AGG, I just want to say I have always appreciated your candor and your honesty with me, and now I hope you'll appreciate mine too, because I am saying all this as a friend, not to be mean. You know how much I have always respected you and your advice.

Anyway, I am first going to quote what you said in another post...



Don't you think this is totally unhealthy? Don't you see a big red flag here? It doesn't matter that she has never had children or not, people either are healthy or not healthy and I don't think it has anything to do with having children. It's all about whether a person can have a healthy relationship. If it weren't the children, then she's going to be jealous of other things, if you had a sport, she would think you are putting that first above her.

Are you sure she doesn't have a little deeper issues than you are willing to see?

You say she adores your children....Does she truly adore your kids? My friend's boyfriend does adore her son. He rarely misses a game, and he goes to almost every event if possible, she has never had to ask him to go, he finds out when they are and he goes, he gives him such encouragement, whether he wins or loses if he can't make an event, then he expects her to go and cheer him on and he goes and does his thing...Yet he too has no children of his own. AGG, that is how it should be. That is a healthy person.

Just please don't ignore this issue with her and I hope you take this very seriously.

Take care,

Anna

Hi Anna,

Thanks for the post and the concern - I appreciate your thoughts <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

Yes, the concerns I expressed in that post from a couple of months ago bothered me too (obviously). But, no, I no longer think that they were a sign that G is an unhealthy person.

G has never dated a guy with kids before, and so to her this was all new. I don't believe that childless people naturally "get" what it means to be a parent. So, I believe that her comments were not a sign of anything unhealthy, but more a matter of her "ignorance" regarding parenting (and I don't mean it in a judging way, but in the "having no experience with kids" way).

At the time of those comments, she had met my kids about two or three times, so she had no relationship with them. Over the past two months, she has developed a much better relationship with them. She chats with them about their lives, their interests, and their friends. She gets them thoughful gifts. She goes out of her way to come visit us whenever she can. And, she enthusiastically supports me in going to the kids' sporting events. This past weekend, in fact, she got up early and drove 25 miles to my area just to see my son's baseball game. And, she was well rewarded, because my son said afterwards - "I really like G". I asked "Why?", and he said "because she cares about me, and because she drives all the way here to see my games". <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

So, these days I do not have any reason to be concerned about competition between G and the kids. I think she has now seen that there is in fact a way to make time and room for both relationships, and that they are not at all competitive. I feel that these days we have a very healthy balance between "kid" time and "adult" time. Not too bad, with only a couple of months under our belts.

You know that having my GF be able to "fit in" with my life with my kids is important to me, so I am very senstitive to this. But, like I said, this aspect feels very good to me with G <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

AGG

The question is whether she now "gets" it or whether she merely has realized that the way to a good father's heart is through his children. Will it last? It is easy to feign interest in something one's significant other cares about, or even to convince oneself that one is interested, but that often doesn't last. My H's OW showed a lot of interest in my kids for months - now, 7 years later, most of them are not even allowed in her home to visit their father.

I have to wonder what would happen if you and your GF married and had more children. Often that is a turning point, after which the original children are completely rejected by the new wife.

I agree that you have to be a parent to really understand the depth of the relationship, but the comments your GF made earlier would scare the heck out of me. There is no reason to ever compete with a child for his parent's attention; children always come first, and you don't have to be a parent to realize that. This is a core belief that is unlikely to change, and is probably largely a product of your own childhood - whether because you parents did put their children first, or whether because you suffered from them not doing so. If she didn't believe this two months ago, I don't think she believes it now.

A logical question, of course. And really, the only way to answer it is by giving it time.


And is it the OW's fault or your XH's fault, Nellie? Perhaps he is showing her with his actions how he views his children, and she is simply following along?


Yip, I agree with that. But I am done with having babies, so that will not be a concern.


Fair enough, Nellie. I guess I'll just have to rely on my own observations of the dynamic between G and my kids, as I know it is not possible to convey it all on a message board. But I am very happy with these interactions these days.

AGG

Good question, AGG. I've also known of two cases where the grown children were actually really destructive to the new marriage. These were both grown D's with emotional problems who wanted financial and emotional support from their F's, who did not set good boundaries with them. These young women resented the new W/stepM. They each had siblings who did not behave in this manner and got along fine with the new W.

Your kids are young and I'm so glad to hear they're getting along well with G, and vice versa. I was unable to have children but helped raise a stepson and a niece and nephew (for whom I was legal guardian because they were removed from their parents). Being a step-parent/legal guardian means negotiating the kids' relationship with their biological parents. It's not easy. I never wanted to make the kids or their bio-parent(s) think I was trying to replace the parent(s). Unfortunately, both bio-moms resent my relationship with their kids... though they are also "my" kids now.

AGG,

I hope you are right and I am wrong. I think I'm jaded on this one because of people I've known in the past with this trait. I guess time will tell.

Take care,

Anna

Anna,

Didn't you have some of these issues with J earlier on? Has he not changed from your earlier observations of him? Does it not show that people are not always what they appear at first?

Here's another example of where I see G - her boss is having a party for her H this weekend, clearly a "grown ups" event, although kids are welcome to tag along and play in the playroom. I have never met her boss or her work friends, so I figured I'll line up babysitters to watch my kids while she and I go and meet these new people. And then, G said that she was hoping that my kids would come too, because she wanted to show them off, and to spend time with them. I dunno, this does not sound like someone who pets a cat while the cat owner is watching, but then secretly kicks the cat when the owner is not. IOW, I see a genuine relationship forming between G and my kids, not one to just appease me.

AGG

Hey AGG,

Of course you know I had some issues with J early on. Maybe I'm wrong but I just can't compare them as the same issues. The thing that always impressed me about J even early on was how he treated others, how he supported my parenting, how he seemed to have good instincts on relationships even though he's never been married and never been a father, etc. He just wasn't fulfilling my romantic needs, he wasn't opening up to me, wasn't letting me in completely....That just doesn't seem like the same issues.

(Just FYI...I typed two paragraphs, then erased...then typed the following after thinking more on it...)

Maybe you are right and G has changed. Go with your gut AGG, afterall, I know better than anyone on here, things can be misread when typing the little information in your life, people make assumptions from these post that some times just aren't true. You are living it, you are with G day to day, you are a very level headed person so don't second guess yourself.

Good luck to you and G. She could very well be getting it now, that there is no "us" and "them", when your in a relationship with children involved it's always "we".

Take care,

Anna