Dating with Children

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