see some live improv comedy.  They're picking me up, we'll drive there together, see the show and they'll drive me home, drop me off.  The only face to face should be about 30 minutes or so, and even then its standing around and mingling.   

So....I'm entering into this once again.   This time....eyes wide open. 

Wish me luck.

Sometimes we get stunted in these situations, and when we are out of them, its like we are out of this cage that was too small, or out of a box, and when we break free of the box, we redifine ourselves, and find out we are actually quite wonderful! Instead of having these people's narrow definition of us, we can see a new reflection! And it sparkles, like "fairy" dust

I would add that you want to make certain they are divorced first. And do background checks to verify (trust but verify!).

Also a red flag to watch out for is if they take all of BMs calls and texts right away, they are still enmeshed. That is a major problem that I wish I had been aware of before!!!! It never even dawned on me that this would be a problem - this tendency to have to jump through BM's hoops, cant say "no" to BM or there is drama.

fairyo,

Take care of you. Be happy.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

Rule 3(a): On the flip side, if your potential mate doesn't discuss his children much with you, walk away because he's likely had trouble with his kids running off the other wives and doesn't want to run you off, too.  No news is not always good news.  Definitely be around his kids for good lengths of time in order to know how they really are before you agree to marry or you will regret it, believe me.  

Fairyo, Thank you for your insight.  As you wrote, your words are particularly valuable to someone who is contemplating a marriage where skids are involved.  It would be great if they could first visit Steptalk before saying, "I do."  If I had known about Steptalk before I married DH would have had some serious conversations, agreements and stipulations before agreeing to anything.

The 'silence' thing is a big warning sign that, as you pointed out, is discredited as "just getting to know each other".  I think we have to look at our initial meeting with the Skids as we would with any other people we meet.  If we detect a certain 'strangeness' in the exchange of communication we say to ourselves that this will not be a friendship to pursue further, it is overly optimistic and unrealistic to think it will get better with time.  When we are in love with our partner we WANT the relationship to work out so much that we delude ourselves into believing what society tells us:  Married people are happier than unmarried people.  Turn the other cheek.  And of course, we look at a future mate who adores their children as a big plus.  I did. 

Our parents taught us to gravitate toward people who were our intellectual, emotional and financial equals.  We were exposed to a Father who defended his wife, much different to what many of us find in our DHs.  In  most cases, if they didn't divorce, our parents knew nothing about second marriages or step children so we had to depend on knowledge gleaned from the media and what we read.  Unfortunately, there is not sufficient or dependable data out there to make an educated decision so we use our instincts and misleading information promoted by society.  Society tells us all children are innocent and SMs are all bad - that can't apply to us because we know we aren't bad.  We're different.  But because all children, no matter how old, are innocent, when things start to go south we question ourselves instead of viewing these people as similar to other a$$es we've encountered and disengaged from.  And because our potential mate is going to promise to 'honor and cherish' us we are stunned and hurt rather than telling them to get lost because we deserve to be honored and cherished.

Like you, most of us had no idea about the drama of dealing with adult "children."  We all came in starry-eyed about everyone being friendly and taking on the role of cool step-grandma.  Little did we know that our very existence in relationship w/their father is a threat to their mother and a slap in the face reminder that the first family as they knew it is gone.  How dare we build a life with their parent and steal THEIR inheritance (aka every cent they can squeeze out of their father).  Next we become a target for all the family dysfunction, funny how dads suddenly form a closer bond with their formerly distant children when SM becomes a target.  

I wish I had read a list like this before marrying DH.  There were immediate issues but I went along just like Henny Penny, "So she went along, and she went along, and she went along..." I went along for yeeeeaaaaarrrrrs until in desperations I turned to Google and found this lovely coven of wicked SM's I could relate to.  

I wish you a bright future fairyo, you've learned your lesson and done your time.  

"Next we become a target for all the family dysfunction, funny how dads suddenly form a closer bond with their formerly distant children when SM becomes a target." 

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WOW, very well said--so true!  Everything you said it the way it really is.  So, why are we still in the relationship?    

I wish I had prepared for the worst jealousy triangulaton of my life from the get go.  Instead, I lived in my Disney Step World far too long, thinking everybody would love me if I worked hard to please them.  I wasted precious minutes in my life, added unnecessary stress and emotion, only to reinforce their crazy antics to make me feel like a big pile of zero family dog crap, over and over again. Don't waste your life on people who purposely take away your joy and happiness. It is horrible for your health and DH could care less how it effects you.  He is only working to please them, he thinks he has you in the bag; (more likely obvious to you).  Nobody deserves to be the family trashed outlier, especially if you have done your best to be included and liked.  Erase the family psychosis completely from your life and if DH cannot support you (or step up, which is doubtful); erase him too.  Life is short and this site is a God send.