Questions

The ex wife and daughter moved today. Needless to say, he’s been a mess. And it’s led me to a lot of questions. 

A sampling of his texts today: 

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle this. I can’t go from seeing her every day to every other weekend.”

“I can’t even say bye without becoming a ball of tears.”

And the ones that broke my heart, after I asked what he was doing:

“Looking at her toys- setting up the Legos, resetting the ninja turtles since she last played with them, crying, being stupid. I got to kiss her goodbye- they didn’t leave yet- she was sleeping. Gave her a little road trip package of a lunchable, new movie on her ipad, a coloring book, and a letter from me.”

Ugh! This whole situation makes me so sad for him. He is such a caring, loving father. And yet at the same time, all of this makes me anxious, because I feel like it’s inevitable until he decides he needs to move to be near her. And God forbid me from preventing that from happening, knowing how important she is to him, but I’m just not ready to move anywhere.

Last night when he came over he jokingly said, “Why yes, I’ll move with you to (where they’ll be living)”. I gave him side eye then said, “If you find a job that will pay you our current combined incomes plus another $20k, I’ll move with you. I don’t want the pressure to job hunt and then I can take my time.” 

But today, thinking about it some more, I don’t know anymore. I hate that the reason I’d be moving would be because of the ex. What if she falls in love and decides to move all the way across the country with her new beau? What then? Would we have to follow her then too? I don’t want to set a precedent, and I REALLY don’t want my life to be dictated by her whims. 

The only reason I’d be moving is because of him and therefore her- I have everything I want where I am right now- a good job that I like and gives me great work life balance, a nice apartment in a great location and a great price, and tons of family. For years I didn’t live near any family, and I love being near them so much. Especially the kids in my life.

Not only that, but I want to be able to enjoy life the way I’d want to live it- meaning with more travel with him and other things I’d want to spend money on. But if visiting her every other weekend hinders that, then I don’t know either. We already barely go on dates any more because he’s still paying things off from his divorce, but once that’s up he’ll likely be spending the amount he’s saved on visiting her every other weekend.

On top of all of this, I definitely cannot make any decisions without even meeting her. Right now it’s almost like she’s more an invisible person to me because I don’t have a relationship with her at all.

And yet- this is the best relationship I have ever been in. He treats me so well, we are so compatible and we complement each other so well. He makes me laugh, I know we are both totally in love, and I do love him, so much. But is that enough? How do I know? I’m guessing only time will tell, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it all right now.

Sigh- these are all the things running through my head, and I know some of them are selfish thoughts, but it’s how I feel right now. So many unknowns, so many questions, and so far, no answers…

My Parents: Currently

I just returned from an out of town trip to go to a family wedding. I haven’t spoken to my parents about the boy since my mom arrived in town almost a month ago and we got into a big fight about it – with me just leaving at the end of it and just not wanting to hear what she had to say anymore. Which is fine by me – I’d rather her pretend that the boy doesn’t exist than keep bringing negativity into my life.

This weekend, however, was slightly annoying. We are the bride’s family, so we hadn’t met all the groom’s family until the wedding. On Sunday, the groom’s father came over to talk to me and my dad – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know how we’re all related, but he did compliment me and told me that I am lovely (so sweet!). Immediately, my dad says, “Do you know any nice boys you can introduce her to?” and he said, “Well they’ll have to be good boys for me to introduce to her!” and also joked that if his son were available, he would introduce him to me. (Again, so sweet!) My dad just laughed, but it wasn’t the first time this weekend that one of my parents asked other friends of theirs to introduce people to me and my sister (who, by the way, is in a 3-year long relationship with a boy my parents also aren’t huge fans of).

It was slightly irritating, to say the least.

What’s tough is trying to imagine how I’m going to reintroduce the boy into their lives – for now what seems to be easiest is to just pretend he doesn’t exist, which obviously is not going to work in the long term. On top of that, my only sister has decided he isn’t good enough for me, which is also irritating because I was never a huge fan of her boyfriend either, but I didn’t make a big deal about it since she seems perfectly happy with him. (Hey, at least it isn’t me who has to date him!) So now I can’t talk to anyone in my immediate family about the boy, and I wish I could.

