Did you know this?
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
November 6th, 2006 at 10:34 am
I’ve had similiar talks with the kids about other issues. The idea of me and their mother is very strong in thier minds. Whenever they get sad or nostalgic about how things were, I sit down a talk with them and remind them of the reality of the situation. I think it helps to reinforce that with them so that they can accept it and move on in their minds as well.