What advice would you offer

To someone who is considering being a stepparent. My bf and I both have children and are talking marriage. I had a stepfamily growing up and still do. He did not.

We have discussed a few issues but I want to hear from experienced stepparents
what would you have done differently?
What advice/suggestions do you have for couples considering blending families?
What issues (discipline, finances, etc) do you think my bf and should be talking about now before we take things further?

What advice would you offer

This is a great question and one I would be interested in reading the responses to as I imagine a future for myself. But, I notice this board doesn't get much traffic. Maybe try the relationship board?

Re: What advice would you offer

OK your topic is very broad so I will just tell you my story. I am married for the second time. I brought two children into the marriage and my DH had a son. When we first met the kids were ages 3, 7, and 11. When we got married they were 10, 14, and 18. They are now 12, 16, and 20. DH no longer pays child support for his son but we do pay for a lot of his expenses while he is in college (Cell phone, contacts, etc.). We also purchase most of his clothing and school supplies. I currently receive child support for my two children. It is a substantial amount so I do not ask for the additional things that my ex is supposed to pay as per our divorce agreement (dr. bills, extra-cirricular activities, etc). We just cover the cost of everything. We both work and each have our own bank accounts as well as a household account to pay the bills from. We never have to ask each other about spending the money in our personal accounts, and when it comes to the kids whatever we see to spend on them is up to us individually. This is something that was agreed upon long ago.

Discipline is handled solely by the bio-parent. Unless it is something dangerous which of course would be stopped immediately. Again this is something we agreed upon long ago.

The kids are all great together. Of course they fight from time to time but I think that's great, they truly act just like siblings. It was very important to both of us that they all got along well.

Our number one rule has always been the kids come first.

I'm not sure what else you wanted to know about but I would be happy to chat about it. HTH

Re: What advice would you offer

My DH is my first husband but I have a son that was 13 when we met. My DH is divorced and my SD was 6 when we met. We chose not to have children together.
Our kids are 26 and 19 now. They are like bio siblings, they keep in touch with each other even though my son lives on his own and SD is away at college.
I am my son's only legal guardian/parent so I never received any financial support but I also didn't have any ex-husband crap.
Our first year of marriage was really hard, both kids were accustomed to being only children. My DH attended SDs activities with her bio mom just to make it better for SD.
It was hard for SD to understand why that couldn't happen when I came in the picture. Her mom would have never allowed it, she wouldn't even acknowledge me for the first year or two.

There was a lot of psychological warfare that went on in the beginning and we all still have scars from it.
BM remarried a few years after we did and had another child which completely thru SD for a loop. SD hates her stepdad and she does everything she can to make problems between him and her mom when shes at their house. This unfortunately is a direct affect of her mom telling her that stepparents dont mean anything when i first married my dh.
If I could do it over I would have insisted that all of us attend therapy. I was in therapy but nobody else was.
We didn't have the skills as a family to communicate when things got tough. I always realized that SDs mom is connected to us and I always wanted us to work together instead of against each other but it never happened.
It would have been nice to have some set rules in each house, SD always had such a struggle because the rules in our house were so clear and her moms house they didn't exist or they changed day by day.
My son had a hard time understanding why our plans to do things always revolved around SDs schedule.
I truly think therapy could have made things so much easier.
Now things are calm and easier in many ways but we missed the opportunity to behave the right way the whole time.
I hope that helps!