I am a BM and a SM, so I will answer these as best as I can.

What would your boundaries be regarding ex and sm? I would want contact regarding the kids to remain between myself and their father. The way I look at this is that we signed up to be parents together. I had nothing to do with his choice of wife, as he had nothing to do with my choice of husband, so we shouldn't have to deal with each other's spouses.

What lines, if any, would you not want your kids sm to cross? The only thing I ask is that she/they refrain from displaying negativity towards me in or around my child. I do the same for them.

If your ex was a pos to you and is a king to sm, how would you deal with resentment, if you felt that? ExH is a different husband to his wife than he was to me. I have no resentment, but am happy that he learned from the mistakes we made in our marriage and is making an effort not to repeat them.

If your kids knew your ex made poor lifestyle choices but now was getting it together, and they felt like he was doing that for sm and not for them, how would you help them work through those feelings? This is not something I have to deal with. I would, were I in that situation, try to explain to the kids that people can't do anything "for" someone else, that their dad is doing it for himself, so that he can be a better person and father, and husband.

If your ex cheated on you and wound up with his mistress, how would you work through that, especially if you loath them? In this case I would have only the barest contact with exH, preferably none at all.

If your kids knew about this, how would you help them through it? What behavior would you expect from them to the new stepparent? I would do my best to make sure my kids did not know the reason behind the divorce. If they did, however, I would still expect them to treat their new stepmother with respect. They don't have to like her but they do have to treat her nicely while in her home.

Say some Tom Brady/Gisele/Bridget Moynahan situation happened. Yes, this happened a long time ago, but these situations seem to occur in real life, too. If you were the bio mom in that situation or one like it, how would you handle yourself? How would you handle any bitterness you feel? And would it still be a problem years later? There seem to be situations on this site where posters met their DHs when the bm was pregnant by dh. Many of these people met when their DHs were done with the bm, but I've heard of some instances where bm & dh were in on/off relationships or still in one when the dh met his now wife. Hmmm, this is a tough one. I think I would feel some resentment were I in this situation. I would probably not be happy at all. I would think after some time though I would just get over it.

How would you handle it if your kids came to you saying they dislike sm and her bios? On the rare occasions when DD has said this (usually about the step-brothers and not her step-mom) I have asked her to explain why she doesn't like them, try to come up with ways that she can try to make the situation better, and then explain to her that step-mom and daddy are together, and that daddy loves stepmom, and DD has to learn to deal with things not being the same as when it was just her and daddy.

Now that I have a child with DH, I stress to him that if we were to ever divorce, I would NEVER give him hell like BM has. She has made life unbearable for us. Unless he's turned into a crackhead or started dating/remarried to someone who is unacceptable, I would not give him a hard time with co-parenting our children.

Before I answer your questions, some background on MY situation: DH and I have been friends for over a decade. When we met and became friends, he was on and off again with BM, his then girlfriend. He broke up with her for a good couple of months and we gave it a shot a dating since we realized that we had feelings toward each other after hanging out together a lot. He ends up getting back with her, I end up doing my own thing and letting things be. She ends up pregnant and her father gives DH an ultimatum of marrying her or else so he does. Marries her out of duty to his unborn child. During this entire time, I have found a new boyfriend, am in college, still friends with DH but since BM was always a jealous bitch, I kept my distance. Was still there as a supportive friend to him. Needless to say, they separated when my now SD was only 9 months old and divorced when she was a little over 12 months old.

Fast forward 5 years and we start dating, then 2 years after that we got married. BM hate my guts and has told SD that the reason they divorced was because DH cheated on her with me. Forget the fact that they were on and off for so many years (they were HS sweethearts) because she was a raging slut.

Anywho, I am dealing with resentment and bitterness from BM always. So below are my answers.

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What would your boundaries be regarding ex and sm?

I would just ask that Ex be respectful of how I parent in my home and I'd be respectful toward his parenting in his home. For my personal life to not become a subject for discussion in their home, as their lives, if not directly affecting our child, would not become a subject of interest in mine. For one, i would prefer that my kids not be around a GF, unless ex decided that she's the one he's going to marry. that being said, if she becomes a SM to my daughter then all I ask is for her to know her place. To allow ex and I to parent together and for her to offer my ex support in parenting, not making parenting decisions. This doesn't happen now. I specified in the beginning to BM that I'm not there to take her place, but rather to support whatever parenting plan her and my DH put into place. Well in order to agree to that you would need cooperation from mature adults. That didn't happen. The one thing that I suggested one DH remarried and BM remarried was for her and her spouse to sit down with me and DH to go over their parenting plan and rules of the house so we can mirror that and implement them in our home, to allow SD to have consistency. BM flat out refused to meet and said she was not looking to be our friends. Nevermind the fact that we never mentioned becoming friends or meeting over dinner. But whatever. I'd do that. Go over my parenting plan, ask them for suggestions so they can properly implement and to have an open door/open communication with new SM in case she has questions so that she can contact me if she ever feels like one of her decisions would be overstepping her boundaries. Keep in mind, this is hoping that ex also remarries a mature woman, not a dumb girl.

