Yes, we are the stupid ones. We fall in love with someone and accept their flaws. This is who they are and this is what they care about. I get so angry at my DH for tolerating this crap but I try to put myself in his shoes and think how I would feel in the situation. I love my children tremendously and even when they act up they are my babies. I was there when they came into this world and I remember how amazing those first moments were. Dh also had that moment with SD. She hates him now but he and I both remember when him playing barbies was everything to her. He tries to do what's right by me, our children, and SD but ends up being torn in different directions. Love clouds logic and sometimes we can't see it until it has caused so much damage not only to ourselves but the people we love. I love my DH, I see who he is as a person, husband, and father. I know his heart is in the right place in every situation even if his brain is lagging behind. I think that is why we put up with this.

Yes but I think both halves of the relationship have their own problematic expectations. In many of these cases, the Disney dads expect SMs to pick up their slack and/or love their damaged offspring like we birthed the rude creatures. And SMs so often believe it's going to get better, these partners are going to change, suddenly the marriage will be a priority. And the hope is what devastates people every time. 

I think its in our human nature to 

1. want to help those in need whether it be the bio parent we're with or the stepchild lashing out

2. not wanting to "give up" because society has put this stigma on walking away from relationships especially after being exposed to kids who are a part of the situation

I wouldn't classify us as idiots but definetely suckers in one aspect or another throughout our journies because only experience (or shared stories of experience) leads to improvements for Stepparents and improvements can mean improving at dodging steplife obstables or leaving them behind all together. 

We are programmed to pair up and then hold on for dear life out of fear of being "kicked out of the cave and killed by a savage animal". By the time we realise what an untenable situation it is we are too sucked in, be it for family or financial reasons, or simply feeling too old to be on our own (where adult skids are involved).

There is also an element of not being entirely convinced that we are right in feeling the way we do, which is why we seek validation here.

Great topic.

I do agree there are some sh!t-show situations where people should never even get involved in the first place and should walk away immediately. I've seen too many stories from first-time posters on here where I don't even bother to comment s it's a waste of time. I know they will be bombarded with "WHAT the hell were you thinking?" from those of us on here, yet the OP will continue to claim, "But he is the love of my life..."

For those situations it's a hopeless case. There is something fundamentally wrong with a person's psyche when they have viable options yet continue to stay in a horrible relationship where they are treated like a doormat.  Sage advice from Steptalk won't be of any help. 

There are other situations where it slowly unfolds, sometimes taking a couple of years, and then it can be harder to extricate from. Particularly when people rush into marriage, co-mingle assets/finances, and essentially put all their emotional, mental and financial assets into one basket.

This is especially true when the skids are small and their needs usually (but not always) need to be the priority.  Couple that with a high-conflict ex-spouse and/or ILs and you have a recipe for disaster.

I do agree there is some idiocy afoot in stories where the skids are adults and the OP (often with their own grown children) put up with far too much.  This is why I highly recommend disengaging and setting boundaries to keep the toxicity out of your life, and out of a shared home. Toxic adults' behavior doesn't change, neither skids nor spouses. 

In those situations, my advice is to either set firm boundaries or get out. There is no way in hell I would tolerate daily or even weekly drama from adult skids when I am entering my "golden years" and supposedly being able to relax and enjoy the fruits of my life's labors. 

Mister Rags,  I have had a major epiphany over the last couple of weeks and your question seems to be the place to discuss this.  One thing that seems to be clear, is that most of these bio-parents have kids with major issues.  In my case, I finally realized that BM wanted to raise dependent (on her only) children, not independent functioning adult members of society.  Pretty much everything she did was to undermine anyone that attempted to thwart that goal (that included DH, me, teachers, peers, etc).  In spite of the 3 steps being adults (SD26, SS28, SD31) none are functioning members of society and she continues to undermine any attempts at their independence.  So am I stupid for not seeing this, perhaps.  But really I was looking at this from a sane parents point of view not this warped version of parenting. So I spent the last 22 years confused  as to what was going on and now realizing that it did not matter what I did or did not do.  And I have also realized that this will continue until BM passes away.  In the meantime DH and I are making plans to sell up and move away.  It would be interesting to hear what others on this site think the motivating factors are to parents raising such disfunctional kids (for example, fear, greed, revenge, control, money) and really is there anything they can do about it.

but not stupid.

at least thats how I see it. We can never know the dynamics ahead of time. I did not join a step parent support site until I was about 3 yeas in it. How can  a non step parent know what they are in for? The pitfalls? The red flags? 

