Hello reddit, this is my first ever post so it might be a little hard to understand but I need to get this out somewhere. I am a 34 year old woman and I'm married to my husband Chris a 38 year old man who I've been married to for about 5 years. my husband is a widower, he had been married to an incredibly kind woman named Delilah since they were 18 and they had twins (M/14 & F/14) - Jacob & Jasmine. Delilah was killed in a mugging when the twins were 7 while coming home from work. It was horrible for the entire family especially for Jacob and Jasmine who are still in therapy and have bad anxiety walking at night. He was single for about 2 years after because he wanted to focus on the twins, we met when the twins were 10 because I was Jasmine's dance teacher. Our relationship started professionally, only talking about Jasmine and polite small talk but we had so much in common and he was an incredible man we quickly became romantic. The twins were polite but not affectionate which I understood, after we got married a year later I moved in. The past five years have been some of the best of my life, the twins weren't all over me but they respected me and would occasionally tell me about their day, Jacob would introduce me to friends as his dad's wife and Jasmine would ask for help with school work. Chris always wanted us to be a picture perfect family trying to push me and the kids closer but I refused reminding him that they needed time and he couldn't force them to want what he wanted. Anyway that was the backstory, on to the incident. Today was the twins 14th birthday, Chris went all out for their first real "teenage" party and saved up so we could go to a massive themed park and stay in a very nice hotel with some of their friends. the twins were ecstatic and went absolutely feral all day, The second night of our stay Chris went out for a work call and I was alone with the twins. Jacob was playing videogames with a friend while I was brushing out Jasmine's hair after swimming and she was painting her nails. it was a very relaxed evening, Jacob was yelling at his friend shouting classic teen boy 'trash' talk when he yelled "MOM! Come watch me destroy this loser!". I completely froze, he'd never even called me his stepmother so him yelling mom was so out of nowhere. I didn't know how to respond when Jasmine glared at Jacob and yelled 'you've been hogging mom all day! Go away!". That was the second shock, neither kid acknowledged the weight of it and neither tried to correct each other. I didn't even know how to respond but I didn't want to make it a big thing so I tried to regain my composer and told Jacob not to call his friend a loser which only made this 14 year old boy stick his tongue out at me before turning back to his game. It's been a few hours and I'm writing this in the lobby because my mind is racing and I need something to do with my hands. I always secretly hoped they would see me as a mother figure but actually hearing them call me mom so casually has me shocked and I don't know how to continue from here, I'm terrified that if I bring it up I might ruin it but I also don't want them to think I'm ignoring them. So now I'm here looking for any advice, maybe people with a step parent could weigh in on how I should handle such a big step forward?   submitted by   /u/OptimalInitiative393   to   r/Marriage [link]   [comments]