To sum up my story H and I were seperated for 3 months(while he cheated) back together 6 months. He left because of my feelings toward his kids I am less than warm to say the least(read my previuos posts) but they do have a mom.
We are in counseling. I am trying VERY hard to like his kids. I can tolerate them, but still not liking them. My desire to make things work in this home is ONLY for my children. I want them to have a happy mother and fatherI have also read His needs ner needs for parents). And know he will not be happy unless I am showing that I like his kids. My children love their siblings and therefore I am nicer to his kids because my children love them too.
My H and I have been in counseling for several months. Counselor has said that if I make myself do things for my H and his kids the feelings will come. That has not happened in 6 months. It is easier for me to be nice and meet my H's needs but I still feel so much anger and resentment. I am trying to do the Christian thing to forgive but so much inside of me wants him to hurt. I have even seriously thought about cheating on him and leaving him with the kids for several months so that we can be even.
Now that we are together again, he is the best H ever, but there is nothing he can ever do to make me believe in him again. If someone told me he was a serial killer I would believe it because there is nothing beyond belief now. I feel so much guilt for only wanting him for my children and even more guilt for wanting him to hurt too simply because he is truly a sweet person. We have done everything Dr. Harley has suggested(I have also read the book LB), but no amount of time and meeting emotional needs will take care of resentment and the feelings that I have of being here to sacrifice for him and his kids with the full knowledge that if the tables were turned they would leave me in my time of need.

I feel like that too sometimes. You've taken the harder of the two routes, unfortunately. You don't have many options if your mind isn't set upon resolution between the two of you. You need to have some faith in him that he would be there for you in your time of need. It's hard... Long-time posters may have some more insight on healing times.

When we married we vowed to be there for one another no matter what. I was there for him as much as I did not want to be, and even if I did half heartedly, I did it. Do you think it matter what drives you to do something? My love for him has nothing to do with why I am trying to work on this. His kids that I have sacrified so much for would leave me high and dry if their mom needed them for anything. That I know 100%.
I needed him and made that clear in more ways than one when I was pregnant. And he refused to help me. Most of his family has no idea about what he was doing. And it bothers m so much to hear them make statements about how good he is to me and how he would do anything for me. I should never hoave to worry about him hurting me. If they only knew.

dkjjhjr, I have read your posts. Please bear with me.

After my parents divorced, I went to live with my father. He married my stepmother. She had two children of her own, who lived with their father, and sometimes with us. She never made me or my sister feel like interlopers, although I'm sure she could have used more alone time with my father. Today she is my childrens favorite grandmother and I have enormous respect and love for her.

You have a chance to make a positive difference in these childrens lives now and in the future. Instead, you are making them feel unwelcome (and if you think that they don't know how you feel, think again). Don't think of it as a competition between you and their mother. Be aware that you bring your own value to the table.

I do see that you are attempting to modify your behavior where the children are concerned, which is commendable and I'm sure that your H's A made things worse, much worse. Regarding your H's family: I have found in my own recovery, that other people's opinions about my marriage are just that: other people's opinions. I could go on about that, but I'll leave it for another post.

I do have some questions, though. Why would you marry a man whose children you dislike? Surely you realize that it's a package deal, even if your H was not the custodial parent at the time. Does your H support you when it comes to discipline? Are the rules the same for your children and his? (I know that growing up, the rules for me were different than they were for my step-sister. I was the Honors student, the cheerleader, she was the high school drop-out who got to stay overnight at the shore with her boyfriend and party all the time. My behavior was monitored because better things were expected of me. Ah, the tyranny of high expectations - the inequities drove me crazy!)

I wish you the best of luck in your situation. I sense a good person in you who is overwhelmed by circumstances. I think we all feel like that sometimes.

This post is most likely going to sound harsh...but you get what you pay for here..
it is free
it is mine...

take what you choose....


Your position on this is full of things that I can not and do not understand....

What good will ever come of holding children hostage to your malace..

what role do children play in your discontent in this life...

we if nothing else are called to serve those in our care that can not serve themselves....

and yet we create discontent...
chaos
and
self entitled poor me...

these are children...
and your feelings matter little to none in this...

you treat them with kindness period inspite of any feelings...

feelings that you feed create and misdirect to the innocent...

you will use this man to fullfill your children and their needs ask and expect that of him...while you villify his own in your heart..it is illogical

you must take this burdon and lay it down..
you must pray for clarity
....

you need to ask for humility to serve..
you need to stop each second that the bile and anger arises in you when confronted by those feelings of dislike and mentally push them aside...

this is as much as your own thought processes feeding in to your dislike as much as you want to believe it is an uncontrolable reaction out of your hands

you must make the decision that NO MATTER you feelings you bring NO HARM or MALACE to these children..

