Thank you. Yes, I feel this way, but could never write something so eloquent. And as much as I would never wish my pain on someone else, when I see what to me are arogant postings by second wife, I do think -- there is a greater likelihood they will be an Xwife at some point.

I resent that maybe we didn't have the perfect marriage, but X could have stuck with it a couple more years so DD would be in college. But he didn't. And DD knows what happens. I didnt tell her, but she is old enough to know. So she has no respect for dad's GF. And yes, I am willing to put my social life on hold for a couple of years, until DD is in college. DD and work come first.

I love how you make the grand assumption that all marriages end with this poor-used up first wife being left holding the bag while DH runs off with his 25 year old secretary.

There are some situations that are grossly different.

Take this one into account: BM walks out on her family, a week before christmas. Shows back up months later, wanting 50/50 custody. DH says and I quote 'I want to be fair because you're their mother' he could have taken her for abandonment and let her have nothing but he agree's 50/50..after a few months kids become increasingly disturbed and after cps gets involved (oldest came home with a cigarette burn on his back) we find out after her neighbors had also called cps and the kids start talking; an extremely long laundry list of abuse and neglect shows up, if I were to list everything that happened over there it would make you sick. Now DH has the decree revised, obtains full custody, BM gets supervised visitation (which she has rarely exercised that right) and reverts back to calling randomly drunk to pick fights over non-issues. Other than that takes absolutely no part in their lives.

Now I, the step-mother, who comes into the family that she abandoned and abused is the villian?

Judging from the divorced people I know through work, DDs school friends parents, and civic associations, I really think my scenario is a lot more common than yours, Sieryn. But every stepmom here is a hero and a saint.

Of course you are sieryn.... you knew he had kids !!!

Whatever reason for the divorce ... whats done is done move on ... figure out brings you peace... but making another miserable so you can have peace is unacceptable.

But you must admit that your scenario in not a 100% guaranteed situation. Alot of the replies I see seem to think it is.

I'm not a hero, I don't think anyone here is trying to be. We're just looking for a place to vent and get advice on our families. It is nice to read the posts and think 'yeah I've been there' or 'other people have this issue too' and its refreshing to see the genuine good advice that comes out of this group of women. Just needs a little less scorn in some cases.

I think this forum should be relabled -- wives of men with children. Not stepfamilies. I see a lot more scorn of the mother. A lot more bashing of the mother/first wife. How rotten she is, etc. How rotten they all are.

No way would anyone ever call me a saint, however, I wouldn't mind being a hero if I got to wear a cool cape!!!

I wrote this as an ex step mom of 8.5 yrs. My ex DH had been divorced for a little over a year when we met and cupid's sllightly misguided arrow hit us.

I am younger than him, adn don't mean to generalise that all divorce happens when a man leaves his wife, but I think that unfortunately alot of first marriages especially of younger people happen when one or both parties don't fully understand themself, and as they grow in age and experience they change and no longer find that their partner has grown with them, or simply feel that they want something else, either way with kids involved it is horribly painful for one or the other, ok sieryn.

Any way, after being married for nearly six years and fighting many of the fights I see steps fighting on these forums, i realised that his ex wife's issues aren't supposed to be my problem, and that her treatment of him was invariably the reward he had earned for creating a reality for her that she didn't sign up for when THEY MARRIED and had THEIR KIDS.

She invested her love , years, and body for "till death do us part", not "till I want more than this".

So I stopped fighting when I realised that she is a woman just like me, and I better stop being sooo presumptuous to think that I am somehow better than she is. I started actually humbling myself, for want of a better phrase, and listening to her, so we as two women, could work together for her kids. I believe that she deserved that.

What kind of man was he to vilify her all these years into my ears, for not being what he decided ( midstream mind you) she should be. Their marriage ended very unhealthily for her, she still loved him and had to look at him move on in front of her, as if she were trash. It took me eight years to finally see it, and stop the turf war. My last straw happened when DH's company downsized, so he wasn't working, and me being a professional woman, was the sole breadwinner, and found myself paying his child support, and his ex's alimony as well.

