I stay because I love my husband and his girls are almost grown. If we had gotten them when they were much younger and things were this tough, I dont know if I could have made it. He has promised me as soon as they get out of school, if they dont go to college he will get them set up in an apt. and tell them they are now adults and out of the house. When I say set up, I mean 1st months rent. We reconnected after 20 years. He was my first love. My first everything....so I am giving this relationship everything I have. But it is sooo hard to deal with the SDs. That is why I have disengaged. Finding this site has made me feel so much better to know im not alone. I dont feel the need to get involved with the decisions he makes unless he asks me in private what I think.

I get to live life with my amazing bride.

When I came to the conclusion that I wanted to spend my life with this incredible woman I soon realized that I had to raise SS (then 1yo) as my own. To do anything less would cheat my wife and myself in our marriage. So, I was dad. 21+ years later I still am dad. Being my son's dad has been extremely rewarding. I am glad I did it.

It worked well for me, in fact for all three of us. It only works because my bride and I have been on the same page, or at least in the same book, for the duration.

That is a good question. Currently things with SO are great and SS just recently popped back up. When things were bad I started to ask myself that everyday. I stayed because I do love SO but if things hadn't changed I would have left. When I think about the future SO is in it, when I think about growing old it is by his side, and when I think of what we can accomplish together it makes me happy. We have so much in common and as long as he keeps things in perspective when it comes to skid then things will work out.

You need to take a deep look inside yourself and find out what your hard lines are, what are you willing to put up with, what you think you can compromise on and you need to find out if your SO will work with you on the things you can not put up with. Every situation is different but everyone deserves happiness. This site helps a lot, it exposes me to different view points, different experiences and posters can really help illuminate my own failings and SO's.

I stay because my spouse is good with my biological children. I may not agree or like certain things he does with his own biological child and we have a lot of communication, and issues in our relationship and our relationship is going through a rough time at this point, but he has never really made my children feel unloved, unwanted, or treated unfairly. I am great full for this. I try to think of the positiveness. However, I fear that soon enough his biological son will come first, and a priority eventually, and my children will be shoved to the side. If this happens, I will be making other decisions without him.

Because I married my DH and I am his wife. No more, no less. I love and married DH and no one else.

Plus I decided a long time ago that if our marriage fails, it will NEVER be because of anything to do with BM2 or BM2 by proxy (SS13).

Well I stay because I have created a life with DW and we're a team. I've never met a stronger woman and one that can put up with my many hardass faults. I'm too stubborn to give up on her or SD either. I may not love SD or even like her on most days but I do care about her and her future. She's great with my DD"s and we have room for growth. I'll never allow her to be the reason my kids end up with a step-father.

I never considered leaving. Why? Because I refused to tolerate the crap. My bride and I agreed early in our relationship that we were a family, our marriage takes precidence over all else, the SKid would be parented equitably by and both of us and both of us would be equity parents to any children in our home, the Sperm Idiot and Sperm Clan got no say, influence, or consideration in our marriage or from us period, ever, no matter what.

I held her to that agreement and for the most part she did not need any reminding though we did have a few instances where she took exception to some of my parenting and disciplinary interventions with the Skid. During those instance this was my stance. "If you don't like how I am parenting or disciplining then you can step up and get it done before I have to. If you choose to not step up then you can bite youg tongue until we can discuss it it private."

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Much to the skid's dissent she did take over on nearly all disciplinary and parenting interventions when the Skid was in his early teens. He much prefered my methods. Address the behavior or situation and move on. His mom was much more of a long term never let things drop disciplinarian. SS asked me to take back over the disciplinarian lead. I just grinned, shrugged, and raised my hands in defeat. He still tells me I am on his shit list for releasing his mom on him during his teens. }:)

ONLY because my skids all PASed out. Their behaviour was absolutely atrocious due to the complete abdication of parental duties by their bio parents due to sheer nonsensical guilt, and in the case of the Girhippo, out of sheer rage, hatred and jealousy.

It was very rough going for a while and every day I thought about kicking him out although I would have suffered severe repercussions as he is a very angry man with a temper due to the divorce where it slowly dawned on him that he was steamrollered by the Girhippo.

He actually turned on me and blamed me for the alienation for quite some time.

It took him eleven years to see the matter truthfully.

The fallout is that there is no longer any romantic love between us and we are basically roommates. I would never do this in a million lifetimes over again and I was much much happier as a single mom.

I stay because of my own two bios. When DH and I married 4 years ago, my 2 boys had to move to a new town and a new school system. They love it here and I don't want to put them through any more upheaval. Their stability is the ONLY reason I stay. Any love I had for my husband is totally gone. Seeing him cater to his daughter and his ex wife while completely taking me for granted has stripped it all away.

Once the boys leave home I am out. I'm like a prisoner counting down the days. I refuse to be one of those poor women who posts in the adult sd forum. There is no way his daughter will make it on her own with the way he caters to her every whim so they'll have each other. Me? I'll be lonnng gone.

I stay because DH is NOT an ahole - yes his son (ss30) is but DH is not. I like my husband which is probably more important than loving him (although I both love and like him).

The sweetest thing my husband ever said to me was that he liked that he loved me but he LOVED that he liked me.

For all of SS's issues with no job and homelessness DH has NEVER tried to get me to house SS. He so wanted me to accept SS, and I truly tried. But I have virtually nothing to do with SS. I am not his mother. Not really even his stepmother. He was long grown by the time I met DH.