IF you can not do this and it is not a feeling but an action you must remove yourself totally from their lives...

these childre are victims of multiple grownups all choosing to act in ways that are not in their best interest...

where they live
with whom they live with
all out of their hands...
treatment that no adults would put up but visits upon children

His kids that I have sacrified so much for would leave me high and dry if their mom needed them for anything.

children are ego driven devlopementally by nature..they don't even pocess the ability to move from outside the Id in most cases...that comes much later in life....

you don't sacrifice for return..
if you do then it is empty and false
you sacrifice because it is the right thing to do..otherwise it would not even be a sacrifice by defintion.

Do you think it matter what drives you to do something?

obviously it does..those that learn to give and do because is the right thing to do...are the ones that are truly happy on this earth...

If our giving becomes fully driven only be return
or only based on a scale of equality....that I will only do for you in equal to what you do for me...

mankind would be doomed....

you must step outside this and see the damage you bring to these people who have no choice in this

you must stop this...
you must.........

you have to stop this chaos and see the bigger picture...

ark

I was raised by my stepdad from the time I was 6 - my step dad walked me down the aisle. My grandparents were divroced and remarried when I was a toddler - each one is my grandparents no more or less then the next.

Blood they say is thicker...but I choose to disagree, because my step families have been more essential in my life.

Here is my belief.

When you married your husband, you married all that came with him - those children are just as much your children now as they are his. You are their mother - not by blood, but by marriage.

You will help instill morals, lead them, comfort them, teach them. Yes they may not be there all the time, but you are that person now - it came with the marriage.

You are their mother, whether you like it or not.

I hope you can see that.

My couselor has said the same thing about taking care of his kids being the right thing to do. All my life I have chosen to do the right thing and again and again it has been shown to me that when you do good and right, others take advantage of you. Taking care of kids is not the same as Can you watch my kitty for the weekend? This is a lifelong commitment even when you get tired, nothing else can compare to raising kids. And let me make myself clear in saying it is not the kids so to speak it is their existence that bothers me.
I always wanted 4 of my own kids who look and remind me of myself, 2 of my own is all I will ever have. The money for my wedding was spent on obtaining custody of his kids thousands of $. To most women children and weddings are extremely important. Those are two MAJOR disappointments in my life.

It is diificult to explain but when you are young and have no kids, you have no idea of what it means to have them. If I knew then what I know now I would have RUN away fast...... but I am not there anymore. I married him knowing that I would have to put up with his kids IF I wanted to. I was very clear in my feelings before and he accepted that about me thinking that I would change because of how much I loved kids, but it did not. I know these kids need someone, but so do my children and I. Their parents have failed them and at the least my husabnd is trying to correct his wrongs but to me it is at the expense of my kids, which drive every thing in my whole life. I will never allow my kids to be hurt by anyone, and his leaving hurt all 4 of his kids. I am trying really hard, but the feelings just are not there and I am not sure they ever will be.

Is there a reason to try?
"For better or worse, richer or poorer..."

It is hard to see what you want from this board. It seems to me as though you are acting like someone who is entitled and a victim. It is hard to understand your feelings about a wedding vs. your spouse's children. It sounds like a spoiled child vs. an adult. You really can't compare a wedding, which sounds like you like the thoughts of it like a stage play vs. the real meaning of it, to children.

The question is really, why would your H want to continue with a relationship with you as it sounds like you are damaging to his children. This can't help but have an adverse affect on the children you have together. It also sounds like you will have a running tally on everything done for the older two compared to the younger two. There shouldn't be any score keeping on attention and fullfilling needs of the children. When you married him you should have been willing to accept them as your own, the way I see it you do have four children. It is very sad to me that even if your M ends, the affect you have had on your step-children will affect them their whole lives, and I wonder what that would be?

I really think you need serious counseling, sounds like you are all about you, very immature and selfish.

Sorry to be so harsh, I will pray for all of the kids involved here.

Temporary T/J..........

I wish this woman (Ark) would stop stealing my lines and thoughts from my own head....I wanted to think of saying something like this first....Dang, Ark...stop it...Get our of my head. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The post was "free" but was actually "loaded".

Lem

again this is NOT about your feelings...
if we entertained you on your FEELINGS then surely we must tear down this web-site and entertain every WS on his or her FEELINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

they are as fleeting as the wind...

All my life I have chosen to do the right thing and again and again it has been shown to me that when you do good and right, others take advantage of you.

you have yet to learn the true gift of giving is in the blessings of doing and finding great value in the ACT not reciprocation....

