But, why should he accept the power differential? A women with kids plus a former lover has more sexual / parental experience than this guy. It is weird to insist that men (or women for that matter) with less relationship experience want a partner with more. Most people want to discover their own relationship / sexual path with another person starting at the same point. I know my wife and I certainly did when we married.

Why should he feel obligated to raise someone else's kids if he doesn't want to? I'm not understanding the "damaged goods" part of your comment.

He shouldn't feel obligated and I don't think anyone said (or even implied) it. On the other hand, there are probably a lot of divorced individuals (with and without kids) who would make the perfect spouse. Just because someone is divorced shouldn't automatically disqualify them from future relationships.

Ah, I see. I think most are reading more into the divorced part and I'm reading more into the "with two kids and doesn't want any more" part.

It sounds like the parent commenter would like to have biological children of his own...which seems reasonable to me.

Should the kid you share some genes with be treated differently than kids you don’t? Are adopted kids not “real?” Why should he not love these children as “his own”? They are not property.

That is not how human culture works.

Perhaps not all, but certainly most of the kids and their parents I hang out with seem to operate this way.

Because we don’t live in a make believe world.

I actually live I such a world as do most of the people I interact with on a daily basis. Quite a few blended families which are unremarkable.

> Why should he feel obligated to raise someone else's kids if he doesn't want to?

Well of course he wouldn’t have to. But they aren’t just “someone else’s” kids...they are the kids of the person he supposedly loves, part and parcel of her personality. He might not have even fallen in love with the person she was before having kids, for all anyone knows.

Seems strange to think of them as somehow separate from her.

Not wanting to raise someone else’s kids instead of your own is the most natural thing in the world.