For step parents

Her daughter is 20 and in college. We waited to move in together until she’d finished hs.

There’s no ex. He passed years ago from brain cancer.

We get along passably. I’ve never attempted to be a step father. It’s not in the interest of either of us. I’m simply her mother’s husband. She probably accepts that because she knows I love and spoil her mother.

My first LTR was like that. She had a young son from her first relationship to whom I became a second dad for about 15 years (duration of that relationship during which my three now adult kits came to be). Never married though.

That 'young son' is now 27, with two kids, works full time in the army, and lives in a different state.

My second ex has no other kids besides our 6 y/o daughter and when she was born I was 48 and she was 42. Again never married. But because our daughter is IVF + egg donor (biologically mine, not biologically her 'mums'), she has a bigger 'family' (from which I'm basically excluded) with the actual egg-donor parent's kids and another egg donation recipient's kids.

Throughout my life I've always got on well with my girlfriends' kids - never tried to supplant their father, and for that reason I have become friends with the ex-partners in a couple of cases.

My bf has a child. I haven't met the baby mama. So far, so good.