What lines, if any, would you not want your kids sm to cross? See answer to first question. If she's mature and we've talked about what is expected of me and ex when co-parenting, all I expect is her support. For her to know that she is not a decision maker in the parenting plan. Keep in mind, we'd try to come up with one that wouldn't cross the boundaries in her home so to speak. Since I have a daughter, I'd expect all reinforcement of the rules to be handed by her father. If my daughter would be completely out of line with her, then I would understand if she needed to call her out on things. Under no circumstances should she hand out corporal punishment. I would also expect and ask her to not ask my daughter about my personal life. That would be none of her concern.

If your ex was a pos to you and is a king to sm, how would you deal with resentment, if you felt that?
I believe resentment is felt when you still have feelings for your ex. If you've moved on, then you should have no problem with him treating her well, because your kid will be with them part of the time and you want your child to see your ex treat his partner with respect. Obviously if you have resentment, you haven't gotten over your feelings toward your ex. If he was a POS to you to the level of abuse, then obviously you'd have resentment, but you would also need to be of sound mind to know that maybe you should keep an eye out to see if he is still the same way. Sometimes he may seem like he's a king to SM but you only see the behavior in front of you, not the one that happens behind closed doors at their home.

If your kids knew your ex made poor lifestyle choices but now was getting it together, and they felt like he was doing that for sm and not for them, how would you help them work through those feelings?
For one, how would kids know about his poor lifestyle choices? If ex fessed up to them himself, then the smart thing to do would be for him to assure them that he's getting his act together for them. But most of the time this is the seed of hatred planted in each child by the BM. I know I go through that. My DH married BM very young, straight out of HS and his choices sometimes weren't smart. she now loves to throw that in his face, saying he got his act together for me, not for SD. What BM fails to see is that he's grown up, when he married he was a guy, now he's a man and is conscious of how the decisions he makes directly affect his children. Unless ex was abusive or had bad habits and the kids went through all of that and he's now a changed man, I would stress to the kids that dad is trying hard to do right for them. BM's don't do this and use this as a tool to manipulate and brainwash children into hating dad and SM.

If your ex cheated on you and wound up with his mistress, how would you work through that, especially if you loath them? With children involved I would first get counseling to learn to work through my feelings of resentment, bitterness and negativity in order to turn them into feelings of indifference toward both of them. My job is to co-parent with these people, I would need to get over my feelings for my kids, in order to foster a positive influence and show them a united front when it comes to their needs. That is the mature thing to do. No matter what happened, that man is their father and unless he's completely inadequate to parent, BM has not right to squander that relationship.

If your kids knew about this, how would you help them through it? What behavior would you expect from them to the new stepparent? If my child new about dad cheating on me with SM and they are now married, she'd know because she'd figure it out on her own, not because I'm going to tell her. No child needs to know something like that. If she happened to find out from another source, then I'd have to explain that people make mistakes, things do not work out and we all fall in love with people, sometimes at the wrong time in our lives, but that we have to be resilient and learn to move on and work with what we have. Unless SM is horrible to my child, there is no reason for my child to treat her with disrespect whether or not she was the mistress is not the point. the point is that she is SM now and supporting dad in his parenting efforts. I would also remind my kid to not feel that way towards them because she doesn't know what life will hand her. God forbid she treat them awful and then when she's grown she finds herself in that same situation.

Say some Tom Brady/Gisele/Bridget Moynahan situation happened. Yes, this happened a long time ago, but these situations seem to occur in real life, too. If you were the bio mom in that situation or one like it, how would you handle yourself? How would you handle any bitterness you feel? And would it still be a problem years later?
This goes hand in hand with the answer to the previous question about resentment. Get counseling and learn to work through it so that you can properly parent your children. at least to the point where you are civil

How would you handle it if your kids came to you saying they dislike sm and her bios? I would ask why they feel that way. Is there a reason they feel that way. If it is a legitimate reason such as SM and bios treating them ugly then I'd have to have a talk with the ex. If they can't give me a good logical reason, then I'd ask them to give them a shot especially if they're being treated as part of the family and not being left out of things. I'd help them work towards getting rid of those feelings.

