by mssinglemama on November 15, 2007
Hi guys. So you’ve fallen for a single mom? I don’t blame you. You’ve found a woman who has been put to one of life’s hardest tests – on her own – and survived. Single mothers are amazing.
But, she’s created a life for her and her little ones and letting anyone in could be risky. If you want in, you’ve got to be patient, understanding and respectful.
You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’m hoping these tips will help you out. But first, let me preface it with this…
One guy dating my best single mom friend, Abby, told me, “someone needs to write a book about dating a single mom.” I shook my head, “no, someone needs to write a book about dating Abby.” With or without her daughter, Abby is Abby and she’s a firecracker.
My point. Yes, we are single moms. But kids or no kids, we are still the same people. We still have the same communication issues, the same baggage, the same heart aches, the same dreams, the same goals, the same desires.
With that in mind here are some single mom dating tips for the guys. Moms, check out my single mom dating tips here.
- Be patient. She may seem rough around the edges – that’s her finely tuned defense mechanism. Don’t worry, in time, that tough cookie will crack and you’ll discover a well of the most rewarding love you’ve ever imagined. But until she can completely trust you – hang on for the ride.
- No experience with kids? Who cares. We’re all big kids inside. Were you ever a kid? So you do have some experience! Don’t be afraid to get down on your hands and knees and run around with her little ones. Experience or not. If you love her, loving her kids will come naturally. Just because she’s a single mom doesn’t mean she’s looking for Mr. Super Dad. She’s looking for someone who has the ability to completely and totally love her children.
- She’s testing you. Yes, she’s testing you. She has to. Think about it. Would you want to date a single mom who didn’t have high expectations for who she let’s into her child’s life? Don’t stress out about the tests. Chances are you won’t even notice them. Just be yourself and you’ll pass. The most important thing is to try to understand why she needs to test you. Understand it, respect it and once again, be patient.
- If she hasn’t introduced you to her kids… don’t pressure her and don’t think it means she’s not serious about the relationship. This is not about you. She’s doing what she has to do to protect her family. Once again, understand it, respect it and be patient. Your reaction to these obstacles and your patience will mean everything to her.
- Don’t play games. Single moms don’t have time to play games. If you wait three days to call her play any other dating games she’ll lose patience and probably drop you before you have a chance to hurt her.
- If you aren’t into her – tell her right away. If you don’t have serious intentions or if you don’t think there’s a chance in hell you would ever “settle down” with her than for god’s sake – tell her. You never know, she might be totally up for a casual relationship too. If not, at least you weren’t messing with a single mom, that’s just wrong.
- Treat her like a princess. This applies to dating all women, moms or not. Just didn’t want you to forget it.
- Talk to her about her kids. Ask her how they’re doing. Ask how she’s doing. And listen to her answers.
- If you’re a control freak…you might want to move on. You’re dating a single mom. She’s in control and you might just have to follow her lead for a while before she relinquishes any.
- If you really want to be with her… prove your worth. Not with money, although money is always nice to have. But with actions. What do you bring to the table? These are questions and tests you usually don’t have to ask yourself when dating single, childless women. But with a single mom, life is happening – right now. How will you handle it? Can you clean? Can you cook? No? You better learn or at least try.
- Make her life easier. Single moms don’t like asking for help. Take the initiative. Make her life easier. Maybe it’s making her smile, hugging her, taking out her garbage or bringing over some treats for the kids. Bottom line – if you’re making her life easier you’re in.
What you’ll get in return…you get the girl. And what an amazing girl she is. Good luck!
Here are more tips on How to Date a Single Mom:
How to Date a Single Mom, Part 2
How to Date a Single Mom, Part 3
How to Date a Single Mom, Part 4
[Photo credit: PlanetPersonals.com]
by mssinglemama on November 14, 2007
I don’t know about you, but movies just aren’t the same anymore. A lot of things aren’t. If I am going to take a few hours to sit down and watch one it better be good, or I flip it off within the first 20 minutes.
Last night I watched Paris, Je Taime (Paris, I Love You). It was unbelievable. There are 18, maybe more, short 5 minute love stories from Paris. Love stories you wouldn’t expect. Love between divorced couples, old couples, young couples, friends and a few on the love between a mother and her child. Some made me cry, some made me laugh and some made me believe in love again.
One story shows the strong will and determination of a single mother, completely driven by her love for her son. Warning. This might make you cry.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/RzaIQWQTARo&rel=1]
And the best single mom movie ever…Chocalot, take a peak. This movie has it all. The stresses of being a single mother and the huge benefits. Sex. Love. Chocolate. Johnny Depp. What more could you ask for? And it’s probably one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. Here’s the original preview.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/dLAuf4-a0I4&rel=1]
What are your favorite single mama movies? What about movies for the kids? Do share.
by mssinglemama on November 13, 2007
I’ve been an online dating “lurker” since my divorce. I joined eHarmony on last year’s very depressing Valentine’s Day.
