I've been stalking this forum for a while and never went as far as posting until now. But I wanted to be honest with the step-moms just starting out, as I hear a lot of 'I can't wait until they are older'. For me, it never got better. Only worse.

I put my entire life on hold for DH. I agreed to marry after only a year of dating (which was a big mistake in hindsight) and gave up a career and moved from Cali to London to live with him. I knew he had a young son from a previous marriage and I never wanted kids but I'm pretty good with them I think. I had young neices and nephews when we met that I looked after, so it wasn't as if I was totally naive. He showed me photos and I got to 'chat' to SS over Skype several times and he was adorable! I was madly in love with my DH and his son was a sweetie, so I figured being a step-mom would be fine.

I hadn't had anything to do with the BM and underestimated how influential she would be in our lives. I am not joking when I say I now feel as if I married her! She pulls all the strings in my life. Marriages are difficult enough without another woman constantly in the picture, but this has been hell. My DH is a pushover, so I've had to fight hard for basic things that any normal wife would expect. Like one holiday without her calling to interrupt and ask for money or want to know what we're up to! There is no privacy and DH unfortunately has a habit of just blurting out our private business without thinking, which she loves! And I'm not allowed to get jealous, as it's the mother of his son. Nothing between us is sacred. I have to quietly sit there at dinner and listen to the calls or sit by myself when she interrupts whatever we have planned and he disappears for half an hour to deal with her drama. But if I say anything, I'm over-reacting. I'm completely trapped.

SS is now 22 and if I could choose again, I never in a million years would have married my DH. My life has been a living hell for the most part and it only got worse as SS got older. I now essentially have two adopted grown kids to take care of and no life of my own. Logically, I can't blame SS entirely for his behaviour as his BM manipulates everything. So I can only guess what he has heard over the years. But I have been the emotional and sometimes physical punchbag for everyone. My DH was always too worried about really disciplining SS properly (as he didn't want to be the 'mean dad'), so SS has been allowed to get away with an increasing amount of bad behaviour with little to no punishment. You can imagine what sort of adult he has become as a result. I have just had to take it or be made to look like an overly sensitive, complaining witch if I dared to stand up for myself. My DH would occasionally step in if SS was obviously out of line in front of him, but he mostly treated it as a nuisance if I asked him to get involved. It was always a big sigh and 'why can't you two just get along?' I would never put up with that treatment from another child, but I did my best to play along and not kick up a fuss too much when it came to SS. It has completely worn me down and I am a shell of the person I was.

I am just about ready to file for divorce and move back to the US, where I should have stayed all along. I never managed to pick up my career again, as SS ended up spending more and more time living with us and causing chaos. In his teens he would just show up at the front door if he and BM had a fight, and whatever we had planned would go out of the window. I was expected to just reschedule everything around it. If BM knew we had something important planned, she would create drama deliberately so that it made things more difficult.

My DH stupidly gave him a key to the house, which SS now treats like his own. In his head it is 'dad's house' and therefore he can do what he likes. So I would end up late for work because he'd eaten my lunch (I have celiac disease, so I normally can't just grab whatever I can find in the office and have to plan things carefully) or I'd find he'd 'borrowed' our car, or something else that prevented me from doing basic things. Or BM would call DH ten minutes before an event to say she was stuck at the office and couldn't pick SS up or whatever and as DH was in a meeting I would get asked to cover. My DH earned a lot more money than me, so everyone seemed to think it was ok for me to have to step in. I wasn't allowed to complain or it caused an argument and DH would be 'stressed'. I basically took on more and more duties as a back-up mother to the point that I could no longer realistically focus on a career. I could never have boundaries in my own home and there was a silent expectation that I had to act as a skivvy for DH and SS since I wasn't bringing in as much money. My DH is a workaholic and is either in the office or on calls, so I just got left with taking care of things most of the time. It was that or leave a child stranded somewhere, which I wasn't cruel enough to do.

All of my goals got pushed back so that BM and DH could focus on their careers. BM has done great out of it and has a high flying career as a sales director now. I was a maid and nurse for her child so she could focus on her career. I was blinded by love at first and was just happy to be married after a serious of bad relationships. I was scared of hitting 40 and remaining unmarried, as I was raised in a very traditional family. So as much as I loved DH at first, I can see now that I definitely settled. Before I met him there's no way I would have said I wanted to be the second wife, look after another woman's child, give up my own career, and everything else it involved.

If SS was my own son, at least I would have had some authority and control over the situation. But as step-mom I had to cover all the work of being a mom, but get none of the thanks and love that my own child would give me. Even raising my neices and nephews would have been easier, as at least they are blood. I will never have that type of bond with SS, even if we are occasionally friends. I once felt really guilty at the idea of leaving, as I worried that he had bonded with me and it would cause more stress to SS to witness another break-up. But I realise now that in his mind DH and my relationship is no where near as important as his parent's and he likely would have been happier if his dad had remained single until he was an older teen (or at least remained unmarried).

To any younger women who are new to being step-moms and already regretting it, I would have a serious think about whether this is the right life for you. I know two step-moms that desperately wanted a family and couldn't have their own kids for medical reasons and they have found it much easier to cope. They also had lovely, very understanding BMs that they got on with well from the start, which made a big difference. But they are very much in the minority. As much as I was in love with DH to begin with, the rose-tinted glasses wore off a long time ago and I know I would have been a lot happier finding a partner without the baggage of ex-wife and child. I came to that realisation two years in and should have listened to my gut insinct. But I kept telling myself it would get better as he got older and spent less time with us and the BM was less involved. That didn't happen. The younger ages were easier by far. All hell broke loose once SS started highschool. Instead, I have wasted 20+ years of my life being the servant to my husband's ex wife.

I will leave with some money, so I can start a new life back home around my family and friends. But I wanted more out of marriage than this. I deserve better.