Re: Here come Wally and Mary Ellen

"Dover Beach" <moon.blanched@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:Xns9A995CACC9B15moonblanchedgmailcom@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Mary <mrfeathers@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in news:jpZUj.102461$TT4.6902@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> But now?  Never mind all that, I'm just grateful that I didn't marry a
>> guy with a kid.  Presuming that this is normal behavior.
>
> We have made it work over the years, but I highly recommend not marrying
> someone with children.  I know people can make it work, but it's harder
> than you think it's going to be.  I've had two different friends ask for
> reassurance about marrying men with children, and I try not to be too
> negative, but I can't say "oh, it's no problemo!"

Having been both a step-child and a step-mother, I can attest that it is 
much, much easier to be a step-child.  Not once, with my multiple 
step-mothers and my one step-dad, did I worry that I was traumatizing them

so much that they'd spend the rest of their lives in therapy.  With
Katrina 
it seemed to be a constant fear.  (Little did I realize that I wasn't
going 
to be the one causing her trauma, it was her excessively permissive father

who caused that.)

Scott has a daughter who is, thank god, 23 years old.  Scott and I also
have 
very similar beliefs on what a parents' responsibilities are - especially
to 
their adult children.  I'm never going to be a real "step-mom" to Sarah, 
because she has a perfectly good mother already and gets enough mothering.

So right now I'm her father's girlfriend and eventually I'll be her
father's 
wife.  We may be close, we may not.  But right now we get along okay.

The day Scott tells me that she and Troy are moving in with us, rent-free,

because they have to spend all their money on new cars, aquariums,
stereos, 
big screen TVs, partying, etc will be another story.  But even then, my 
problem won't be with Sarah, it will be with Scott for turning into such
an 
asshole.  Been there, done that, the T-****rt is apparently in storage in 
Illinois.

Lisa Ann