I was not happy about that, but when the oldest needed braces and i had to postpone my vacation, I almost died.

Then I had to put myself in check and realise that, these kids didn't ask to be here, they were willingly conceived, be it under false pretences. They deserved better than being held back a year for a 2 week trip to the Bahamas.

I had braces as a teenager, I couldn't wait to get them out, so I empathised, and kept practicing empathising, so the kids could have a reasonably good childhood. And believe me, them seeing me actually getting along with BM worked wonders for our relationships, the best for HER KIDS was all she wanted, and felt a loss of ability to provide that when he left, and even worse when he got together with me, who was her enemy in the beginning.

In the end I had to divorce, for lose of respent for DH and just not being willing to continue in a "blended" family.

I needed simpler, so I got out, and remain good friends with all parties. I did my part, but I will always say that the steps must put the kids first, always, and please sometimes take some time to understand BM. She is a woman too, who might still be strugling. What woman doesn't know what heartbreak is.

She had her kids in a supporting environment, it isn't always fair to be forced to continue parenting the kids without support, and with animosity and shame heaped on top of the enitial loss.

" love how you make the grand assumption that all marriages end with this poor-used up first wife being left holding the bag while DH runs off with his 25 year old secretary."

I also love how it is assumed all husbands were ever even married to the biomoms at all! My husband merely had a FLING in highschool that resulted in pregnancy,he was hardly married!
I could also hardly be considered taking him away when I met him about 10 years later.
Different Strokes,for different folks. All stepmom scenerios are not the same.

"I think this forum should be relabled -- wives of men with children. Not stepfamilies. I see a lot more scorn of the mother. A lot more bashing of the mother/first wife. How rotten she is, etc. How rotten they all are."

Stepfamilies are either wives of men with children or husbands of women with children! And this forum is a place to share advice and vent...if you do not want to read what stepmoms post then you do not have to! I do not think that the sm's on here think they are saints, though we do have to deal with a lot more than a bm does! Many of us that post on here are raising our skids full-time which is a lot different than raising our biokids full-time. And yes we do complain about the ex, because many ex's are bitter and hard to deal with (men can be hard to deal with ex's as well). And yes I do think that I am better than my dh's ex...she left him for another man and walked out on her kids. I would never abandon my kid!! And since I have been with my husband my skids have all improved tremendously in school and at home!

Well about a mom leaving kids to be with other man, this is hard to understand no matter how you slice it. Sometimes I think that she just didnt want kids in the first place, but had kids for hubby in ill fated marriage, but even then, there should have been a bond that would prevent her from moving on.

Like some dads who are able to leave and never even maintain communication for any reason, there will inevitably be regret, and the kids now having to face the turmoil of getting past the hurt to forgive if they want to have a relationship with the absent parent, a relationship that they tend to romanticise no matter what. It is after all in their imagination.

In my case I was packed off to BDs house when I was 16 and getting rebellious for BM. I wouldnt consider this abandonment, he was much stricter, and got me in line quick.

Either way, before I divorced, I asked my DH to help me to be his wife, like, make amends with BM and ask her forgiveness, do whatever, for the mess that was made of your marriage with her, this way our lives would be easier with the improvement in relations between them, but his response was no, everything was her fault, she was all to blame.

Now no sensible adult could possibly believe that, I mean there is always two sides to a thing, and it always takes two to tango or untangle as it were.

I just wanted to be relieved of fighting with the mess he made of his past, and has dragged their kids into, he was un-cooperative, and I needed relief, so I made my own way to BMs instead, but to this day he will not take his share of the responsibility, just happy to have me do all the work and her take all the blame. He wasnt that special, as harsh as that is to say.

And guess who he blamed for my unhappiness and my being fed up with his past and the resultant mess. Yes, he blamed me.

Iam not going to comment on the description of how a marriage ends in this post. its been my experience that marriages end for all kinds of reasons, in all kinds of ways, and that the blame for it never really rests on one of the parties alone.

