I remember when I was dating and starting to get serious with my now husband, this would have been about 17 years ago, I had a couple of girlfriends say to me something along the lines of, “I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t want to marry a guy that had children already.” One even elaborated and implied something like, “I deserve better than that.” Anyway, at the time I didn’t give it much thought, and just felt, heck, we were in love, what else mattered, right?

Strange how 17 years later I’m finally beginning to understand what they seemed to almost instinctively know—you will never have a traditional marriage whenever you marry someone with children from a previous relationship. All sorts of weird, odd scenarios can come up that would never come up in a traditional marriage—yes, biodad can appear out of the blue and want to reestablish a relationship with his kids after years, after you spent megatime and megabucks and megaheart on them, etc. And, even though it is good that biodad and his kids are connecting, now you feel like chopped liver.

I’m one of those who if I had to do it all over again, I would. But, I would like to get the word out there for those thinking about marrying someone with children that: 1) You will never have a typical marriage no matter how much in love you are—that has nothing to do with it, and 2) One day you may be in with the SKs and the next day you may be out, and it can occur any place, any time. You could be fine with them for 13 years, and then suddenly it seems like they turned on a dime, and you may never even know or figure out why, and it probably has very little to do with you, even. It will have to do with them, as in your example, biodad came back into the picture and piff!

This is where you need to be able to focus on your marriage and find value in that, because in the long run, you may not get much from SKs, or as stated above, sometimes not even your own kids. Everyone deserves to have a first marriage and a first spouse and first kids, but not everyone can get that, unfortunately. Those of us where it is our first marriage and our spouses second or third marriage, feel the burn more, I think, because since it is our first marriage we go in with very naïve eyes and expect everything to somehow work out just fine.

Her youngest is 21? I promise you she is ready to have an empty nest, not to buy into 18+ more years of having someone else in the home.

You are jealous of the bio-father because he waltzed into the lives after the tough stuff (raising kids) was done and they welcomed him back. I think most people would feel jealous, hurt, etc. But he's their father, regardless, and they want a relationship. It's a story you'll see here over and over...no matter how sorry the bio-parent is, the kid still puts them on a pedestal. Put your resentment aside unless you want to drive your wife away over this. You and your wife will likely have plenty of time with grandkid most likely--you'll be high on the sitter list.

Idvilen, you summed that up amazingly. Dead on