Should Your Children Know Who You Are Dating?
“I don’t want to tell them, even though I have been seeing this guy for almost a year,” a friend of mine confessed recently over dinner.
Her children are 10 and 12. She and her ex have been divorced for almost five years. “I just don’t want them to start wondering if this guy is their next father.” She shrugged. “And besides, it feels that this relationship is just for me. I am not even introducing him to my family. They will start asking all kinds of questions, too. I’d rather just keep it private.”
It’s an issue, isn’t it? When and how do you tell your children that you are dating someone? And how much do they need to know about your private life?
It’s normal for kids to look at a new partner in their parent’s life and assume that he or she will step into the role of spouse. It’s all they know, after all.(Well, that’s if you aren’t a serial dater, of course.)
“I think it would be nice to have Dave as a Dad,” one of my children said after I introduced them to a man I was dating a few years ago. He was the first serious-ish guy I had dated since my divorce. And so, he came to the house a fair amount. And he slept over, too.
I now think that was a mistake. We went out for about two years. And the break-up wasn’t bad. But my youngest son had grown accustomed to him – I wouldn’t say attached. But he had come to know him. And they liked one another. When I decided to break up with him, my son thought I was being mean. “Give him another chance,” he said. “He is a nice guy.”
I don’t think he needed to be trying to get his head around why I was rejecting another man when he was still a young teenager. He had witnessed the divorce. Who was I? His loving Mom who didn’t like men? What kind of message was that for him to absorb as he was reaching manhood himself?
It soon blew over, and that was fine. I tried to explain in the most rudimentary way about the vagaries of relationships.But with subsequent relationships, I kept quiet. They knew I was seeing someone, but I never introduced them. Which was just as well. Because the dates fizzled.
I have male friends who worry about whether they should call their girlfriend’s house, out of fear that one of her children will answer and wonder what strange man is calling Mom. (She had yet to introduce ‘the concept of another man’ to her children.) And I know several women who say that their boyfriend’s children automatically attach to them – perhaps because some Dads have a hard time creating intimacy with their kids on a weekend basis, and the presence of a woman can make it easier.
Still, just because a woman is a woman doesn’t mean she automatically feels love for all children. (That, too, is often assumed.) The whole blended family thing is complicated, especially before it’s even officially blended. The Brady Bunch was a drama sit/com, remember? Not a documentary. The relationships are often hard to untangle – and fuse.
A lot depends on the ages of the chidren, of course. But my sense is that we should be parents first and lovers second. They didn’t ask for their Mom and Dad to suddenly be out there on the singles scene again.
Most of the people I know who handled it well did so by keeping it private for a long time, and then, when they were sure that it was a relationship that had longterm potential, they gradually included the person on outings and at family dinners. But if the children were young, they always slept in separate rooms. They connected later, when the kids were asleep, but they didn’t want to cause them any upset about what was going on in the bedroom. They usually just introduced the person as Mommy’s new friend.
Our children grow up fast enough as it is. Divorce forces them to mature faster, I think. And when we can, we should keep the home as stable and safe as possible.
