Anonymous wrote: Perspective of someone who started a relationship with my DH when his daughter was 13. He had been divorced from his wife for three years at that point. She had already been engaged to someone else and then broken up in that time. Once we started seriously dating, his ex felt threatened and immediately started a serious relationship Of her own and asked her new boyfriend to move in with her within three weeksAnd was engaged within six months. We waited until she was 18 and graduated from high school in order to get married. We wanted her to know that she came first in her dad’s life, and we didn’t want to have her experience the kind Of upheaval that she did on her mother invited Someone else into their home.

I do not regret that we waited until she was 18. But to be honest, in retrospect, I agree with your parents. Thinking of my stepdaughter‘s needs, it was way, way, way too hard for her to have had both parents go in there on romantic directions right as she was becoming an adult. Both parents moved to new homes, both with no partners. Neither home felt like her home. Unexpectedly, I became pregnant in my 40s, and all of a sudden she had to compete for her fathers attention with an infant sibling. You can’t guarantee that that wouldn’t happen to your child. Now, on a purely selfish level, I can say that my child is the greatest joy of my life and I would never change anything that would result in me not having him. But from the perspective of what is right for my stepdaughter, having her parents focus more on her than on starting new families with no partners would have been best. starting her first adult home on her own while her childhood homes were on shaky ground was too difficult for her. She struggled with a sense of belonging, unfortunately she found it with a new peer group that was very dangerous. she got involved in some really dark stuff, and she became very self-destructive. She now is involved in a relationship that’s very dangerous, she has a serious drug addiction, and she is estranged from both of her parents. There were underlying problems and how she was raised Long before I ever entered the picture, but her father remarrying while she was a teenager and her mother remarrying before that was extremely traumatic and damaging for her. I would have a kid extreme caution before proceeding.

Anonymous wrote:Bottom line is that it leaves a significant scar on kids if one of their parents remarry, regardless of who it is. This develops a lot of trust issues and the cycle continues.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bottom line is that it leaves a significant scar on kids if one of their parents remarry, regardless of who it is. This develops a lot of trust issues and the cycle continues.

Where are the statistics that back this up?

Considering 50% of marriages end in divorce then I guess half the population is significantly scarred and have "a lot of trust issues."

It's lousy parents and bad marriages that can scar kids. There are some single parents who do an awesome job, some remarried parents who do great jobs, and some married couples who completely screw their kids up because they hate each other but won't split up.

I guess it should be made a law that once you have a child, you must never have an adult relationship again until such child is legally emancipated?

Anonymous wrote:Bottom line is that it leaves a significant scar on kids if one of their parents remarry, regardless of who it is. This develops a lot of trust issues and the cycle continues.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe in living together before marriage. 3 years is a long time to just be dating. So we would be getting married ASAP if the relationship was strong enough for that or we would go our separate ways.

What a peculiar belief