That being said, I sometimes find myself cringing when reading some of the posts here by second wives. Almost every second wife who is running into stepfamily problems, who posts in this forum, whines about how the ex wife was/is a horrible mother, and treats the former husband so horribly, blah blah blah. They constantly denigrate the step kids, while claiming their own kids are perfect angels. More often than not, they blame the ex wife for the kids problems in the stepfamily.

Most divorced people and their new spouses will look negatively at a previous spouse. Thats human nature. But realistically ladies, you CHOSE to marry your husbands, and they in turn CHOSE to marry their ex wives and have babies with them. If these women are so horrible, then what does that say about your husband's taste?

Fact is, most bio mother and bio fathers are just fine. They dont do things the same way you would, and there is some residual bad feeling, but they arent the problem. when you marry a man with children , you need to put your own natural inclination to try to take over his and his kids lives on hold, and just STAY OUT OF IT. If he cant, or wont deal with the ex, its not your problem OR your place. LEt them work out the details themselves, and stop the critisizing. For the most part, ex's and their new spouses, on both sides of a stepfamily, have a warped perception of t he other side. Again, thats probably human nature, but it will make it much more stressful to do the right thing for the children.

Lest you think that I am some bitter ex wife whining, ( which I notice has been the assumption on others who call out the nasty attitudes on here) I will say that I am a bio mom of four, and a step mom of two. My ex husband has never remarried, and thus my children do not have a stepmother of their own. Do I get along with my ex? No. But I dont bad mouth him, and I deal civilly with him, so that the kids arent affected by it. After all, what does it say to a kid if you tell him what a donkey his other parent is? Sometimes, ladies, the high road is to allow yourselves to be wronged by the other party.

As for my step children, I stay out of it. I love my stepkids, try to do things that help them in their lives, worry about things they do that can negatively affect them.One of my stepkids is having major problems with attitude and school. I dont think some of the things that their bio mom does are correct or helpful, but guess what? they arent my children, and its not my place to tell her how to parent. There is residual anger between my husband and his ex, and I guess my natuarl inclination would be to side with my husband. I do, privately. But I refuse to be drawn into their issues, because they are THEIR issues.

Anyway, ladies, I think a lot of you need to just lighten up and stop trying to control things to your liking. Those things arent your place to control anyway. Take the high road a little more often and dont knock the bio mom. She is almost always doing the best she can, although you dont see it. And your husbands are almost always doing the best that they can, although the bio mom doesnt always see it. Thus is the nature of divorce , and stepparenting.

Kathline, if you ever break up with present DH, pls let me know so I can fix you up with my X.

Kathline, essentially in am in agreement with your view of relational issues between exes when kids are involved, I did choose my DH with kids and ex in toe. I did not expect it to be so hard, or for the hardship and infighting to go on soo looong after we married.

I had to let DH know that there IS something fundamentally wrong here. He needed to take a look at himself, and find a way to smooth things out. The kids attitude couldn't be healthy for them, they were unhappy and ill at ease alot, in comparrison with other kids their age, they also needed some form of relief. I couldn't go on in the absence of peace everytime we had to see their kids. It needed to end.

It was not until I became completely fed up with the same nonesense going on for 6.5 yrs after we were together ( I expected soem resistance to my presence in the beginning, but not eternally) that I went to BM's house and asked her what she wanted for me to do with her kids, That simple. Please bear in mind, that this was after I asked DH to do same repeatedly. All I said, "what do you want for these kids, what can I do on dh and my end", and she had alot that she wanted, DH was too busy resisting, fighting, blaming her to help bring peace, so I made alot of what she wanted happen for her peace and what she wanted for her kids.

And I realise that in alot of ways he wanted to win in some invisible fight, where he would gain the trophy of being better parent, so went against alot of her initiatives, he wanted to father them in any way that was opposing to her, or belittling to her. Then when something came up that he hadn't formed an opinion about, I had to come up with some idea for the kids that weren't at peace in our home. IMPOSSIBLE.

After going to BM, alot of peace came about, but DH was not ever going to make amends, and I couldn't carry his load as if it were mine anymore. But I realise now that he needs to win, and cannot be wrong when facing her. He has issues when having to deal with her.

I can never really know how all marriages ended, but this is my experience, that's all I know for now.