NO ONE can take advantage of you without your consent...

and if you gave and gave and gave and sacrificed and not for the right reasons..
not for the value that you believed that your husband should have access to his children...but out of some warped sense of entitlement for what role he plays in your own childrens lives.....

then you alone set this path up this way...

you alone set the tone of doing and consenting...and if you really didn't want to do... didn't want to consent the time to speak up has long passed...

most importantly it can't be undone....

To most women children and weddings are extremely important. Those are two MAJOR disappointments in my life.

while you can certainly choose to be live your life victim to these two things..there are alternitives...that have solely to do with you...

OR
you quit comparing the thought of not having four of your own children
and dig deeper to love these children for the BLESSINGS they are....

if you could never had your own..would you spend your life hating all that could..

would you adopt a child to only resent he or she....

we huamns are capable of infinite love ESPECIALLY when it comes to children....

love is an action NOT a feeling....

and the wedding...please....it's a waste of money...for people come to party...totally unprepared for clean up duty....ha ha...

you can view your life as half empty...
the total martyr...
doing
and
giving...
poor poor you

but it will destroy you...already your ability to not bring malace to innocent children...guilty by you for being born...is rearing its ugly head...

I suggest you divorce this man....to save his children from you....

your plan to use him to save your children while you villify his...is a very very slippy slope...and you stand to teach ALL the children in that home ...very very damaging coping mechanisms and skewed ideas on relationships.

I find it difficult to believe you can't see beyond your FEELINGS

I find it difficult to believe you can't see the illogical route you are on..

keep the man to make your kids safe and at the same time resent his children for wanting needing the same thing...

you are a threat to your husbands children...

ark

i hope that you can apply this to your situation


my H and i have no children. we wanted it that way. my H doesn't LIKE children and believes that NO MAN ever wants children, they just learn to live with them when they come along.

however, he left me for a woman with 4 children ages 6-16 who says her children are the most important thing in her life.

all of the words of hope that i have gotten from posters here and from Jennifer Harley comes from the belief that if my H isn't ever able to really accept and love her children, the relationship will never work

NEVER....

even though they "have a dad" the OW will want and even expect my H to feel the way she does about her children..."love me love my children....we are a package deal"


Do YOU want your relationship to work?

Well, Eav, I can say that I never heard that one before. DO you believe the same things about men and children as your Husband (i.e men never wanting children, just living with them when they come along)? I am not judging you, just trying to understand this a little better.

Lem

no lemon i don't believe that at all...an men have told me THEY REALLY WANTED children so i know it's not true

just goes to show though how completly without those feelings my H is...he can't even imagine that ANY MAN really has those feelings because he has NONE!

me...i love kids...but being a teacher, i get to enjoy them and then i get to come home and enjoy my private time too (at least i used to before my darn H left)

that is why MY situation is so hard for me to understand... the OW even told me once that "she could NEVER have a relationship with my H because her children are her life and he doesn't even LIKE children" i guess she thinks he's changed....just for her....cause she's so special

but i doubt it...he also liked to tell people "dogs are better than kids because you can put them in cages and leave them alone and no-one can call the police"

but just so you know....other than his dislike of chilren. before this awful mess with OW...he really was a great guy

Eav:

Girl, I can only read the above post by you and "sigh"...none of this makes sense, does it?

I have no doubt in my mind, that your WH was a "great guy" to you. There are probably very few people (at least those that I know) who could be separated from their WH for 19 months and have gone through what you have been through with him and could still hold out this "love" for him.

I think of myself as an above average intelligent person, and "I don't get it" with your story....but that is ok, I am not you, and just because I "don't get you" doesn't mean I can't offer you some support in my own little way. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

You don't ever have to prove to me, or qualify to me that your husband "was" a good guy. Your "love" for him after all of this mess, speaks volumes.

Lem

thanks lemon

i don't love easily but when i do, i love hard

and before i met my H...i didn't believe that i would ever get married because of the marraige my parents had...and the life that my sisters and i had because of it

but i believed he was everything that i'd come to think didn't exsist..that with him i could have the life i didn't think was real...only happened on tv and in fairytales

and we did have that...and my sisters called it "my fairytale"


until...he did everything to me that my dad did to my mother

go figure

I am going to be blunt here and say that you sound extremely narcissistic and shallow. Children are individuals, not carbon copies of their parents. My daughter resembles and acts just like my H; my son, as my H says, is my "testoster-clone". Should I appreciate only my son?

And I know a lot of women (myself among them) who did not consider the actual wedding very important.

To believe that you wouldn't have to deal with your H's children simply because he didn't have custody at the time must have taken a fair bit of denial.

