Dating with Children

with the man I affectionately call “the donor� and the woman I affectionately refer to as the “bimbo/sugarmomma/homewrecker�. Sigh. I do love those people.

My four children came home with much enthusiasm to see me, their cats, their rabbit and their dog. I was sitting on the couch and all four of them found places to sit on me as we watched The Corpse Bride. We discussed why the characters were engaged to the people they were and why the Corpse decided at the end to release the man she truly loved to his former fiancé. That act of selflessness allowed her to move on to the next stage of her “life�, and allowed the two who were destined to be together to live out their mortal lives as husband and wife. I’m assuming Tim Burton didn’t write a divorce in to the script.

I guess I have never loved someone that much. The only man I’ve put forth any effort in to keeping was the aforementioned donor. When he found bimbo/sugarmomma/homewrecker and moved on with her, I did not wish them well and peacefully move on to the next stage of my existence. I fought the situation kicking and screaming. I think I went a wee bit psychotic for a year or so afterward. It didn’t help that he kept coming back to me for booty call after he was with her. (I don’t believe in the “once a cheater, always a cheaterâ€? thing, but for him I’ll make an exception.) I was stupid enough to believe that I was winning my childrens’ father home. (me = idiot)

So is that true love? Putting the wants and desires of the object of your affection above your own? I bet that’s true. Other than the love I have for my children, I have to admit that I don’t think I’m capable of that kind of love. I will never allow myself to. I mean, look what happened the only time I attempted it!

Sigh. I’ve been inspired tonight by the Corpse Bride of all people. Ain’t love grand?

At least in the movies.

marriage, divorce, The Corpse Bride, family, movies, reconciliation, love, cheating

Internet dating has been such an interesting quest. I subscribe to only one dating site and find it quite entertaining. There are chatrooms, message boards, daily matches, event boards, and pretty much anything a gal (or guy) could want to go on the prowl.

My problem? I live in a remote area. In the last three years, I’ve dated about 15 men, 13 of which have been found through this dating site. Of those 13 men, 2 were who they said they were. TWO! Now granted I’m not much of a dating-ho, but still! You’d think that statistically I’d have been able to find a higher quantity of relatively sane and balanced men!

I have, in talking to male friends of mine, found that the women they are finding are not much different. My theory is that the Internet is such an anonymous best that people can simply hide behind the screen and pretend to be who they want to be. Of course not all people on dating sites are like that. I mean, look at me! However the propensity sure seems to be there. Either that or I have a Loser Magnet attached to my forehead!!

I have decided that from here out, my friends and family are going to have to set me up with men they know in their everyday lives. He must be relatively easy on the eyes, relatively good shape, employed, love children, and be a dynamo in bed. Is that too much to ask?

dating, internet dating, honesty, dating sites, dating with children

Young children, if not spoken to very frankly, think that you are being unfaithful to their other parent when you first begin dating. It doesn’t matter so much how long it has been since the divorce, nor does it matter if their other parent has been dating. It still gets to them more than you would think!

I have a friend, “Jeena�, who divorced when her kids were quite young. She did not date for a couple of years after the divorce was final, and she had been separated for a long time (a couple of years I believe) before that. When she did finally put herself out there, her older son, “Dane,� was quite distraught that his mother was cheating on his father! Mind you, his father had been dating since the separation, and Dane was aware of this. He still somehow had it in his head that his mother was supposed to be sitting at home waiting for his father!

Jeena was left with the decision of how to broach this subject with her rather precocious son. She tried to pussyfoot around the subject. She vacillated between whether it was even okay for her to date or not since the kids were still so young. She thought about just continuing on with dating and just letting her son deal with it. She finally decided that she needed to have a talk with Dane. She told him: “Dane, your dad and I are divorced. I know that’s sad and I know you want him to come home so we can all be together again, but it just isn’t going to happen. I want you to know that since I am divorced, that means that I am single. It means that you dad is single as well. We can both date who we want to and it’s not being unfaithful to your dad when I go out with other men.� Dane didn’t care for that too much, but at least it was spelled out for him in terms he could understand.

Dane is now in school and has a healthy understanding of his own life. He loves both of his parents, but it isn’t so traumatic if one or the other of them starts a new relationship now. Neither of them brings home every Tom, Dick, or Harriet that they date, but they do let their kids in when the relationship looks like it might go somewhere. The kids are very receptive to their parents discussing these related issues now because they know they will be answered honestly and in ways they can understand.

Way to go Jeena and crew!

dating, dating with children, honesty with children, divorce, dating after divorce, communication, family

Tonight was the celebration of my youngest son’s 5th birthday. At the time of the divorce the ex and I agreed to always have the kids’ birthday celebrations at my house and he would always just come here for it. We thought that’d be better than doing the ‘every other year’ thing to the kids. Consistency, we call it.