My parents actually really liked him before they found out he has a daughter, and I have been able to mention a couple things just about work in general and my industry and his challenges in his specific role, but nothing on a personal note.

I really hope one day they will come around. I’ve decided not to say anything to them about him wanting to take them to dinner, since they’re already pretty booked up with plans and because I just don’t want to make room for them to give me unwanted advice/cry/have an emotional meltdown just by mentioning him again. What really matters in this case right now is that I know he was willing to make that effort.

To be continued…

On Why I Haven’t Met the Daughter

It’s been 5 months into dating and I haven’t met the daughter yet. He originally wanted to introduce us back in May, but then he ended up not being able to come to the event we were planning on going to so it didn’t happen. Then, the ex got involved. She told him she wants to meet me before I am introduced to their daughter, which I totally understand. He was not a fan because he’s said time and again to me that it doesn’t matter what she thinks, plus apparently she won’t even ask me questions or talk to me so the whole thing is “pointless”.

About two months ago we were spending the weekend together and on Sunday she suddenly needed him to watch her for the next 5/6 hours, which meant that I needed to go home. I was pretty upset – we never really get that much time together to begin with, then my weekend with him gets cut short because she has work to do and I haven’t met their daughter yet so I have to leave? He could tell I was pretty upset even though I tried to hide it, and said he will introduce us soon because it’s been hard for him as well to have to juggle time with me vs time with his daughter, so I felt better.

Time passed, and I didn’t hear anything. The next time I brought it up, he said the ex was being difficult and saying things like “well, you better make sure you want to marry her before you introduce her!” And his response was, “Well I can’t promise that because they need to be introduced and I need to make sure that works before any sort of proposal.” And apparently she is just putting off meeting me.

I suspect that it’s more because she is unhappy and single and doesn’t want him to be happy – or as my coworker called it, “She’s being single white female!!”

The most frustrating part is that they are moving next week, so I know I won’t be meeting her before then (I have a ton of family obligations between then and now, plus he hasn’t brought it up at all so I highly doubt I will meet her next week). Now I wonder what our first meeting will be like – me going with him to visit her and stay with them for a whole weekend? That seems like a lot for a young girl – and maybe even a lot for me, since although kids generally love me and I love them, this is the one kid that I NEED to get along with, so that brings a lot pressure too.

Either way, I’m trying to let it go and just let him figure it out. I also know that the timeline of when I meet her has absolutely nothing to do with how he feels about me – he’s even said to me before that one day I’ll be her stepmom (which totally weirded me out, to hear it out loud!), but it’s still frustrating that what will be one of the most important relationships in my life is being put on hold because of someone else.

I wonder how it’ll all play out – or even how long we’ll have been together before I finally meet her.

To be continued…

The One Piece of “Advice” I Keep Getting

So now that we’re up to speed on my parents’ reaction and the top 3 concerns from everyone, there’s one more that isn’t quite a concern, definitely isn’t really any real, useful advice, but that I’ve been hearing over and over. And that is: “You are too young and pretty and smart – you can find someone else who treats you well and doesn’t have all that baggage.” 

How helpful is that? It’s like when I was single and people would say, “But you’re so pretty! How are you single?” It frustrated me to no end when people said that! Being pretty/smart/young/[fill in the blank] literally has nothing to do with whether someone is in a relationship or not! The reasons the above “advice” irks me are:

1. I’ve been single for a long time now – by long time I mean I’ve never had a relationship longer than 11 months; my last actual relationship lasted about 2 and that was back in 2014. And I was even younger (and probably skinnier) then than I am now. What did that do for me? Nothing.
2. Everyone has baggage. So this one is just more apparent than most – a daughter definitely affects things differently, but it’s not like I’m dating someone who is so emotionally handicapped from previous relationships that they cannot even be in a proper relationship, which I think is way worse. (Maybe that’s naive of me?)
3. Are you psychic? Can you see the future and tell me that for sure I’m going to find someone better than this? No? Then hush – I’m doing the best I can and I do think he is the best I’ve had. He treats me with respect, we have ridiculous conversations with both of us just laughing, he sings to me and dances on the street with me, he plans cute little dates for us, is smart (I am extremely impatient with dumb people, so this one is important), and he is so emotionally available for me – more so than any guy I’ve ever been with. Everything just clicks with him. If it didn’t, I’d be the first one outta there and wouldn’t look back! I knew from the get-go that he has a daughter, it’s not a surprise. So please, mind your own business and let me lead my life.

