"It's important to teach your kids that unfortunate events can and will happen, but it gets better. It's important to teach them how to cope." Isn't that what life is about for everyone? I admire your wonderful attitude and your graciousness.

You mentioned that you dated three Disney dads, none whom are from parents who divorced. It does make me wonder if there is some sort of correlation. My DH's parents were never divorced. He never had the experience of overcoming divorce. He had terrible guilt concerning SD who had been his princess - and it is hard to believe she was not aware of this. I was away from home for two months just after we got married. I came home for the weekend and he cried when I asked for an hour away from SD. As I stated in another post, that was when I should have set limits.

You wrote, "It baffles my mind how the kids these days are so selfish and do not care about their parents happiness." You were obviously raised by your parents to eventually grow into a self-reliant, resilient adult. I believe many divorced parents actually WANT their kids to remain childlike because, as with many fathers, they don't see them often. And because they are not living with these kids every day, they tend to overlook multitudes of behavior 'quirks', creating false entitlement and lack of respect for others. These kids know when their parents feel guilt and take advantage of it. They also know they will not be able to play this game with other adults who do not view them as the 'Golden Eggs' so they declare war, and use whatever is in their arsenal to eliminate the 'enemy' so they can return to the game they benefit from.

Valmont, you have a lot of wisdom!! :). I am sorry that u had a crappy first SD. Like I have told my older son ( my first and only marriage was to an idiot whom, I found out after the fact, abused my son.). He told me about it after the ex OD'd and believe me, me and my son have had some rocky times in the past because of it.). I've said, "parents are humans and make mistakes too". BUT, I still feel very the pain and guilt of making that mistake of being with that man in the first place. And StepAside, Wow... What a POS example of a SM u had!!! Sound like my boyfriend's ex wife!!! ( she was a stripper, coke addict, who now lives on disability claiming Lymes disease-- although that doesn't stop her from continuing to use drugs from what I've been told). I scratch my head thinking that my boyfriend could have picked up with another loser -- rather than me. I like to think of myself as a good role model- college education, responsible, etc...but the boyfriends dtr lives in her own world about who she thinks I am. When I moved in with them with my younger son, I wasn't looking to be the girl's mom, just her friend. But listening to her swear and stomp her feet at the age of 17 and break my things, go through my things and steal from me-- then complain to dad that I am taking her stuff -- was a little too much to swallow. Even at Easter when she visited, all she said was Bye to me. Meanwhile, she has no problem coming here and eating my food. ( at least I didn't get to hear, " Ewww, what is that?" this time.

I'm not sure how many parallels can be drawn between one's family constellation and the present. So much depends on expectations and assumptions. For example my father had 3 sons in his first marriage then got together with my mom and had the four of us. But the BM there had long before my parents got together, become mentally ill, was in hospital (ultimately committed suicide) and my father, who was incredibly neglectful, had abandoned his elder 3 boys to foster carers. Therefore whilst my older half brothers were known to us when we were growing up, and came to stay with us in vacations, their relationship with my father and mother was that much more calm and distant than often happens because the BM was wholly absent and not in touch with them, they had good foster placements where their primary carers were not my father and also were very caring, and my mother was perfectly kind in her care of these boys but fundamentally disengaged (in a non-hostile way, she just never had engaged -- wise woman). Funnily enough when I went on to marry myself decades later, my DH also had three elder children, and the BM was dubbed mentally ill -- though in fact in her case it was more of a narcissistic personality disorder. But she rapidly made a large number of people's lives hell and twisted the whole experience of stepfamilyhood for all of us, hence there just is no comparison emotionally between the two setups. In fact in a way it was precisely because my experience as one of the younger, second brood in a stepfamily was so positive, that I did not see the circles of the Inferno closing around me as I first fell in love with my DH.

I have a stepmother and a stepfather--both really nice people. I think I am a little closer to my SF, probably because he has been around longer. If anything, this whole ordeal with my BF's kids has made me more mindful of how I treat my stepparents. I never EVER want to treat them the way I have been treated.

Valmont and jeaniemarie wow - couldn't agree with both of you more

I'm also a child of divorce, as was my mother before me, and I've had step-parents (SF's...only my mom remarried my father never got past it) and you really made me think about something Valmont: while my mom complained endlessly about her horrible SM (my step-grandmother) and how terrible her life, etc.. etc... when she decided to cheat on my dad continuously until she left him and then destroyed his relationship with his kids as much as she could, my mom never seemed to stop and think twice about putting her own kids in the same boat she said was so horrible for her - a broken home as she referred to it

None of us got away with any of the behavior my DH's kids have gotten away with. We didn't dare treat our SF badly nor our mother either. There was zero tolerance, from both of them, for it

You would think we would be prime candidates for acting out and getting away with murder and having an oh so sympathetic mother, seeing she had been through it all in her own life but nope - she never once stopped to think divorce could be rough on us, cut us any special breaks, raised us to act like victims, etc...

Yet my DH, who grew up in an intact family, feels tremendous guilt and fear over the divorce and how it affected his daughters. DH has allowed so much bad behavior from them it's not even funny

And like you jeaniemarie, once I became a step-parent myself, I treated my own step-parent even better than before as I had a new appreciation of what it was like to be in his shoes!