SORRY SO LONG!

I am both a BM and step mother. I wish my SO's ex wife was the BM I was. The only thing constant that I insisted on in my own situation that everyone involved put the well being of my son as primary...it worked. I never took advantage emotionally or financially and when I was hurt or slighted or jealous or angry I dealt with it...all in the name of keeping the peace. I did happen to be in a good place financially (of my own doing) and had a super supportive family which helped.

I have this conversation often with DH so we more or less know what the situation would be like.

What would your boundaries be regarding ex and sm?

As long as the kids are not being abused, you have your house and I have mine. If there's any issues with their manners that they would like addressed, they're welcome to come to me and I'll deal with it. Minimal unnecessary contact.

What lines, if any, would you not want your kids sm to cross?

As long as they're not being spanked or abused, I could care less. The more people to parent, the better. Her life is being affected so I would expect her opinions and desires to be involved, and it should have just as much importance as us, the bioparent's. This is because if I had a new husband, I'd care that his opinion was involved in the decision making process.

If your ex was a pos to you and is a king to sm, how would you deal with resentment, if you felt that?

I know sometimes you can love each other and not be compatible. Not my problem, glad he got himself together for another woman.

If your kids knew your ex made poor lifestyle choices but now was getting it together, and they felt like he was doing that for sm and not for them, how would you help them work through those feelings?

I would explain that the love you feel for an SO is very different than the love you feel for a child, or a parent. I would tell them when they are young, that when they grow up, they will understand. As they get older, I'd give them this scenario: would you treat your spouse like you'd treat your parent? Would you willingly take us on "dates" and give us lots of presents to show you loved us? Would you call us daily just to let us know you're thinking of us? Yeah, didn't think so.

If your ex cheated on you and wound up with his mistress, how would you work through that, especially if you loath them?

I have a very clear separation of someone doing something that clearly betrayed me, and my own feelings towards that, and would not impose my own feelings on my kids. I don't think I'd loathe them, I'd be upset things didn't work out but he was not the only fish in the sea, as I was clearly not for him, I'd be too busy getting my own chunk of manmeat to dwell on that kind of negative emotion.

If your kids knew about this, how would you help them through it? What behavior would you expect from them to the new stepparent?

That everyone makes choices and we may not agree with them but we can still love them. I would still expect the utmost respect towards the stepparent, even if it was the mistress. Because I know if the roles were reversed, that's what I would like--and who's to say it couldn't have very well been I who cheated had he not done so first?

You find love in the most strangest of places--it would have been nice if he gave me a heads up that he found the love of his life, but in the grand scheme of things that was just a mistake, and you know what? I have better things to do in my life than judge or resent or dwell on a mistake,

Say some Tom Brady/Gisele/Bridget Moynahan situation happened. Yes, this happened a long time ago, but these situations seem to occur in real life, too. If you were the bio mom in that situation or one like it, how would you handle yourself? How would you handle any bitterness you feel? And would it still be a problem years later? There seem to be situations on this site where posters met their DHs when the bm was pregnant by dh. Many of these people met when their DHs were done with the bm, but I've heard of some instances where bm & dh were in on/off relationships or still in one when the dh met his now wife.

Not sure what this situation you are referring to is, but I am one of them, DH was done with BM and she came back two months later claiming she was pregnant. She was still with her exSO at the time so no one knew whose baby it was, we decided to go ahead with out relationship and had been dating about four months before the child was born. In any case, if he left now and got together with someone, and married them, then that means he must really love them. I took the chance to have a baby with him, I must be prepared to raise it on my own too. I would be sad, and ask that he gave me some space, but once again, I have better things to do than dwell on that bitterness.

How would you handle it if your kids came to you saying they dislike sm and her bios?

You don't have to like them but you have to respect them. And chances are they don't like certain behaviors, not that they dislike the person. So I would help them identify the behaviors and see how they can cope with it while also being respectful. I would have them approach their dad about these specific behaviors and see if they can resolve it. If the SM and her bios are decent people, then I would have my kids speak to them about it too, in a very respectful way.

These are issues that our sks BMs seem to not handle in a way that's good for everyone, so how would you, as a bm, handle them differently?

I think I would work extra hard to make sure my plans and my decisions don't inconvenience the other side. If that inconveniences myself, so be it, I do not have the right to inconvenience anyone or handle anything in a way that is not good for other people, regardless if I reproduced with them or not.

I am not so egotistical to think I, a speck in this universe, is entitled to ANYTHING just because I popped a baby out of my vagina.