The bottom line is, I’m just trying to follow my heart. I prayed to God to put His plan for me in my heart – some advice that my best friend gave me – and so far He has led me here. I’m not saying that the bf and I will never break up, or anything like that, but that even if we do, I don’t want it to be because of what everyone else is saying. I would want it to happen because either I’ve decided he isn’t the one for me or our relationship didn’t work out or something else – not simply due to the fact that he has a daughter.

Everyone else can get over it. 🙂

Top 3 Concerns From Other People

Now that I’ve gone through the AskMen.com Top 10 Reasons Women Don’t Want to Date a Single Dad, these are the Top 3 concerns that people have brought to my attention since I started dating him.

1. Finances.
My godmother, who married a guy who had two daughters, aged 11 and 13 when they got married, gave me a lot of advice. Her main point was warning me about our financial situation if we get married – namely, that some of the money I make, or that we make, will be going towards raising his daughter, rather than put towards things I would maybe want to do, like travel, or towards the kids of my own that we have. While this is a valid point, I feel like maybe once I meet his daughter and form a relationship with her, I may just love her too, and not look at her as a drain of our resources, but as someone who I also want to provide for financially. My godmother says if she could do it again, she wouldn’t have married her husband, but just have been in a committed relationship with him. (Which kind of makes me question a few things – like would she rather have spent money on travel for herself than on something for one or both of her stepdaughters? Strange.)

2. Being an “outsider” when it comes to parenting his daughter.
Again, another valid point. I’m hoping that if I meet her soon, she’s young enough to be ok with developing a relationship with me, and maybe will listen to my advice as she gets older. I don’t mind that my BF and the ex-wife will need to agree on things with her, but this is so far down the line it’s tough to really imagine how we will figure it out, especially since I haven’t even met the girl yet.

3. Dealing with the ex’s whims.
This actually is already starting to affect my life. She is moving, with their daughter, about a 6 hour drive away next week, and he’s already starting to freak out about how he’ll only see her every other weekend rather than almost every day. I really don’t want to move right now, for many reasons. Some of them being that I’ve moved around almost my whole life and finally feel settled here, since the majority of my family are in the area. Of course, I don’t want him to be unhappy, but it would really suck if we both had to move because she decided she needs to move home and take their daughter with her. This is probably what’s weighing on my mind and heart the most right now, although we did have a conversation recently about it and he says he doesn’t have any actual plans to move, but will see what happens when they move and how he feels. (Then he cracked a joke about how he’ll just knock me up and put a ring on it so I’d have to move with him – so romantic! Haha)

AskMen.com: Top 10 Reasons Women Don’t Want to Date a Single Dad

I came across this slideshow the other day, and thought I’d go through each one and my thoughts on them. (The slideshow lists them from #10 to #1, so I’ll follow the same format.)

10. Mom is always there. For me, it isn’t so much about the fact that I’m “always reminded that Mom is there”, but more that as our relationship progresses, my life will be affected by what she wants and does, since it will also affect their daughter. (I’ll save details about this for another blog post!)

9. Mom really is there. I haven’t met the Mom yet, but I don’t imagine that part will be too bad. (Maybe that’s naive? Since I’m also pretty sure the reason I haven’t met his daughter yet is because the Mom insists on meeting me first, and yet is totally blocking the actual meeting. That would be my only reason for thinking there may be “tension” between us at this point.)

8. She doesn’t want to babysit. Meh. I guess since I haven’t even met the daughter yet, this doesn’t really apply to me. The only thing that it may affect is the fact that because I haven’t met her, we can only ever meet up after dinner on week nights, and since we live about a 45 minute train ride away, that gets kind of annoying. Not gonna lie! Plus, i really love kids and I would love to spend time with the two of them (Dad & Daughter).