My father and stepmother just came up from Atlanta to be with us at Thanksgiving, and then travelled to Delaware for my son's hockey tournament. Watching my stepmother's face as my son scored a goal was a real treat.

You have no idea what you are losing by focusing on what you don't have.

With that, I bow out.

Once again let me say, I love MY children with everything in my heart and soul. I know how imp. my father was to me. I am not sure that I could have survived my teen yrs. without my daddy. I would be willing to do anything in this world for my kids, including like their other siblings. That is why I try real hard.
It is very discouraging to me though because I have no place to belong in their lives, even when I am trying. If you ask their mom I am nobody, even though my H says they love me with all they have, if you ask either of them, I am their SM but their REAL mom lives down the street.(Real mom does live down the street and rarely visits w/ them. No more than 8 times/yr.) I feel like an outsider who does all the hard work.
I am an RN. I love my job. I would go even if I was not paid (I would not go as often, but I would go.) The money from my job is not the only compensation that I get. I enjoy what I do. In this job as a custodial stepparent, I never get compensation. I have no place to belong in their lives, and yes H tries really hard to make me feel like I do, but I know I don't. It is not a rewarding job. Being mom is the most rewarding job I have ever had, sometimes I will just sit and look at my babies and thank God for them, because I know they appreciate me.

as an RN I have to say I am rather shocked at your lack of understanding of child developement...

a NINE year old and an EIGHT year old...

forced out of their home..
forced in to dad remarrying a stranger...
forced in to being a visitor in one or the others home
forced in to splitting their lives.
and
forced in to DEALING with a mom that lives down the street and doesn't see her OWN children...

do you know the fear and hearbreak these children must feel....
can you step outside of your own entitlement and feel the beatings of their young hearts....??

and YOU want gratification from people that are developementally barely able to give based on their own growth and learning scale.....

The fact that GROWNUPS sick in a hospital say thanks nurse when you empty their bed pan is a lot different from CHILDREN who have no control on their lives...

they are trying to find a safe sancturary..
they have to deal with all the crap outside of their control outside the front door...
let alone the crap that all YOU ADULTS have brought in to their lives...

daddy has made new babies with a women who can't stand they were ever born!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and this all about you......??????????????????????????

you should mourn and weep for what these children..in the nine years of their life have had to endure...

you should from this moment on do nothing except that that brings sanctuary...safe boundairies and assurance that once again based on grown up idiotic whims that these kids won't be abandoned again...

If you ask their mom I am nobody,

yep ask the fruitcake mom who only visits her own children a few times a year...
AND
then take her idiotic word....blllleeeeecccchhhhhhhh

if you ask either of them, I am their SM

well that's what you are to the nine and eight year old abandoned and tossed in adult CRAP

they are probably terrified to bond with any adult..
all you all do is leave and abandon them..
and live your lives thinking and acting as if it is all about you you you..

their mom
their own dad
and now step mom has to throw her two cents on to the plate to say she doesn't like these children for being born cause she always wanted FOUR kids AND didn't have a wedding...

ARE THERE ANY REASONABLE ADULTS IN THIS SITUATION THAT CAN FOR ONCE DO RIGHT BY THESE CHILDREN AND FOR ONCE FORGET THE HECK ABOUT THEIR OWN PATHETIC FEELINGS!!!!!!!!

God Bless those children...mere babies....
who have already been thrown around....

ARK

Why don't you.

I read you have custody - YOU are their mother. My step dad is more my dad than my biological father - because he was THERE. I lived with him most of the time.

My stepdad(whom I actually call dad and never usualy remember he is not related to me by blood), my DAD...had two daugters from previous relationships. I have NEVER felt any less loved than the other two because my DAD made it his place to be my Dad. He married my mom, and knew that along with the role of husband, came the roll of father...and he stepped into it.

I feel like you resent them because you didn't get the wedding you wanted, instead you helped your husband get something he wanted, his children, who are more dear to him than any material possesion or event. That now you can only have 2 of your own 4 natural children...and you resent that too.

I truly believe you need to change your thinking and think of the fact that in all honesty those 2 children ARE your children too - not just "siblings" to your natural children. You knew he had children before you married him - they came with the package...and he married you I bet hoping you would love and care for them the way he does.

My H has a son from a long time ago that he has no contact with. I have never met him - he is 11. But already I love him. Because he is part of my husband. And should this child ever come into our lives...I would never try to replace his mother as she has been his full time care for his entire life, but I would love him no less then my children.

Maybe that's something my step father taught me? That you don't have to be blood to love...my step father is my dad through and through. HE is who I call when I am down, he walked me down the aisle. He is there for my kids - his grandkids. Why? Cause he chose to love me at 6 years old unconditionally when he married my mom, and has shown me that love ever since.