It isn’t ALWAYS the case.  I have a child from a previous relationship and I don’t see it as a competition, and it shouldn’t be.  The type of love you have for a child and a spouse are different. 

You run into this problem for a few reasons... either you have no level of compromise, there is a diffficult HCBM in the picture, or your spouse doesn’t have a set of gonads to set boundaries. 

I feel like an outsider too. I moved in to their house. He wanted me to for a long time before i did. I had to set some boundaries for myself like can I just have my bedroom, just my bedroom as a skid free zone. They just dont listen. They come and go as they please, take what they want( not steal but take batteries from my remote, borrow things and not bring back), walk in without knocking sometimes Im naked in bed. The youngest is 10. They should be able to sleep through the night without daddy.

4 steps, good for you for walking away. Someday i will too but my life has flip turned upside down and I feel like I can never get my old life back.

If you want to live this way.  It doesn’t have to be that way, but your SO is allowing it to happen.  You have to see, it’s not the kid its your SO.  He is allowing it.  And because of this it will never change. Only gets worst, bigger kids  gives you bigger problems.  And more costly problems . 

I usually don’t feel like an outsider, because my husband actually has boundaries with his ex & treats his kids like kids. The only time I ever feel outside of anything is when one of the boys bring up a memory that predates me. It’s innocent & hardly an issue. 

Did it happen easily/naturally that we have this dynamic? Nope. I fought tooth & nail to have boundaries set up & luckily DH realized that putting BM first was harder on him than putting me first - like Rags says, I brought the pain - coupled with the fact that if things didn’t change, I was done. 

You absolutely don’t have to be an outsider in your relationship simply because your spouse/SO has kids. But that’s up to what YOU are willing to allow in your life. You teach people how they treat you, and if you don’t like how you’re being treated, you always have the option to leave. 

There are posters on here whose partners with high conflict exes still put their spouse first, so it IS possible. Take care of yourself.

Stepmom 2.0's recent blog.  Sadly this is far too common.

We ask our spouses to put us above their parents, yet they have known them longer.

We ask them to put us above long-term friends, coworkers, their boss, their siblings, cousins, etc.

Usually, no one bats an eye at a spouse being the #1 priority above all other adults and children. So what makes their kids any different?

I understand where you are coming from, and I don't blame you in the least bit for wanting to leave. Your DH treats you like a child while he treats his kids like adults.

And THAT is the problem. It's not the step family dynamic itself. It's adults who don't understand that enabling isn't the same thing as showing love. It's adults who can't get over their guilt and use that to justify treating their kids as their #1 priority. It's adults who don't want to do it on their own but don't want an equal partner - they want a free bed-warming, babysitting ATM.

You aren't crazy for wanting better. You aren't wrong for thinking that things should be different. The fault doesn't lie with YOU or other SPs who just want to be treated like what they are - a spouse and an adult.