My therapist did me a great service when she said No one should expect you to love a child you didn ' t birth . You are expected to be respectful and nonabusive toward him but that ' s it . Anything above and beyond is great if you choose but loving a child that isn ' t yours isn ' t something you can just force . From that day on , I gave myself permission to stop pretending that I loved my stepson . I care for him because my husband loves him . I respect him because he ' s human . But I cannot wait until I am no longer his parent . Aka he ' s 18 and I ' m not obligated to provide daily care . Now my own kid ? I ' m over the moon in love with him . I just do my best not to make the difference obvious . But luckily my son is 4 months old and my stepson is 8 so no one would ever expect me to treat them the same .