by mssinglemama on March 12, 2010
Introducing Him to the Kids
I know it’s been a while since I’ve offered up a around of single mom dating tips, but here is a fresh batch. The subject? Introducing or not introducing men to your children.
First, a few real-life single mom dating experiences. In both cases, each single mom did what she felt was right at the time. We can’t hold them responsible or judge them for their actions. We are all learning as we go… dating as a single mom is by far the hardest and most misunderstood experience mothers can have. But we can learn from each other.
Single Mom Dating Scenario 1
She bides her time, listens to her ultra-protectionist mama gut and waits 9 months to introduce the man she’s dating to her toddler. She introduces him only after she’s certain they’ll be together forever and have fallen completely and totally in love. Did her patience pay off?
At first, yes. Everything is going so well that they all move in together three months after the introductions. Four weeks later her boyfriend, likely caving under the stress of what I’ll call Sudden Toddler Exposure, jets. He leaves. Completely and totally leaves and she hasn’t heard from him since.
Single Mom Dating Scenario 2
She doesn’t wait. Knowing instantly that he is the one. She brings the man into their lives, introduces him to her 6-year-old and then – because he lives out of town – allows him to practically (but not really) move in. [click to continue…]
by mssinglemama on December 17, 2009
Do you know what you would want from a man if he popped into your life (not what you need, but what you want)?
Here’s a starter list of some man qualities I think are mandatory before he can be single mom worthy:
1. Respect for you and the kids.
2. He should like you (a little bit) more than you like him. You should be fawned over because you don’t have time for the other way around. Soon it will balance out. But, at the beginning, you should be chased.
3. He accepts your past. I, as a single mom, have yet to make it far enough with someone who questioned my past or held it against me. I am almost certain I can pick these types of guys out from a line-up, so maybe that’s why. Regardless of how jerkdar accuaracy, avoid them like the plague. Bcause soon, they’ll be bringing up your past – the past the two of you share. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.
4. He’s a role model. No drugs. No cheating. No jerk behavior. No abuse. And, an obvious one, but something to just put out there in black and white – would you be okay if your children grew up to be just like him?
5. He must respect the “kid thing”. If he gripes for a second about the kid, or battles for their attention then – sorry! - he’s not the one. There’s a difference, by the way, between legitimate concern over not enough one-on-one adult time and what I call griping. Use this as a measure – if he sounds at all like he’s whining [click to continue…]
by mssinglemama on September 13, 2009
“Are those poop bags in your pockets again?” I see the top of a bright blue plastic bag sticking out of his shorts.
“I always come prepared,” he says. Always is right. John Bear is seldom without a poop bag or two sticking out of his cargo short pockets. I’m always telling him to stick them back in while teasing him profusely for being such a dork. “Stop laughing,” he adds, “one day I’ll have our kid’s diapers stuffed in here.”
Gulp.
Visions of three more years of diapers are flashing through my mind and I give him one of my looks.
“What? No? Is that a bad thing?” He asks.
“No,” I relax my eyebrows and smile, “It’s fine. Really fine actually.”
My thoughts don’t even venture where they typically would with the typical men of my past. Instead they stay safely seated in the upright position, ready and willing to believe that happiness does not necessarily have an expiration date.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a ton of shit to clean up along the way.
—-
We went to a Browns game this weekend for Fiesta Movement Mission #5. Pictures will be posted as soon as I get some sleep and just a little bit of time.
xoxo
by mssinglemama on September 7, 2009
“If everything works out with John, Benjamin won’t know a time when he wasn’t around.”
As my therapist’s words sink in the last three years of my life flash through my mind; from the beginning when I packed everything up and moved into my mother’s, to the quiet nights at her house in the woods wondering and wishing myself away and back to some semblance of independence and then to the moment when Benjamin and I stepped into our own sweet, little apartment – ready to begin our new life.
What followed is all here, on this blog in my eBook, or safe in my mind.
I sit on her couch, staring off into a painting on the wall as I try to grasp this idea of him not remembering anything before John Bear. The memories wash over me – the adventures big and small – like the time we were yelled at by a hair salon owner or the countless grocery store trips that typically ended in knock down drag out tantrums. Then there were the big adventures like trips to find Joshua Trees
or deep forests and mountain coves in Vancouver.
And smaller adventures like hours of puddle jumping for no reason
or sweating it out on a hot summer day in August to hear our future president, a man also raised by a single mom, speak to us from about twenty feet away.
or chasing bunnies with Sydney.
Now, looking back, it is these moments – the moments when I forced myself out of the house with him, braving the book store, the library, the festivals, the camping trips and the road trips all by myself, trying to fill the time – that are the best memories I have of the two of us.
Memories of the moments when we both forgot where we were or when we just took our time
because we didn’t have anywhere else to be.
“So they’ll all be gone? He won’t remember a thing?” I ask my therapist or, as I fondly call her, Wonder Woman. She’s helping me to straighten out my trust issues and to figure out why, in the past, I had a pattern of choosing bad boys dysfunctional men. [click to continue…]
by mssinglemama on July 29, 2009
My Secrets are Out…
Ms. Single Mama Uncensored: Dating, Sex and Love is here. But first a few words from my delirious haze. I am hoping they make sense…
Before I started writing this blog the whispers in my head, the words of strength from outside of myself were hard to come by. I only knew one or two fellow single moms and living at my mother’s for one year did a number on my social life. I was alone, utterly alone and it was uncomfortable.
I tried to find inspiration in other single mom books and while they were insightful on many levels, all fell short for me. I craved real, honest advice about dating and love. I didn’t know it then but I would soon fill that void myself and also become a voice for single mothers everywhere by shouting from the my little mountaintop: we are beautiful, we are strong and we are sexy as hell. And while this shit ain’t easy we don’t need a man to rescue us, we need to rescue ourselves.
I am not sure where those words came from. They started, I believe, as whispers in my own head or more like echoes. And then you all showed up. Your words and your thoughts inspired me to keep writing, to keep sharing my stories and your words, in turn, became the whispers in my head. [click to continue…]
