It can go either way to be honest.

And that tipping point, in my humble opinion, is 100% in the hands of the kid’s biological mum and dad.

If it goes well and the parents have a healthy approach to co-parenting and the children’s welfare is front and centre, you will be stepping in a world where the kids feel safe to make decisions and choices based on their own happiness. In other, you have every opportunity to form a relationship with those kids based on what is mutually agreeable to you and them.

If it doesn’t go well, you’ve just stepped into the most sadistic reality you might ever knowingly walk into, perhaps not even that knowingly to be honest. The biological parents are unhappy, the children are being used by the parents to play against each other. The mother most likely wants nothing to do with you and the kids feel like they must filter what they say to avoid offending anyone.

Its not just the kids though, you can be immediately seen as the “other” woman. Wait, hang on, he already left his wife and when I met him, they were a long time over.

And yet…. Family and friends of your partner find you an easy mark to tag as the other women when you haven’t even discovered yet just how dysfunctional the marriage had been for 15 years before you even swiped right.

But that’s how it is when you a woman without children who starts a relationship with a guy who is the father to teenagers to a woman who was part of his life for 25 years and that control is hard to let go for some woman.

Let me step back for a minute.

I’m a woman who has had my share of relationships; short and long term; short and long distance; young kids, older kids and no kids involved. So, when I swiped this guy with teenagers it wasn’t a deal breaker. I was forthright though. I didn’t want to be called a “step mum”. I’d be a friend however that worked best for them as they traversed a turbulent enough time as a teenager and working out how their parents’ new lives worked after divorce.

My relationship with the kids grew over time as I gave my time and understood the differences between teenage behaviour and outside pressures.

But my relationship with the dad couldn’t survive the splinters that were strewn in the aftermath of a messy divorce.

If you are a woman without children of your own and have a successful relationship with someone who has had children in a previous relationship, I tip my hat to you. For you have the greatest fortune in finding a partner who has the ability to navigate those murky waters with you and if you’re very fortunate a biological mother who sees you as another important person in the children’s lives.

Without this you can feel unseen, worthless, overlooked, left out, dismissed….

…. Hang on, this sounds familiar?

Its like all those years I spent feeling frustrated and left behind when all my mates and family had children and I still didn’t have a bloke. What would I know about nappies, crying babies, tantrums, teenage moods, school drop offs, homework?

I knew nothing about any of it. But I discovered a big secret, no one does, everyone is just working it out the best they can. If you haven’t had children, you are just as qualified as the next person on raising children.

However, you are not a biological parent, so your opinion is not valid. Frustrating? 110% it is.

Not being considered, not having a voice, I knew this feeling. I’d been here before and it was so familiar to my unrecognised grief in my 30s when I hadn’t met anyone to start a family with. My opinion on kids was drifting off on its own dinghy while the family cruise liner of opinions steamed ahead.

Here I was, knowingly walking into a relationship expecting grand things and finding it can be like having a windstorm whip sand up into your eyes and squeezing lemon in them to help clear your vision. Just soak that in for a moment. Rub your eye if you need to.

You have no control in this situation because you hold none of the cards.

My relationship ended after 4 years with my partner, but I also lost a huge investment of my time to those young people. I had been privy to watching them grow, being part of their events and milestones, I’d white knuckled through driving an L plater, I had laughed a lot with these kids, I really liked them. They had become important to me.

I wasn’t a biological mum but damn, I had some moments that squeezed my heart.

So, just like that, I was no longer part of their lives.

If you want to know who needs an award in this community, who deserves a toast and a shout out, it’s the step mums who don’t have children of their own. The women who have no casting vote but have everything invested.

They are my real childless heroes.

Penelope Rabarts