My takeaway from your post is that when there are BMs, SMs, GFs, etc., hating each other and having drama over a man, the man is the common denominator. The likelihood that he's just this great guy who is the hapless victim of crazy women who want him so bad they can't control themselves is slim to none.

Also, don't feel guilty over your boundaries with former skids. Keeping in touch with them would likely cause more problems than solutions. Make a clean break and set them, and yourself, free. 

I think in my early days I may have been a HCBM. I was young, we both were, we had a child before we were wise enough or mature enough to be having children. And we divorced before our son was 2 yrs old and he had a gf within days if not hours of our seperating. But (big big butt) looking back, it was both of us and we were immature so parenting was a tug-of-war. Once I became more settled in who I was, a lot of that insecurity went away. They've been married appx. 35 years now, we coexist quite well and I can safely say we're all mature now, lol. 

I used to put it all on him/them but I can see that while some was him, it was more a case of none of us being really ready to raise a child, let alone ourselves. 

I do agree that often times it's directly on one of the parents and it's hard to juggle children when one keeps dropping the ball.

I’m sure my ex has spun stories about what a horrible rotten person I am, which suites his NARC narrative, but reality is once we were divorced I wanted nothing to do with him and for him to just leave me the hell alone.  After he moved away I left it up to him to facilitate a relationship with his kid….so here we are 24 years later and BS has never met the guy and has never even spoken to him. 

Don't feel bad. I, too, struggle with guilt over not really bonding with SS. I was very careful not to overstep, because I knew that was often a sure fire way to alienate the SK and make things worse with BM. That was a bone of contention for DH at first, because he had visions of every-other-week happy family. It's better now.

I've been nice to SS. I don't do much for him, but I did a fair amount when he was younger (but only what I was willing to do). That's pretty much stopped at this point, as he's a moody teen who doesn't like me or DH because we hold him accountable for stuff and refuse to kiss his @$$.

Also, honestly, he's never been the kind of kid it's easy to like or bond with, even when he was little.

All that to say, SPs and SKs are people. Some will click. Some won't. As long as there was no neglect or abuse, it's fine to not hit it off. Society puts these expectations on SMs, in particular, that we should love our SKs like they were our own. In reality, that's rare and, even from a biological standpoint, an unreasonable expectation.

SPs who do genuinely love and attach to SKs? Great. Awesome. But that doesn't mean the rest of us failed.

I've been saying this for years that,

:Society puts these expectations on SMs, in particular, that we should love our SKs like they were our own." 

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Would dh, or who ever LOVE the neighbors kids like their own? IF not, why not.