Stepmother by Surprise.

In case you were wondering, no I really didn’t expect to be a Stepmother.

Okay, I know what you are thinking, “you were dating a man with kids; what did you think would happen?” Well, to be brutally honest, not this.
For starters, I have never had a relationship last longer than three years. That was my first marriage, so to be fair, most of my relationships lasted about 6 months. A year tops. So his kids didn’t really factor in, especially as he only had them for a weekend, a fortnight. I just saw that as a chance for me to have quality “me” time.
I didn’t meet them for a long time. When I did, it was pretty much them playing on a playground while I sat and watched. Not really an indication of things to come.
After a while, it became apparent that this was one of those long term things, like maybe even a three-year thing, and as the kids got older, he started to spend more time with them and wanted me to too, so I did.
But I was cautious and kept my distance. Not to be mean, but so that no one got weird about it when we broke up.
But we didn’t break up. In fact, it was starting to look like a serious relationship with lots of sleepovers at each other places. Eventually, this meant sharing the house with his kids.
So at this point, I was nervous around children. Awkward didn’t begin to cover my experience of being in the same space.
There was the…