Don't Let Your Backbone Play BlackJack in Vegas - a New Primer on Dating with Kids

Switching my Snowbird baseball cap to backwards....

Dating with kids, though.... I haven't figured out the magic recipe for their level of involvement...  Has anyone?

On one end of the spectrum, is the parent (probs most often the dad) who chooses his partner totally independent of his children and tosses everyone - including the new GF or wife, in the emotional deep end, figuring they'll all be able to adequately swim and later Kum-ba-yah together.

On the other end of the spectrum, is involving the kids in dating patterns from the outset and giving them a sense on who is spending time with mom, or sharing their attention.  Out of this, the shallowness of one's children will often be revealed:

"What kind of car does he drive?"

"Does he have good hair?  He has to have good hair."

"Yeah - but does he lift?  Is he fit?"

"Does he SKI?  I mean, does the bro really ski?" 

"Is he cool?  Can he hang?"

I'm ashamed to think what my children focus on first.  We need to work on this.

Anyone who knows us well, knows that my home is filled with laughter.  Right or wrong, we all roast each other a bit -- it's a sign of affection between us -- so you can imagine my single / dating life offers up prime roasting material.  It keeps everyone laughing really hard - including me.  As long as we can laugh together, it's so worth including them.  It helps us feel closer, too.  I'd like to think it helps them feel safer - that I'm not going to get serious with someone in a way that's going to dramatically impact their lives, without them participating in some way - even if just hearing about some things, from the beginning.

Oh - it's super fun when my 16 year old daughter dishes out dating advice to me  - especially when it takes on a lecturing tone.  She talks from the perspective of someone who has clearly never fallen in love and consequently never had her heart smashed into a gazillion pieces.  She speaks with quite a bit of authority on the subject, though.  Sometimes I scratch my head and say, "Wait, whose the parent, here?" 

My children have been easy through this.  The challenge for me has been, managing men's expectations around the level or non-level of my children's involvement.  One man insisted by the third date or so to take my kids to ice cream.  A well-meaning neighbor had taken the kids back to their house, thinking I'd appreciate the alone time with my date and probably wanted to spare my kids from the perceived stress of meeting a new man.  This turned circus-like when my date arrived to me alone in the house, folded his arms across his chest and said:

"Where are the kids?"  

I was all like... (nervously laughing) "Let me explain my neighborhood.  Everyone basically lives at each other's homes and my kids are all down the street and...." 

"Well let's go get them."

Awkward silence.... disbelief fills my body... I think I heard my backbone literally say "Buh-bye.  I'm off to Vegas-- you are on your own."

"Really?  I'm not sure that's such a good idea" I say, "and it would be nice for me to get out and away from them for a bit...I mean I do have them all of the..."

"Let's go get them."

"Wow. Okay."   (by this time my backbone was sending me selfies by the Bellagio Fountain). 

So awkward visit down to the neighbors we go, where I wasn't exactly ready to unveil my first kind of dating relationship yet - I mean the first one to last more than two dates... and now, the neighbors have to / get to meet this guy, while I attempt to retrieve my kids...who don't really want to go with us - they want to ride Vespas and play hoopes with my very cool neighbors.... Frankly in that moment, I did too.

After bribery with FroYo, my seven year old son...and the toddler... come along on the ice cream social...  It's all a very horrible memory for me.

Fast forward to a season later where a different man I knew as a teen but who I hadn't seen in 26 years flies across the country to visit and explore a romantic connection, and we have an epically long weekend jam packed with my kids normal life of activities and football games and dinners...  this man hadn't had kids of his own, or spent much time around them per say, so he was a little oblivious how to just BE intimately around them... but he insisted on maximum kid time in the planning - after all, he was very serious about me as a 16 year old so we must still feel this way about each other at 40, right?!?

In fairness to him - he bit off more than most people could chew to presume he could waltz in and manage himself around strong personalities of my particular children.  Let's not minimize the noisy toddler and the effect this can have on someone who has not had to spend intensive time around one of these specimens before....  All while trying to evaluate how he felt just being around me - while in FULL BLOWN MOTHERING MODE.  My kids may have put him a bit through the ringer. Meanwhile, I was so busy making sure my kids were okay that I couldn't take a sec to ponder, how did I feel about this man and myself around this man?  What a mess that felt.

Again - in attempt to see where this relationship might be headed, I lost all traces of my backbone... Like my backbone was once again playing blackjack and craps in Vegas and maybe handing out dollar bills, I dunno.

It's not always this way...I suspected one man became totally skittish when he knew my kids knew anything at all about his existence in my life.  All of these share a couple things in common:

1. They were out of balance with reality.
2. My role as mother who knows best for her kids and family was not trusted at best, undermined, at worst.