7. She wants her future kids to be your first. Although that would be nice, I feel like it’ll actually help that by the time we have kids he’ll have already gone through it all once before!

6. She doesn’t want to be judged on her mom skills. This doesn’t matter at all with me, since I’m great with kids and they love me. 🙂

5. She thinks you’re damaged goods. They’ve been divorced officially for about a year and a half now and separated for a year before that, so I really don’t think he’s “damaged goods”.

4. The relationship is limited. This is actually probably the most true statement of everything so far, at least in my experience. Like how we can’t see each other on weeknights until after dinner, or can only spend every other weekend together. Then again, the relationship – and he – is worth it to me.

3. She wants your undivided attention. This actually also rings pretty true for the first couple months of our relationship. There were times I felt a little nuts knowing I couldn’t see him for days at a time, but we recently just had 2 weeks apart when he went on vacation and it’s been fine. This is another topic I will explore in a separate blog post at a later date!

2. She wants kids, but not yours. I never did think I’d be a stepmom or even have the potential to, but I don’t think it’s that terrible, especially he’s said he would want 2 more kids and that’s the exact number I want! (I also would go up to 3, so with 2 kids of my own + his kid, that would be like 2.5. Perf!)

1. She doesn’t want kids. This obviously does not apply to me at all.

If you’re reading this and also dating a single parent, how many of these apply to you?

Tomorrow I’m going to share the Top 3 Concerns From Other People who have given me advice!

My Parents: The Reaction

I’ve alluded to this in a previous post, but the biggest problem so far in my relationship has been with my parents. Initially, my strategy was to let them I was dating someone who made me incredibly happy, and I talked up all the positive things about him. Just over a month ago, I finally admitted that he is divorced and has a child while on Face Time-ing with my mom.

There was shock, tears, anger, disappointment, and sadness. Apparently there have also been sleepless nights, and the last fight we had about it she asked if I knew how much I hurt her by not breaking up with him. She even questioned how they raised me (since my “values” are “clearly so different” from my parents’ – though I don’t think “don’t date a dad” is technically a value per se). Through my sister, she even threatened to take back my plane ticket home this Thanksgiving (which, by the way, I didn’t even initially want since I knew I’d be seeing them when they visited here this summer, but it’s the only thing they provide for me financially – my one trip home a year), telling my sister that if I were “dumb enough to lower” myself then she doesn’t even want to see me. (Again, dramatic much?)

One thing my bff said to me recently is: “From what I can tell, he really does genuinely care and love for you. I don’t think you’re blinded by love, I think you’ve really thought it over and are doing a lot of soul searching.” I questioned everything about my relationship, trying to make sure I was seeing clearly after all this, that he is good to me, and that it is worth it all. So far, it is. A couple weekends ago after my last blow-out fight with my mom, I texted my best friend. After she digested everything, she wrote, “Sometimes I have to remind myself why they are so against him because it is so blown out of proportion that I forget that this is all just because he has a daughter.” So. True.

I get where my parents are coming from – in an ideal world we would be able to choose who we fall in love with, and in that case I wouldn’t have chosen a dad if I were presented with all the facts. It obviously isn’t ideal at all, since it makes things that much more complicated, but who’s to say that it won’t all work out? I can think of at least one example in my family, where my cousin has a daughter from her previous marriage, and is now happily married to her current husband and they have another two (great) kids of their own, and are incredibly happy.

After speaking to the bf about this again last week, he says he wants to take my parents out to dinner and try to show them what a good man he is, and try to win them over. I’m still unsure about that, as my parents are overly critical to begin with, and coming into this dinner with a guy they already don’t like just because of his situation isn’t going to help that at all.

