The same as Pashan, except we have no kids, and also, I love the way we complement each other in taking care of all the troublesome little things that come up in life--fixing broken toilets, mending clothes, making phone calls, giving advice when one of us has a problem. DH has never bored me in 46 years, and when we have to drive a long distance, the time passes quicker because we enjoy talking so much. I love knowing I can share funny incidents and funny cartoons with him and he will laugh at them as hard as I do. There have been some rocky times in the past, coming from two quite different cultures the way we do (American and Japanese), but things just keep on getting better and better.

the silence is deafening. one serious issue is that while nc may not be responsible for man's promise to fiance, there is the potential issue of aids. this changes everything for me. someone's life could be at risk. of course the fiance needs to be told. when nurses are having unprotected sex, and they know all the dangers, it makes me wonder just how careful are most people? there's no way around the truth, even though it's inconvenient and ugly. you are treated by the world in the way you allow yourself to be treated. you must respect yourself and honor yourself. if you manipulate and lie and get "away" with it, as in, the unexpected pg wins you the man, guess what? you're not winning any prize. I wish this weren't true. But I would lay money on it. Be careful where you point your feet, because that's where you're gonna end up.

My take, 15 years ago. . . to the present. Some things have slightly changed for SMs, and some things have not, and some things have a long way to go. What is a potential SM supposed to look for nowadays? There really is no one set of answers. There are just too many extenuating factors to take into consideration, and still much of the advice out there for SMs is based on long-held presumptions and assumptions, and much of it is based on what largely non-SMs think should work vs. what actually may. Very few, even amongst professionals, take into consideration SM’s main role as dad’s wife or SO and instead seem to only want to focus on the “mom” part of SM. Because of this, for years and years SMs have been looked at almost solely as competitors to mom or competitors to SKs for dad’s attention, and SMs have traditionally been treated abrasively and judged harshly because of it. The reality is, most SMs just want to be dad’s wife or SO, and welcoming to the children. I’ve been a SM for over 15 years now, and I still can’t really help much with the “How do you make it work?,” question. What I can tell you is that as a SM, or even potential SM, you need to do what works for you, because there is so much bad or contradictory advise out there, it is unbelievable. What works in one step-situation might not work in another, because there may be a huge difference in the many factors that go into making a step-situation work. I often even refer to SP’ing as a crazy backwards world, because things that no woman or wife would be expected to take in a typical family situation, for some reason a SM is expected to take and with no questions asked. In the year 2018, everyone knows spouses and even SOs are to be seated together at events. This is just a given, isn’t it? Not with SMs, that’s for sure.! You can be married to your husband for years and years and it can still be a crap shoot whom someone will try to pair with your husband at a family event, no permission needed. You’ll both just attend an event, and, surprise!, everything will be arranged like your husband and his ex- are still a ‘joined at the hip twosome’ and you (SM) simply do not exist. This is just one example. Follow your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Look out for yourself. Most people will probably tell you something like, “Just be nice to the kids, and it will all work out,” or something similarly sappy. It sounds like common sense, and I would have thought the same before I became a SP, but that’s another thing. . . a lot of what sounds like common sense doesn’t work in step-world. There are studies that show that the nicer a SM is, the more the kids may start to despise her, because their loyalties are to mom, and they’ll just automatically look at SM as competition for mom. This is especially true if BM encourages them to think such, which certainly can occur. There is no way you can change anyone’s mind in this situation. You can’t control BM; nor should you be expected to. This is where you need a STRONG husband/ DH. He needs to put his foot down from day one that you are his SO and his children are to treat you as dad’s wife, and not as mom’s competition. Sounds simple enough, but so many divorced men with children fail on this one it is unbelievable. Too many of these men wind up treating their wife or SO like a child and their child more like a spouse. Even little things like letting his son or daughter sit in the front seat next to him ALL the time while you’re in the back, could send the message to the kids that they are dad’s significant other and not you. Children deserve to have all the love in the world, but they are not SOs and they are not wives. You combine a lot of these SM in the back type situations, along with guilty dad syndrome and BM’s PAS’ing, and next thing you know, you start to feel like the servant they are treating you as, and then when you go to one of your married friends to complain, she tells you that you need to understand more and give them space and not put your DH in the middle. In reality, not only are YOU the one being put in the middle, but you are also being put in the middle of someone else’s divorce/ fallout. There is no way you should be put in the middle of this and no way you can correct this. Only your DH can. Not trying to sound sour, but trying to get all to see that there is no way a SM should have to settle for being sloppy seconds just because her husband has children from a previous relationship. If as a SM, you feel like you are being the family servant or scapegoat or can never do anything right, or everyone is telling you you need to suck it up for the “family,” these are all signs that your DH is letting you take the fall, among other things. One might expect that of BM or even SKs, but very few women ever expect that once they get heavily involved with or marry, that their DH could so easily shrug his shoulders and let his wife or SO take the fall in reference to his family pretty much every time. In the end, the only advice I can really give any SM, is make sure you have a strong and true and tried DH before you ever marry him. You’ll need at least that. There is really no way to guarantee your success as a SM, as success largely depends on bio-mom and bio-dad, and less on SM or the SKs. And, remember: Manipulative, controlling BM and weak, enabling DH almost surely means Step Hell for life.

After reading this yesterday two things happened that caused me to realize how truly TKO I am. I now add: When your 3 year old plays with her toys, the Mommy and Daddy have to work on the kitchen. When a tropical storm fells an 80 foot tree on your property, your first thought is "It could have fallen the other way onto my nearly finished kitchen!" I'm sure most kids aren't even aware of their kitchens, but Paige hears us talk about it all the time so she thinks that is what adults talk about! The other day a tile sample board fell on her finger while she was sitting on the counter. She went to preschool the next day and told her teacher that "a big wood fell on my finger while I was sitting on the granite." Yes, that's right, she refers to it as "THE granite." She also blames me for the injury because I put the tile board there. I know, I am due for mother of the year this year! I also woke up in a panic at 6:30am yesterday as Tropical Storm Fay was making her way across north Florida. I wasn't panicking about potential danger for my family or my business, I was worried about water getting into my new kitchen and damaging the floors and cabinets! I know its ridiculous, but I can't help myself. When we discovered the tree had fallen I freaked out because it was on the same side of the house as the kitchen and easily could have landed on it.