Tonight I realized that this is beyond unnecessary at this point. He will have a party for my son this weekend with the stepmom and the stepsisters, and my other kids will be there for it as well. Why does he need to come to my celebration as well?

The answer: He doesn’t! I’m done! I vow to write to him before the next kid’s birthday (which thankfully isn’t until April) and say: Please don’t come! According to the parenting plan I do have to invite him, but it doesn’t say that he has to show up, right??

The point is this: We did start out with the best of intentions and wanted to make the transition of their father no longer being in the home as easy as possible for the kids, and we did a good job. However, sometimes the things we’ve done become obsolete. My children are very aware that their dad has moved on and has a new home, new wife, and new children to boot. Why should their mother have to stress out every time each of the four kids has a birthday? I’m ready to be free!!!

divorce, parenting, birthday celebration, transition

A brief history: The ex and I tried to work things out even after the divorce for the sake of the kids, but in stepped “Julia” and now he is married to someone else. I had been pondering marriage myself, but am now re-thinking it because of the reaction of my oldest son to his dad’s marriage.

We all know that children harbor in their hearts a desire for their absent parent to come home. While my kids see their dad every other weekend and have a relationship with him and are well-adjusted given the situation, they still want him home. My oldest son, in particular, has expressed this to me on many occasions.

Jump forward to October 6, 2006. Their dad came to pick them up for what they thought was a weekend trip to Canada and instead took them to his city (nowhere near Canada) for his wedding. He said he thought this would be a nice surprise for them and that they seemed quite delighted that he was getting married. I know that they wanted to be in a wedding, so I’m sure that on some level it was exciting to them, however when they got home they kept telling me “Julia is not our mom now” as if I thought she was. My oldest son went to bed that night and got very weepy. He said that a song kept running through his head that reminded him of daddy and made him feel like he was going to cry. Ever since the wedding, he has needed something else on at night to listen to so he doesn’t have that song running through his head making him cry.

What I learned from this is that children need to be as prepared as they possibly can be for changes in their lives, and we need to be as honest with them as possible about such things. Though his dad has lived with Julia for nearly a year, it wasn’t final in his mind because they weren’t married. He still held in his mind that his dad would come home someday. Even the engagement didn’t seem real to him because they learned of it from one of Julia’s daughters and not from their dad.

This is not a dad-bashing post, but rather an explanation of why we want to be direct with our children. Let’s remember to put them first, and to remember that even though we may be deliriously happy with our life-choices, our children still need to be reassured again and again that everything is on the up and up, and everything will be okay.

dating, dating with children, divorce, remarriage, honesty, marriage

What do you do when you are suddenly faced with the “to date or not to date” question? Is it too soon after the divorce? Is it not soon enough? Will I be able to handle dating and my job at the same time? Am I emotionally stable enough for this? What if he is not who he says he is? Is a bar a reliable place to meet members of the opposite sex? Online? Am I going to wind up buried in someone’s garden?

Add to all the questions and emotional baggage you are carrying around from your divorce or breakup some small children! Or teens! Or adult children who think they know how you need to live! Does this not compound the question of whether it’s even worth it to put ourselves out there?

I am hoping to address many of these topics and more in this space, but for right now I’d like to focus on the feelings of the children when you are beginning the search for Mr. Right or Mr. Right Now. Sometimes we meet someone online, or at work, or at a bar and we think that they are it. We are so in love (read: infatuated) that we just cannot imagine that next week or next month they will not be in our lives! No one has ever understood us so well! We were finishing each other’s sentences after only knowing each other for a matter of hours! Trust me, people, I have been there a time or two!

The point of this rather rambling editorial is this: People are not always who they seem to be, nor are they always who we want them to be. Once the infatuation of your initial month of dating wears thin, you will notice that they always leave the seat up, that you can’t stand their laugh, that they have completely different goals for the future, that they sit in front of the t.v. working on the butt-spread too much (or not enough) or any other number of intolerables in your book. Why, then, would you want to introduce your children to every person you date? You might be so excited about the budding relationship that you let Mr. Right (or Mr. Right Now) develop a relationship with your kids, and at the inevitable end, the kids are going to be hurting and even more confused that you.

My advice is to give a relationship a minimum of six months before you introduce small children into it. For teens and adult children the time would obviously be less, but my personal expertise is in the area of children under the age of twelve. Please, no matter how wonderful Mr. (Ms.) Right (Now) is, keep the kids out of it for a spell! I promise that you will not regret it!

Dating, Dating with Children, Infatuation, Emotional Baggage, Divorce