If I would have known that my SS had no interest whatsoever in making himself into a useful adult? Yeah - my DH and I would have continued to date long distance until the boy had either graduated from HS, turned 18 or ranaway for real - whichever came first!

But I thought I could "Help" my SS.

Joke's on me! bhahahahahahaha

NO
that is all
Just NO

Had I known what it would be like before getting involved with SO... ABSOLUTELY NOT! No way in hell would I ever have chosen this path for my life. Nope. No. Hell no.

You're right. People are quick to mention "you knew he had kids before you got involved in all this"... true... but I had absolutely no idea I could hate two young children just from small resentments building and building until I can't stand the sight of them!!! I even shudder when I hear another child with the same name being called!!

Hmmmm very torn on this one LOL

Probably would have just taken things a lot slower - spent a LOT more time with the skids and seeing what kind of parent he is before moving in.

BUT - when things are going well it's great and we do love each other dearly so - I don't know.

I think though, that your issues are a lot different from mine so where I can hope that given time things will settle down here I can see where you could be feeling so overwhelmed with it all.

Hats off to you, stay strong.

With my SO it was a 'love at first site' thing. I love this man just as much, if not more, as I did when we first started dating. I've never loved anyone like I love him, and I don't think I ever could. We have had our ups and downs but, for the most part, he treats me wonderfully and always has.

However, sometimes I feel so completely and utterly stupid for staying with a man with 4 other kids, 3 of which are by a crazy, immature c*nt. Every time I see her name pop up on our phone my stomach just drops. This woman is a plague on my life.

I see all of these women my age getting to share the experience of having a child with men that have not yet had kids. I see their happy little family of 3 and I can't help but want it. No other woman, no other woman's kids. Just me, my love, and our children.

But I'm standing by the belief that the best things in life don't come easy. So, would I do it again? I'm going to have to go with yes.

My wife and I joke about it quite often. If we had known what was in store for us through the early part of our marriage and how much WORK it was (and is) to stay strong to each other...neither of us would have done it. To have known those difficulties and heartaches before marriage would have scared us straight into not going down that path together in marriage. Neither of us would have likely divorced our first spouses if we worked on those marriages the way we work on ours.

But, there is no book or counsel that can prepare you fully for a blended marriage. There are books that can help guide you (and I recommend them if you need support) but nothing can prepare you for the uncertainties in dealing with kids and the exes. The best thing to have is a strong mental outlook to be in it for the long haul with ALOT of patience and forgiveness. You need to also embrace the "new normal" of blended family life because it is nothing like a nuclear family dynamic. It is fluid and always changing as the household members come and go with kids and the ever-changing make-up of the household unit.

The only constant is the husband and wife and that is the foundation that must become absolute and strong. If that foundation isn't firm and resolute, then none of the rest of the family unit will be. Kids will push and pull constantly to work their ways with the respective parent and step-parent. Their tactics will cease only when they see that it doesn't work in their favor. The best defense against that is for the spouses to support each other 100% of the time and gain an absolute trust in each other that can come with time.

With that strong marital constant must come a mettle to withstand the inevitable pains, hurts and resentment towards the kids that are not biologically our own. We are the adults and must act that way even when our step-kids (and, let's face it, our bio kids aren't angels) try to "torment us" in ways that we are sometimes unprepared to handle. They are trying to find their place in the family (even if it doesn't appear that way) because they don''t understand their place and want things back to the way that they did understand. If we constantly fail in their tests, they won't stop because that will breed an unstable environment and they will never feel at peace in their new role. And, like I said earlier, the other spouse fully supporting the other will help in solving those "issues" with the kids.

So, I wouldn't have gone down this path of marriage with the knowledge at the onset of what difficulties were ahead. But, we have been through it and survived and have a beautiful and wonderful marriage. It's not perfect, but we aren't perfect people, and I wouldn't trade what we have today for anything else (including with our 5 kids).

I love my DH dearly but I would NOT have married him. I might have dated him and each of us kept our own place until he was done with the crazy ex and CS...or maybe I wouldn't have made it that long. But no way I would have moved in/married him.

When it is just me and DH, things are perfect! But then they come....ugh...at times I do not even want to be around DH for how he acts and treats them...like they are babies and can not fend for themselves...he actually helps the 13 yr old with his shoes...UGH!! I totally disengage when they are here, days at a time, I just can not stomach it! As soon as they return to BM, I just give a big sigh of relief!!

2.5 years into it, I understand so much more about the dynamics of how SO parents (or doesn't parent). I think I'd still be with him, although today isn't a good day to ask me that, but I sure wish I could have pre-empted his shitty parenting. I don't care for SD, but so much of how she is can be blamed on her parents...so SD isn't technically the complete dealbreaker. SO's parenting is the possible dealbreaker.

Today my answer is clearly No. Had I known that my DH didn't have a backbone, that the BM was a lazy, manipulative bitch and that the kid isn't even his or even the same race so can't even fake it, No, I would not have married into this. I've always assumed I'd be a committed person going through good and bad when I was single, but no one should live miserably for rest of their lives due to a commitment ceremony. I'm at end of my rope. Sometimes love just ain't enough...

Absolutely I would've married him. My DH is unique, in that he recognized the issues with SD14 and put his foot down. Had he not, and continued to allow her to manipulate and rule his life, I'd have walked after the first few months.

Since he's taken the steps (therapy, discipline, finally disengaging)and has put our marriage and me first, I'm glad I took the plunge and married him in June. We have THE perfect relationship (other than SD14) and I can't see life any other way.

