Awlbiste said:
My parents divorced when my mother was 31 (I was 3). As far as I know she never dated until she was in her late 40s, and got remarried in her mid 50s. Her time was spent on being a single mother and the sole provider for the family. As an adult now I have to say that whatever she potentially sacrificed by not dating after her divorce I gained by being in a stable household without a parade of Uncle So-and-Sos.
Being a single mom (and I"m talking about a stable single mom, not some stereotype of the so-called bad ones) is, as far as I can tell, an incredibly difficult job. I had a friend who had an Oops Baby in her early 20s and no guy would even bother.
That said, I wouldn"t date someone with children either.
I had the opposite experience, I never knew my father, and my mother remarried when I was 5 or so. And my stepfather was, by all accounts, a gigantic waste of time and affected all of my siblings and I horribly. They stayed married for over 20 years, and now we all pretty much agree that we wish that they has never married and wish she had either met someone else or stayed single so we wouldn"t have had to grow up with the stepfather we had. Thing is we can"t even hint around the topic without my mother either getting angry and venting about everything "bad" from our childhood at the stepfather (which isn"t fair but /shrug) or break down into tears. And she"s apparently blocked out the memories of a lot of what happened when we were growing up, even stuff that she was directly involved with, as though she"s mentally blocked it all out. It took over 20 years for my mother to finally realize that he was a heap of shit and divorce him.
Of course we realize that we would never want our mother to be eternally single in return for our happiness, but /shrug. Best case scenario I think would have been her waiting for someone better, but I dunno.
As far as what you say about Uncle So-and-Sos, I"ve been their and it"s hella creepy. If I met a woman and knew she was "The One" I wouldn"t pay it any heed, but in the dating culture it"s too bad that you know a lot of these kids have seen man after man.
One woman I was seeing, we had been dating for quite a long time and were actually having sex about 5am when the bedroom door opened and her son walked in ( I wouldn"t be a bit surprised if he had heard "something" and came to investigate). Silly us, thinking her kids were sound asleep at that early an hour. Thankfully we had been 90% under the covers, but having the door open and hearing "Mommy?" was enough to stop our hearts cold. She curled into a ball and started in with some heartwrenching crying and tears, while I was left trying to convince him that we"d just been "wrestling around" under the covers and tried playing it off. He bought it and eventually went back to bed, but that lone incident creeped us both out and pretty much single handedly killed off the sex whenever the kids were around. I ended up feeling like a dirtbag and she refused to talk about it at all. I brought up the possibility of simply locking the door if we ever found ourselves in that position again (no pun intended), and I got my head bitten off for even suggesting to lock the door - she thought that was a horrible idea, to prohibit her children easy and ready access. I thought about pointing out that we would be able to hear any child knocking or saying anything, but I knew when to just give up. So suddenly the sex was nearly eliminated unless there was some sort of babysitting arranged; it was horrible.
I would have been willing to marry her as well, she was a good woman, but the drama from "her" family, the children, and the baggage she still carried from previous relationships was too much. At least if I had children with a single woman, the children would be "ours" and we"d be a team, with every single mother that I have (seriously) dated, it"s been my coming in as a 3rd party and everything else was "them", and I was excluded from even helping with anything other than stuff like taking out the trash or painting (because they were HER children and it was HER job). And I"ve had friends tell me that they were actually JEALOUS of me, in that I would be in a relationship, actually BARRED from any familial responsibility by the mother, essentially in a no-strings booty call. The thing was, things will get creepy the longer it goes on and I could never stand being in that position as the children become more attached, yet you KNOW that the woman is either unwilling to get married ever again (due to past failed marriages) or might be willing but the dynamic is so borked that you start doubting it will work long term. And I"ve been willing on a few occasions, but /shrug. As a result I"m far more reluctant anymore, though given the right woman, you never know.
