If you have a kids from a previous relationship, what is your DPS relationship like with them?

[alfredT]

I'm widowed with 3 primary school aged children. Its been nearly 2 years and I've finally adjusted to my new normal. I want to just concentrate on myself and children and being in a relationship is not even on my radar. In fact I feel that as long as the kids are kids I don't want a relationship. However things have happened and I'm falling for someone who feels the same way. I feel confused on how to deal with it.

This might sound crazy but I am scared of how a partner might treat my kids. They obviously won't be their father but what would they call him? there's loads of ppl on MN with stepkids but how do you make it work?! I'm sorry if these are stupid questions but I've never been in this situation before.

Hi

Also widowed here, have two children aged 9 and 7. My late husband died in 2015 when they were 4 and 2.

I’ve been with my partner for two years (but he’s a long-term friend, known him over ten years beforehand). We were due to marry last week... but, lockdown!

There’s the background. I never would have accepted anyone who wasn’t fully up for becoming part of a new family. It has unfolded over time but we have reached the stage where they refer to him as their stepdad, or sometimes their dad, but address him by his first name. He tells me he loves them as his own. He’s now (and again this was a gradual thing) involved in parenting. The good, the bad and the ugly.

It hasn’t been a fully smooth ride, certainly my partner had a period where he wasn’t confident in dealing with them. My daughter (younger child) took a little longer to adjust to him, she has very set ideas of ‘daddy’ even though he died when she was two so she doesn’t have clear memories. My son, I think, was keener to have another father figure and was happy with my partner from the beginning. Been very lucky.

Married Dh when Ds was 9 and for the first few years it was great. But as Ds became an older teen (he’s 17 now), it’s been strained. Mainly because Ds is tall, handsome, a really nice person. All the things Dh isn’t and knows he isn’t and I think he’s jealous of him. But that’s down to Dh and his own insecurities.

I knew a woman who had a partner who didnt have children. He made it clear that he saw her dc as nuisance. He would be so childish in teasing the DC, ignoring them etc..like sibling rivalry vying for the attention of the mum.
Because of this i would never have more than a fwb while dc under 18. I dont trust them. Then you get the pervs and cocklodgers deliberately want a single mum.