I ended my engagement 35 years ago but never really left the relationship. We're each other's emergency contact and share house keys.

• Over three decades ago, I told my fiancée I didn't want to marry her.
• She had adopted kids, and we moved into a co-parenting relationship.

We'd driven from a Labor Day cookout in Washington, DC, to our home in nearby Maryland when I turned to my fiancée and said, "I don't want to move; I don't want to get married."

Her tears caught me off guard, and I attempted to comfort her, but she slapped my hand away and yelled "don't touch me," which woke the children sleeping in the back seat.

I can't say we weren't getting along, but at times I felt I wasn't a partner in a relationship but rather a live-in nanny.

She had adopted a son before we met and then adopted a daughter, against my protests that our relationship was too new for another child. I looked in the rearview mirror to check on the kids and was relieved to see they were back asleep.

I exhaled hard and bit my bottom lip to stave off tears. I didn't know my own father, and at that moment I knew I would never abandon those two who called me "daddy."

We co-parented

After they moved, we settled into the role of co-parents as if we had been married. I would get the kids on weekends and often stopped by with dinner during the week.

Victoria had always said she wanted three children spaced two years apart. She was on schedule with the first two, but life got in the way, and the third child came two years later than planned. We drove to Lutheran Social Services to pick up the newest family member. Jonathan was 3 weeks old, and my heart melted when Victoria handed him to me.

As Jonathan got older, he started calling me daddy, just like his siblings. Victoria's mother indicated she thought that was a problem. My would-have-been mother-in-law and I seldom agreed on anything, but I understood her concern and got the children calling me "DJ," short for Daddy Juan.

She got married and divorced, but I'm her emergency contact

When Jonathan was 2, Victoria got engaged.

I disapproved. He was a whisperer, and a man who didn't speak up couldn't be trusted. But I never wanted to get in the way of her happiness, so I faded into the background.

The day they got married, December 19, 1992, was the most challenging day of my life. I had accepted she was going to be married, but when I saw the three children walking down the aisle as ring bearers and flower girl, it hit me that they were part of the package. I left the sanctuary and stood in the hallway, visible to the first five rows of pews. My mother saw my distress and came to comfort me.

Their marriage lasted only three years. The little ones are now 32, 36, and 38, and five grandchildren call me "Pap-Pap."

Victoria fell down metal steps on New Year's Eve in 2019 and broke her leg. The repair took a hardware store's worth of metal. I converted the first floor of my home into a rehab center so she could recover in comfort.

We have keys to each other's houses, are each other's emergency contact, have power of attorney, and are executors of estates. In a bizarre twist of fate, our mothers died two years apart on the same day, August 7.

It's said that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Thirty-five years after we split, we're still going strong. I think it safe to say we're "till death do us part."