Why does my strong mothering backbone take a vacation when I'm dating?

Because I don't have any idea how to do this... Because maybe I've been too much of a "people-pleaser" in this process.

The right thing to do with children... is probably someplace in the middle.  My backbone needs to be on duty and on call.. no vacays allowed...

I think the most responsible thing a parent can do - or what I'd like to do going forward, is to spend a handful of times with an individual and decide - together -if this connection is going to be at least a little more committed than the others have been.  Then decide - together - what everyone is comfortable with on how to move forward and allow space to see if the kids can form a meaningful connection and bond with the new person in my life.    

I've been on - no joke - like 75+ dates last year.  A majority of these occurred before my mother's passing last year.  I really needed a hiatus to take emotional inventory after she died.  There were weeks where I went out 2-3 times for breakfast, cocoa or dinner with different people.  Where I couldn't thoroughly Google a man or had limited information on him, I often met him out in public to minimize people coming to the door to fetch me and to maximize my family's safety and privacy regarding my address.  I also live in a tight-knit neighborhood where people notice coming and goings and I've been trying to minimize chatter.

I have also determined online dating is the crutch newly divorced people use to force themselves to get out there, or people who are too shy to approach men or women in their normal course of activities.  I'm gathering that many of us who have used it were those left by spouses, whose egos and senses of self took big hits and we needed a platform to regroup and survey the scene while still being authentic Nervous-Nellies in real life about getting back in the saddle.

I've absolutely abandoned online dating because I've morphed into a more confident sense of myself that I can now flirt and make conversation at Whole Foods, the gym, the ski hill and any other place I find myself in... I've come a long way in a year.

Now it's time I get more serious about getting more serious, though -- I want to.  Which is why I'm laying better groundwork now in regards to my children.... musings and introspect on why I haven't yet become more serious about getting more serious is coming in the next post.

Ciao.

Dating Land Mines and Bizarro

I am concurrently reading two Brene Brown books Daring Greatly  and I thought it was just me ~ but it isn't.   Brene Brown has her PhD in the areas of shame and vulnerability.  One I am reading for a women's book club I'm in, and the other is for a 10 week "vulnerability class" I'm taking.  Being Mormon and not holding my marriage and family together,  I am working through a ton of shame. And if I want to embark on a new relationship I have to put all the hurt behind me, tear down any remnants of walls around my heart and be utterly vulnerable to a man. The end of this article looks at the Latin origins of the word VULNERABLE and it turns out, that we've gotten the word Vulnerability wrong all this time in our language!  No wonder we fail at finding and keeping love! 

 I'm a strong woman capable of living on my own.  I enjoy it.  One of the most frequent comments aside from what a beautiful family I have is "you are so brave and strong".  I've educated five children completely at home and helped them become accomplished athletes.  I am also licensed to deliver babies born at home.

When my former husband had a public and humiliating affair, I took the children and a U-Haul trailer 2000 miles to Utah to give everyone some space (and maybe run from my problems).  This takes a fair amount of strength and resilience.  But if I really hear the feedback coming out of my marriage as it dies,  maybe I lost my marriage and family in the process of being strong.  Maybe I need to tease out and hold onto the resilience piece and abandon some of the strong piece.  They are not quite the same.  I'm exploring the ways that these maternal strengths may have hindered me in intimacy.  The former husband has actually described me as pushing him away.  I've got to take a look at this.


I have not yet begun round two of dating.  I'm not sure what is holding me up.  All I'm clear on is that it is not quite time to step back out there.  To recap, in December and January I had four dates with four men.  One culminating into a late night meet the following evening to exchange baked goods before Christmas and and maybe go in for that quick kiss we avoided on the first date.  I guess it was like a mini "re-do" on ending the first date.  This is my first foray into dating Mormons (I converted to the faith after my marriage so I've technically never dated a Mormon man before).  Our kiss was textbook Mormon-esque.  Just a peck.  Maybe two... or three....  Lips firmly closed... No big deal, right?  Sure, except I parted thinking about it so much that I drove about a quarter mile home in the dark with my headlights turned off.

It left me feeling like..."Yep! There is something to the Mormon business of chastity."  I'm excited to parent teens embarking on dating having experienced both avenues of dating.   One can experience a simple kiss and have it consume your thoughts as much or more as if it had been way over the top involved.