Ive grown in my knowledge and still wonder if I made the right decision.

I was one of the stupid ones for about 9 months until I came to the realization I was too much of a quality human being to resign myself to helping raise a 5 year old brat who would likely never launch and instead die in his Grandmother's basement at age 40 from a heart attack due to too much McDonalds and never getting up from his video game chair

I was also too high quailty of a person to accept dealing with a white trash BM who lives off her mom and the state and will herself, never launch despite being 35 

Too quality of a person to marry a man who made the idiotic decision to have sex: aka risk impregnating a bottom of the barrel woman and therefore tying himself to her and their doomed to fail offspring for the next 18 years 

And too smart to settle for a man who made next to no effort to be a quality partner to his woman and instead every effort to spoil and induldge his petulant crotchling 

Nope... I'm a little too good for that 

I learned...and then I left 

I will give my experience. I was raised by two fucking insane extremely violent and criminal narcissists. How I was literally programmed was just not how you were, for example. A person with healthy parents and who wasn't raised being told a hundred times a day what scum they are and how inferior they are to other females (that's what I'm still trying to heal to this day), just wouldn't put up with the same crap I would (but not anymore). It was drummed into me that the way my parents and other abusers treated me was because I couldn't quite get there. There was always one more fault to fix. Just when I thought I fixed a thousand faults and altered my behaviour, there was always some other "reason" why I couldn't be loved like other kids, especialy girls, and why I didn't deserve good treatment. It's a mindset that abused people develop in childhood: "I'm treated like crap because I can't quite get it right as a daughter, GF, friend, employee, etc."  There used to be a poster on here who would say, "we accept the love we think we deserve." It's not conscious. It's subconscious. I think that's what people who aren't being abused don't understand. They then ask why we stay or why we put up with it. Well, it's not that simple.

We also get asked why we don't stand up for ourselves. Again, it's not that simple. We were constantly gaslighted and taught that we were wrong to think certain ways. We would lose people we loved unless we tolerated abuse. We would lose people we loved for so much as implementing a boundary or speaking to a concern. There's a shitload of loss through rejection for abused people and we grow up knowing that relationships/love are always precarious and it never takes much at all to lose someone. So, we try to walk the line for as long as we can. We think we're constantly wrong, flawed, inferior and less deserving of love and respect than everyone else. 

So, when I met H, I was still in that mindset. Also, I hadn't had a relationship in nine years. I felt that that was evidence right there that I wasn't lovable, especially to men. So just having a BF was exciting to me. I mean I didn't tolerate physical abuse or name calling, but I still didn't understand what emotional unavailability was or if I did, I wouldn't have known that it wasn't due to me not being (fill in the blank) enough. I was inferior. Especially to females. 

Then there was that societal bullshit about always putting children first. I bought into that myself, so I can't put all the blame on H for that one. Both H and I thought that what made a good parent was putting the fucking brats, er, I mean, the children first. There's also the stigma of SMs. I went overboard trying to prove that I wasn't the mean old SM trying to send her SKs "off to boarding school." I literally humiliated myself and abdicated my role as adult to way overprove that I wasn't the mean old SM trying to "ship the kids off the boarding school." 

I actually didn't understand why I was in agony. I was doing everything right. The kids were put first and I abdicated my role as respectable human being. I did nothing about my SKs deliberately excluding me and my H selling me out and allowing it because I was used to being excluded all of my life.

It took YEARS to finally figure out my mindset and turn it around. I now have the mindset you have. It's not the reason a person behaves a certain way, it's that they're doing it. It's also not because I'm lacking. It's because the other person needs immediate correction in how they're treating me. I now have no problem subjecting people to "abject misery" which I learned from you. LOL. I no longer have that mindset that I grew up with. 

To make a long story short, the reason a person puts up with crap in the blended families we read about here is because of how they were raised and programmed and likely societal expectations. Then there's having no clue when entering a step-family. When I met H and my two SKs, I actually thought that God was rewarding me with three people to love instead of just one for being single for so long. I had no idea what red flags to look out for in a blended family. I knew red flags for single childless men really well, which is why I stayed single. I had chances. I just saw red flags and fucked right out of there. I never thought a 5 and 7 year old could weild so much power and that a grown man could or would be their bitch. 

I don't think stupid is the right term. Perhaps afraid (afraid of being alone, afraid of the unknown). Maybe naive even or lacking self esteem?One of my friends called me of being desperate for staying with my ex as long as I did. I was upset with her at the time but now that it is over and I have been removed from the situation I know she was right. I couldn't see it because I was caught up in it.