He and SD14 are currently estranged, which helps our situation tremendously. She has her head shoved squarely up BM's ass and doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon, which is fine by us. He's tried, attempted, begged, pleaded and then finally said "Look, you have to put in effort too, relationships aren't a one-way street" and disengaged from her. The kid only comes around to his family for money at her birthday and likely Christmas in a few mos. They've all caught on to her though, thank God!

I don't think so. I love DH dearly but I hate dealing with BM and SS17. DH does not stand up to either one and I can't hardly stand it. It is my biggest gripe with DH.

I also moved away from my family and friends to live with DH in the house that was his and BM's and in their neighborhood. That was my FIRST mistake.

If I would have married him I would have waited until DH got a different place to live, SS was out on his own and DH had set some clear boundaries with BM. Like DH only speak to BM when it is an emergency and that he learned to cut her off when she starts rambling/whining.

If I waited for all of that would we have ever gotten married? Probably not.

Nope. Not in a million years. Before the wedding, I was told "I [he] want you to raise them like your own." (both adults)The first time I tried to enforce a rule, I was told that I was too harsh and should just let them enjoy the house since it "is their's too". BS! When they pay rent, it can be theirs.

no way it has been the worst 12years of my life.

Yes, BUT, ONLY when the child was grown and had begun taking care of himself! Until then, I'd just visit him on weekday nights and the weekends he didn't have SS!

If I knew then what I know now, I would not have even considered dating someone who had children from a previous marriage. Like the OP, I also met DW on an online dating service, and if I could go back and do it over again, I would simply skip all the profiles of women who had children. I'm not one who believes there is one and only one soulmate for every person, so I believe I would have found a different good match for myself, without the SKids.

That said, since I didn't know then what I have learned the hard way, I do love DW very much, and though we've had some rocky times due to SK issues, we've also had a lot of good times in our 11 years of marriage, and we're in a good place now in spite of a bad situation. So although the path I chose didn't turn out ideally as I would have liked, I'm not about to walk away from it. Yes, there have been times when I seriously considered running away from it all, but I think I've come to accept that this is my place in life, and the good outweighs the bad, if only by a small margin.

Christ, I didn't even want to get into it in the first place! I was literally like 2 seconds away from saying "I don't think it's going to work out" after he picked me up for our first date with SD in the car (having never mentioned before that he had a kid) then proceeded to take me to meet BM so we could drop off SD and go on our date...seriously! I was fuming and ready to hightail it out of there! But I never got the chance because he went into the "all the other girls refuse to give me a chance just based on the fact that I have a kid. They don't even get to know me! But I can see you're different. You really have a good heart!" speech...and then I was thinking "Ah crap now I have to agree to date #2 or I'll be 'just like the rest of them'" and I guess he actually did win me over...to this day though, I swear it was some sort of reverse psychology and that I was tricked! I mean, I love my DH to pieces. We've been together for almost 10 years! but if I had to do it all over again, I could definitely live with being "just like the rest of them"...actually I'm now seeing how the rest of them had a point....

Stepkids are f-ing awful. Period.

Nope, never again. Like everyone else, I love my guy, but the loss of my sanity and peace is not worth it. I can't help but wish, way too often, that we had broken up after our first fight (about skid of course) 5 years ago. If we had, I may be in a much better place now. Instead of daydreaming about what it would be like to have a baby, the first baby for us both, with a man without kid baggage and a psycho BM, I may actually have it. If I had dumped him then, maybe I could have a great guy and a toddler by now. Who knows, maybe not, maybe I would still be alone and missing him. Obviously the fear of the unknown has kept me in my situation...although in retrospect, the unknown would certainly have been a better choice. So, five years down and five to go until skid is out of the house and my life resembles something normal.

And don't you just HATE that comment that everyone makes, "well, you knew he had kids when you met him." I HATE that, especially when it comes from my fiance during an argument, as if that line gets him out of any responsibility for his actions. Actually, NO, I didn't know. What I knew was that one of my fiance's sperms, most unfortunately, managed to locate the egg of the hideous beast that he misguidedly married and that he had to be responsible to deal with his error or judgement for the next 18 years. I did NOT however know, that he would be a Disney dad who did not know the word "no" and was completely unfamiliar with boundaries and discipline. I did not know that he would be more interested in being the buddy and the fun parent in lieu of a real parent. I did not know that skid was the male Paris Hilton, who got everything bought for him the moment he even thinks of it, while doing absolutely nothing to earn it...even when the money needs to be used elsewhere. I did not know skid was a cocky little turd, who constantly refers to himself as awesome as if that's a noun. Awesome implies that you do something beyond existing. I did not know that the terms of my fiance's divorce did not include her releasing his balls from her vice grip. I did not know that BM, who soooo wanted a baby, would decide that that baby really wasn't much fun as a child and that she would dump as much time as possible on us, despite the 50/50 agreement. I did not know that BM would suddenly decide that she didn't want to bother getting her child to school, to sports practices and to camps, because it would be much easier to tell us we had to do it. I didn't realize that BM would decide that her new boyfriend and partying were more important priorities than her own child. I incorrectly assumed that my fiance would take my side when it came to fights with BM, HA, wrong. I incorrectly assumed that I would have a say in my home about such issues as adult time/kid bedtime and if and when I wanted skid's slimy teenage friends in my home, HA wrong again. So, to summarize, what I knew when I married a man with a kid was nothing. It all looked so easy on the Brady Bunch. Do first time bio parents really know what they are getting into? Don't they complain about how hard it is to be a bioparent? Do people tell them, "you knew how hard it was to be a parent when decided to get pregnant." Funny, I have never heard anyone say that to a bioparent. Well, then why assume we know all the gorey details of what we are getting into? Would I marry a man with kids again? Hell no, because now I know what I didn't know then.