I was still living at my mom’s house which is out in the woods. There were no men in sight except for the biker across the street.
I took the eHarmony personality test. Be careful with this, because once you take it – you never get another chance. Make sure you’re awake, relatively chipper and feeling completely open and honest with yourself.
After the test eHarmony served up my first seven matches. I was excited – “Look, an inbox full of men! Just for me!” But I couldn’t see the photos. They wanted my money. But at the time it wasn’t in the budget – at all – so I started sifting through the descriptions.
One guy actually sneaked his e-mail into his profile, “EHarmony is expensive,” he wrote, “E-mail me at dude@dude.com.” Yay! A guy who likes to beat the system. I like that so I sent him a lonely Valentine’s Day e-mail. Days later there’s still no response. I had even attached a picture. Hmmmm. I forget about it and try to stomach my first virtual rejection. It stings a little.
Three months later I get a response, “Hi, this is Carlise, Dan’s friend. I am checking his e-mail because he actually died in a car accident last October.”
My heart cries for Dan for a moment and then my sympathy for he and his family is replaced wtih anger at eHarmony. How could they do that? Then it hits me. The “matches” on eHarmony are not paying members. Many just popped in, took the personality test, and then never returned – or even worse – died.
I still became a paying member. I’m was too tempted by all of those new “matches” they e-mail you every morning. So after I spent over $100 to activate my account I was like a kid at a candy store – hurrying to scope out every man’s photograph.
I didn’t think one of them was cute. I e-mail a few any way but never got responses – because they’re probably inactive accounts. I e-mailed eHarmony asking for a refund. They told me my matching preferences weren’t broad enough, that I should be open to dating people of all ages from all over the world.
After receiving over 155 matches, only one led to a lunch date, and that was a complete failure.
Bottom line: don’t waste your money on eHarmony.
My friend Abby, my bestest single mom friend, had three very interesting and very good looking dates from Yahoo Personals last week.
The reason Yahoo and Match are better online dating sites than eHarmony:
1. They’re inexpensive.
2. You can see rough dates of when matches last logged in (although both sites should improve this feature).
3. You can control your searches, don’t let a computer match you - especially if 80% of those matches aren’t even active on the site.
See my other online dating entries for more background on this and some very important online dating tips.
by mssinglemama on November 13, 2007
My new boyfriend and I decided to quit smoking – together. It’s the first time I’ve done something together, as a couple in years. Well, if you count my divorce, it’s been nearly a year. Knowing Saturday night was going to be a baby-free all-nighter we pick Sunday to go cold turkey. I’m scared. Scared to quit smoking and scared to enter into a verbal contract with someone – a commitment.
I started smoking the day I realized I was going to leave my husband. He had come home and said he’d been fired from yet another job and that he didn’t want to work again, that he wanted to be a stay at home dad. We didn’t have the money for this scenario and I insisted he go out and look for more work. He refused. At this point he was bailing on me and my baby – that’s when I knew it was completely over. I heard my neighbor walking through the driveway. It was Abby, a single mom. Her daughter was just three at the time.
“Abby? Is that you?” I asked over the fence.
“Ya,” she said. We’d only talked a few times here and there, nothing too in depth. We were just friendly neighbors. She was the single mom, I was the married mom with the newborn, supposed to be completely happy.
“I need to have a cigarrette, and you need to tell me what it’s like to be a single mom because I’m about to be one.” She came running into my yard.
“Oh my god. I’ll be right back.”
It was in this moment as she went on and on about the trials and tribulations but about how ultimately, it was the right thing to do, that I realized the bond single mothers have with each other. Perhaps because we are the only ones – the only ones – who truly understand what the other is going through.
Leaving him, moving back in with my mother and leaving my career was the single most challenging thing I’ve ever done – I needed friends and I chose cigarrettes. Now, one and a half years later, I’m back on my feet. Have my career back, have my real friends and my life back. I don’t need them anymore.
On Sunday morning we quit together, as promised. But then today, Monday, I head into work and feel awful. I actually feel like I’m going to get sick all over my desk. Am I pregant? Nope. Definitely not. Could it be the smoking? I Google it. Yep. Smoking cessation can cause nausea. Weird.
I make it until 5:00 pm and then I have one. I just can’t do this. I can’t go pick up Benjamin like this. This nausea has got to go. The cigarrette doesn’t help. I get home and take my temperature – it’s 101.1. Oh my god. I’m sick. I’ve been home from work nursing Benjamin for weeks, have missed six work days and now I’m sick.
