Yesterday morning I woke up still in a fabulous mood after an amazing night with Kris. We hadn’t had one like that in a while. I have been stressing out about our relationship and my fears have been controlling my emotions, the way I’ve been treating him – everything for the past few weeks.

Read my eye-opening post on “Do I need therapy?”and you can see why…the perfect advice (from commenter Tim) came at the perfect time and I was able to let go of my fears for one night…and one morning…and one afternoon. And now it’s been 48 hours relatively fear free.

So yesterday morning, my new fearless self, asked Kris if he could watch Benjamin while I ran to the grocery and of course, he said yes. He suited Benjamin up and took him to the park while I had nearly one hour of stress free shopping.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I’ve asked a man in my life for help as a single mother. I know I’m not alone in this unhealthy practice of denying ourselves the time we need to be alone.

My theories on why single mothers are afraid to ask boyfriends for help:

• We have been on our own for a while. The idea of receiving help and then possibly getting used to it and then losing it scares us to death.
• We expect men to offer help. But in reality they may feel intimidated – after all, from their vantage point it looks like we have everything under control, and they don’t want to insult our pride.
• We don’t want to scare them off. When we are with someone we may not want to make them feel like dating us would be “hard” or require major household duties on their part.

But we have to remind ourselves – this is our life. If they truly want to be with us it will take some extra “work” on their part. But it shouldn’t feel like work. When I got back from the grocery I thanked Kris again. He said, “No don’t worry about it – we had fun!” I grabbed Benjamin to take him up for his nap. When a friend is over I usually hurry upstairs and lay him down while they wait…but Kris sticks his head around the stairs, “can I come?”

“Sure!” Wow. Is this really happening? He comes upstairs and we all cuddle together on the big nursery chair while Benjamin falls asleep. Amazing. I think he’s falling in love with both of us. I know I’m falling in love with him…I can feel it and this time I’m not going to sabatoge our relationship because of my own fears.

Related posts:

1. Something amazing happened.
2. The Single Mom Dating Conundrum.
3. Cigarrettes, men and some major trust issues.