But this article is more about the multitude of ways that many of us push others away in intimacy. This man turned into Caspar the Ghost just days following the intense encounter - either due to total lack of interest or due to his integrity and understanding that my marriage was not legally terminated yet.  I'd like to think the latter, but in reality, it's probably the former.  I like to live in denial that maybe he's just encased in cement in Jabba the Hut's lair like Han Solo.  Or maybe in dating he carefully constructs a mine field that no one can pass and come too close.

After all, who wouldn't want to just leap into life with a woman with FIVE kids including a toddler, whose divorce isn't quite finalized?  In some of the craziest moments inside my home where we've had several consecutive days of sports, the house looks like Bali after the tsunami and my toddler is in his season of screaming, I'll say to one of my married girlfriends, "Who wouldn't want to partake in all of this?!?"  "Take care of your marriages, ladies!!"  I'll say in a group text.

I'll review here some of the microscopic but significant things that went down to self-sabotage the endeavor before it even got off the ground.  Because next time around, I'd like to not lay a mine field  between the next great man and my heart ~ nor do I care to step along his carefully laid booby-traps, land mines and barbed wire on the path to his heart.

I'd like to be vulnerable and be a magnet for someone equally as sophisticated in the art of vulnerability.  If I lay land mines, I'll consequently attract someone who also lives in his own sabotaging minefields.

Let me share with you some of the detonated WWII-type mines I carefully placed.

1.  I might or might not have said more than once in person and via text "I imagine it will take me at least  2 or 3 years to find a committed relationship with someone." 

2. "I have to get my toddler out of diapers before I find a committed relationship."  Yep, I actually said that out loud.

3. My personal favorite commitment-phobe self-sabotage remark... "I can't imagine folding a man into my crazy life anytime soon."  

Now I've given up trucker talk unless I have a lapse and feel really emotional.  (Last week, I watched "the other woman" change her Facebook cover photo to her wearing my clothes and snuggling with my dogs.  So I may have used some expletives that day and if I were still Catholic, would be sitting in a booth with a priest.  Mormons just privately repent over and over and over and over...again.  I also scheduled counseling for some coping tools.)

But I just re-read #1-3 of what I typed - that which I actually said on my date.  And maybe via text - not to the men I didn't expect to see again...BUT TO THE MAN I DEFINITELY WANTED TO SEE A LOT MORE OF.  And I'm now saying... WTF?



I have issues.  I need an intervention.  I must morph into that DC Character, BIZARRO (click here for a reminder) where, when stakes are high, I communicate directly the opposite of what might actually be rolling through my brain requiring a translation.  I loved those episodes of Superman when Bizarro showed up.  Now I understand why.

Wait! It gets better!  If you subscribe to the notion that like attracts like, I may have attracted someone who does the same exact thing in regards to self-sabotage!  Here are a few mines he laid out for me to fall on....

1.  As he chose to extend the first date by an hour or so and talk...He says "I think I'm planning on traveling for an extended period to Europe sometime in the next year or so and maybe live there for a while."   In my mind I said "AWESOME! So why did we make this first date go longer and why does your online profile suggest you are interested in marriage?"  What came out of my mouth was a total support for this plan and suggestions he get a Eurail pass.

2. and 3. and 4 and 5.  all kind of go together and are paraphrased "I'm still wounded from my last long term relationship and am looking for just friendship.  We should go camping sometime. How far do you think we can get if we spend the night together?  I don't have physical relations before marriage. I want to get married sooner not later and you can't move fast enough for me as you are just coming out of your marriage.".

Again, a "WTF" moment in time and space.  With this, I'm like...OK enough confusing messages here that maybe it's just me, my crazy life, and he's obviously not remotely interested in exploring it further.  Or he's suffering from the same plague I have living on the square planet Bizarro occupies.

Either way, this is definitely NOT going to work.  Not at all!

I am learning that for me, I morph onto BIZARRO when I feel most vulnerable.  If one looks at the definition our culture gives to the word VULNERABLE...we associate it with" weak, impotent, open for attack, powerless".  No wonder strong alpha men don't want anything to do with that!

But if we consider the actual root meaning of the word and it's origins in ancient history....it originates from Latin BATTLE language and most closely means "open to attack", "difficult to defend" "bridge".  Even the most highly guarded defendable fortresses in medieval society had to have an entrance for food and survival.  Now this is the kind of vulnerability - just a footbridge toward my heart -  I can live with in search of love.  I imagine when we pick apart the word VULNERABLE in military terms this way, some men would see being vulnerable not as weakness, but a necessary part of the war of finding love as well.

When Bizarro shows up on my dates, that's probably a clue that I really like someone, but also a CUE for me to just STOP talking.  A little silence never hurt anyone.  But ultimately, Bizarro needs to understand that although he means well by protecting my heart, he's no longer invited to the party.