All I can do right now is hope and pray that it all works out in the end and that they’ll come around. As to how we’ll get there, I’m not sure at the moment, but I’ll keep you posted…

Looking for The One: How It All Started

I’m going to continue laying the groundwork before bringing everything up to speed. As I mentioned in the Introduction post, I had determined that 2015 was going to be the year I met my husband. This meant being open to a lot of dating – a lot. I signed up for match, checked my Coffee Meets Bagel app every day, and went out – a lot. I met one guy from match, one from CMB, and a couple just from going out. I read this book, and applied the principles to my life. Two weeks later, my man and I started dating.

This is so cliche, but it happened the night of our holiday party. He never really ever hung out with us and was always taking off in the early afternoon because he had to go home and pick up his daughter, so up until that point I’d probably had about 2 real conversations with him. That afternoon, for some reason, he was hanging around, sitting at an empty desk between me and the other manager in our office, chatting. I asked if he was coming to the holiday party (because I had planned it) and he said no, then an hour later after shooting off a few texts, he said he was coming after all.

I felt like something was going on with him, though I wasn’t 100% sure, and I was excited he was going to hang out with us for once (though I previously never really felt disappointed or like I even necessarily wanted him to be around with us at work happy hours and the like, so that was a first for me!). That night there was a lot of joking around and chatting and drinking, and eventually, at the end of the night, I left my sweater at the bar so he went inside to go get it, and I followed him in and he turned and I was right there and we kissed.

The next day, I woke up thinking “Whoaaa – did that actually happen?” and it turned into a blossoming romance, even though I never had any sort of romantic inclinations towards him. There was a whole other side to him that I had never seen previously – the softer, less loud/obnoxious, romantic side of him. There was just an undeniable connection between the two of us, and I fell in love with him the night of our first date. He texted me, saying: “I’m not gonna lie – I am falling head over heels for you” and when I read it my heart dropped and my face got hot and all I could think was “I think I’m in love”.

Since then, our connection has stayed the same. He told me he loved me the week after that, and asked me to be his girlfriend the week after that. I just know he’s The One for me, and 5 months later, I can say that the easiest part of our relationship is us. It got messy when my family found out that he’s a dad, but I’ll save the details for another post (probably multiple posts to come).

All I know is I love him, he loves me, and this is the best relationship I’ve ever had.

All About Him

Age: 34

Divorced for: Officially just over a year and a half, separated for about a year before that.

Kids: Just one, a girl

Daughter’s age: Almost 6

My first impression of him: That he’s loud. One of the first things I remember about him is when I was on the phone with someone at my desk and he came over to chat to the guy whose desk was next to mine, and I literally could barely hear anything the guy on the phone was saying to me!

My favorite things about him: Smart. Funny. Kind. Caring. Thoughtful. Straight forward. Honest. Upfront. Adventurous. Romantic. Patient.

Why he got married: He knocked the ex wife up, after they’d been hooking up for about 4 months.

How long they were married for: 4 years

Why he got divorced: They grew apart, and he’s told me that they just don’t have anything in common aside from their daughter.

How long we knew each other before dating: A year and 2 months as coworkers

He told me he loved me after: 11 days (but later confessed he fell in love with me in 1 day)

Asked me to be his girlfriend after: 21 days (yup – he told me he loved me before he asked me to be his girlfriend. lol)

Am I missing anything? Let me know in the comments!

Introduction to Dating a Dad

I made 2015 the year I was going to focus on finding the love of my life. After spending last year settling in my new city, settling into my new job (and getting promoted at the beginning of this year), and dealing with turning the big 3-0, I felt it was the perfect time to focus on finding the love of my life, after neglecting my love life for a couple years.

Long story short, after dating several guys at the beginning of this year, I fell in love with a coworker. Thankfully, he is also a manager and of a completely different department, but needless to say it was completely unexpected. I say “unexpected” because I never saw him that way, I never knew he was interested in me, and because he is a divorced dad. Not that I was discriminating or anything, but I just never pictured dating a father.

As I write this post it’s been almost 5 months since we first started dating, and there have definitely been some struggles. I was trying to do some research on advice for dating a divorced dad, but couldn’t really find anything helpful. All the books were advice on being a stepmom, and I haven’t even met his daughter yet.

So I’m starting this blog to document my journey in the hopes that it may help someone else later on.

There is so much more to come – I hope you’ll follow along!