I call Kris. “I cheated. I just couldn’t stand it. I can’t be this sick. I thought it was nausea from not smoking, but I’m just actually sick as hell.”
“Do you really want to quit or not?” He sounds disappointed. I try to defend myself.
“But, I’m a single working mom. Any kind of stress relief I can get is worth it. I can’t be in withdraw around Benjamin. And tonight, being so sick, I nearly broke down in tears.”
(I actually had broken down in tears but didn’t want to tell him this). He still sounds pissed. And he should be – I broke a promise. I call him back later, he apologizes for being “difficult” and I apologize for cheating.
“Do you want me to come over? I can make you some tea, cuddle you down.” He offers.
“Nope…maybe tomorrow night.” Step by step, I tell myself. I can quit smoking with someone, sleep with them, even become emotionally attached to them, but it will be a long, long time before I’m ready to actually ask a man for help. I just can’t. I should call Abby and ask her why.
(P.S., I never smoke around Benjamin or in the house, which is why I really want to quit – it’s getting cold out).
by mssinglemama on November 11, 2007
It’s been four weeks now.
My new relationship status is beginning to sink in.
I have a boyfriend, and I’m actually enjoying it immensely. Usually at this point fear takes over and I start pushing them away. I slowly eject them from my life, or cut it clean depending on my mood. But this time, I’m not feeling that way. I’m not stressed at all. I’m completely comfortable with him and totally into him. So far, the feeling is mutual.
I had him over for dinner on Thursday night. Benjamin was still awake. Kris has seen Benjamin in the mornings briefly but this would be his first evening with us, usually the highlight of my day because Benjamin is chipper, happy and ready to play.
Kris walks in, gives me a hug and then crouches down on his knees, “And, how are you?” He looks at Benjamin and Benjmain stares back. This is odd, usually he flashes a smile and runs away but he can’t take his eyes off of Kris.
Kris leads him into the living room and opens his toy chest. This is a first. Of all of the men I’ve dated since the divorce not one has genuinely just sat down and played with my kid. This used to surprise me because I thought – “If they’re trying to win me over wouldn’t they want to at least try to play with him?” To their credit, some would try, but it was awkward and forced. “I’ve never been around kids,” they would say. “I don’t know what to do.” Kris has never been around kids either, he’s actually only 23. Five years younger than me.
While I’m in the kitchen cooking dinner, I hear Kris talking to Benjamin, he’s calm, assuring and playful. A few hours later I take Benjamin up for bedtime. I come downstairs and all of his toys are cleaned up. Kris had tidied up my living room. I’m now pinching myself.
Kris is still there in the morning. We all eat pancakes together. There’s lots of laughter, more playing and the entire time Benjamin is following Kris around like a little puppy. I put Benjamin down for his nap and say good bye to Kris, we both have to work.
When Benjamin wakes up four hours later (he has a nasty cold which is why I’m home on a Friday) he searches the house for Kris. He’s going from room to room. As soon as he realizes Kris is gone – he starts crying…hard. My heart breaks. What am I doing? What if this doesn’t work out? Where will we be then? Benjamin is clearly well into toddlerhood (20 months) and now he is very well aware of what’s up.
The single mom dating conundrum:
When a man enters our life we want to see how they would fit into our family, or if they can even handle it. But we can’t do it without introducing them to the kids.
The solution:
When Benjamin was a teeny tiny baby, this wasn’t an issue. So everything I’m about to say clearly depends on the age of the children.
I’m not big on the idea of waiting six months to bring a man into my daily routine. I guess it’s because I’m afraid he would be shocked at the reality of how hard it is to raise a toddler and then split. Then I would have invested six months of my time in a guy who wasn’t really there for the right reasons.
The other problem. I am a working single mother. Not bringing him around Benjamin leaves me only a few hours in the late evening. Period. This can get old and can also hurt a budding relationship.
I have learned from my past mishaps not to raise this issue too early. Why? Because there is no way he or you actually know how long this will last yet, and you shouldn’t presume to know that. Once I actually told a guy I was dating, “the only way I can date you is if there’s potential – potential that one day we might get married.” We had only been dating for a few months. I didn’t even want to marry him. Isn’t that crazy? I just had to rationalize why I was spending time away from my son – to myself. In the end that one just fizzled out but the moral of the story is – it could have been more fun if I would have left my drama in my head. I’m thinking this is probably a good conversation to have 6-8 months in to a relationship. Just a hunch, but to each his own.
My solution: I am going to keep Kris’ encounters with Benjamin to a minimum for the next few months, but he will have a few. Because I also want someone to fall in love with my son, not just me…we are a package deal.