{Other clues I am pushing a man away...talking incessantly about my gluten-intolerance. That should be reserved for my closest friends who already love me unconditionally.}

Ciao!

Dating with Children

* Disclaimer:     I received some nice notes in my inbox from yesterday's post and I felt prompted to lead with this disclaimer today...   This blog is not to glamorize divorce or dating.  I feel marriage and families are the best platforms to work through our junk in the trunk.  I worked very hard over the past few years to keep my marriage and family together.  Sometimes I think these things can actually be contagious, so please do not allow my writing to somehow inspire you to fracture your family.  I haven't let readers a window into my suffering and instead expressed it through silence and a setting down of the quill.  Before this week, my last post was in May...  



Today I wanted to write about dating with children because I've had many inquiries about it.  If you've followed me at all, you know by now that I have homeschooled them for eight years.  What this means is that we spend A LOT of time together.  We know each other in ways I would not if they were in a bricks and mortar educational place.  I'm an expert at how each of them learns.  I know most of their secrets.  They know most of mine.  I'm so blessed to have decided to carve this path out for myself and them.  It's forever changed us and added a richness and depth to our relationships.


How does this affect their presence around my dating?  When I make any major parenting decisions (birthing at home, breastfeeding, vaccination, home education, athletics), I like to read and hear from a variety of voices on the matter... then, I typically make some major -against the grain, off-the-conveyor-belt decision that always always turns out best for my family.  On dating with children.... I've read a plethora of articles on the subject.  Articles from professionals, articles from divorcees.  It's kind of like the vaccination debate...I think if one more person passes judgement on the way another parents, I'm going to punch them in the face.  What matters is the end result.. that we have self-aware kids who turn into adults who love to learn, and are engaged with and productive in society in a meaningful way.  That's my mission, anyway, and hopefully a path to happiness for them.  

My kids are highly involved with my culling process of men right now at the surface level.  Here is a primer on online dating... In a given month, I may have 3,000 men viewing my profile - the site lets you know who views you... Out of that ~ maybe 30 will decide to actually contact me.   Out of that, I may only find one or two in a given month that I'm interested in allowing a pursuit of me and even after that, issues come up early in dating that cause you to start the process all over again!  It's a total numbers game.  I may as well have some laughs about it all with the children if they are going to see me on the screen a little more than normal.  We DO have some giggle moments where we are doubled over laughing through it all.  It's taken the online dating thing from something that I might have felt should be kept underground to something I can have a lot of fun with and enjoy with them like Madden Xbox!  Speaking of X-Box, the kids are contemplating creating my own Madden football team of fallen date partners who either by their choice or mine opted not to continue on.  We give them their own jersey with their name on it and create a body type and look, and then play football with them.  It's funny stuff.  My kids have a sense of humor.

No one has met my children yet.  This will be another threshold to cross.  My children will know that when they meet someone, this person has been highly selected and culled from the haystack to get to this point, but it won't mean anything but dinner, or breakfast or whatever is happening at that moment.  It will be my responsibility at that point to ensure that neither my children nor the man who meets them expects anything other than that first fist bump, high five or whatever awkward thing they all choose to do to greet each other, while I step into the kitchen to put the flowers in a vase or something.



At this point, the kids have only a superficial list of criteria for a man I am dating.  I'm sure they will expand upon this in the future.  I've actually left a couple big ones off this list because...well...not all things are for sharing!  Some of their criteria I can live with and some, well... may need some loosening up as time goes on, but for now....I'll let them have all the power they want in the process...  Examples are:

* Good mormon Utah hair (Utah men have some seriously amazing hair out here)

* Be able to throw a spiral with a football

* Love football and sports

* Have a testimony of Jesus Christ and be active in the Church (yes, this is important to the children!)

* Drive a truck is a plus but not required....

Do they already sound like little employers seeking a new hire?  Is there learning for them in this?  Yes!   We are already plotting for that first meet and greet that will eventually occur.  I'm asking them to visualize what that might look like to them and how that will make them feel and to remind them that although they are not quite in the driver's seat, they sure are co-pilots with a set of controls.  It's amazing how assuring this is and how relaxed they are becoming.  They seem to totally trust me and this process and have a knowing that their lives are going to eventually be enhanced because of it and because of who is allowed to venture into their sacred space.  They feel really safe, even after a difficult few years.

Ciao!

There have been over 16,000 visits to my blog since inception without promoting it at all, so I'd like to have a little fun with this and see what I can generate if I push it out more!  Feel free to help by moving it along if you see something of value or entertaining.