I did a search in Google, titled: "How am I supposed to act as a step-parent?" and it brought me here. Reading some of the posts, especially those who are still learning to deal with being a step-parent, has helped me realize that maybe its not just me.

A little about me first I suppose. I was single for 38 years of my life. A choice I made for various reasons, one being I never found the right girl. I never imagined that the right girl would end up being a beautiful Mexican woman working on her Visa and speaking very limited amounts of English. We met where we worked and spent a year flirting with each other with everything except words. One day on the staircase, I was going down and she was going up, I stepped aside to let her pass and she stopped in front of me, stood on her tippy toes, and kissed me.

Our first date began with her meeting me at the movies to see The Pink Panther. She got lost on the way and after half an hour of texting through broken English and Spanish we met up and spent most of the time on the top row making out like teenagers. We dated fairly consistently until I left to work in Alaska in the summer of 2007. I told her I wouldn't be back and fully expected not to be. This was something i had been planning on since I was 14. Needless to say, I returned at the end of the summer, walked into where she worked, kissed her and told her she was going away with me that weekend.

2 months later I asked her to marry me in front of a Taco Bell at 11 at night while we ate Chalupas. Yes. I'm quite the romantic. My ss (That's the short for it right?) was never too much around. I won't say she was hiding him so much as protecting him I suppose.

Anyway, we moved into together 2 months later and simply learning to live with another person much less two and one of them being a child was an experience. Not always a good one.

We were married this August, though not by the state, just a pastor, so that I could get over some of the feelings I was having about "living in sin" or whatnot and her paperwork wouldn't be thrown into a handbasket for changing her legal status.

I will say that my SS is a good kid most of the time. He is very quiet and still has a hard time expressing emotion. Which drives me nuts sometimes. I never know if he likes something or not. The problems I'm having and have been having isn't with him but with the way his mother treats him. She has told me before in an argument or two that He is her life and I'm just her husband. I'm trying to work out a life here and I can't say anything to him that doesn't cause my wife to get angry and flustered. She is so worried about hurting his feelings. (I asked him to get out of my chair when I came home from work once and she had a fit.)

The biggest issue I have, is when we argue, she will do it in front of him. I've told her before that I'm not gonna argue with her in front of him but she continues to do so.

I guess I can fill in the rest as I go along here....

I'm happy to have found a place where maybe I can let of some steam once in awhile hopefully get some feedback from folks in similar situations.