Whats the pros N cons of dateing a Single Mum/Dad?? (22)

yeah it's a difficult situation..luckily my exwife has always played fair with me in this regard...my daughter knows she only has one father and that's me .. even tho' her mother has had a new partner for quite a while now...

i can only say that kids aren't dumb...they know who their parents are no matter what the external situation might be...i know it does your head in tho.. i can empathize with that...

good to meet you Patrick

Welcome Patrick and lovely to meet you.

Difficult isn't it?

My children have their stepmother, who many years ago assumed the mother role.

I embraced it rather than fought it, my children know who their mother is and I found that the more I embraced it, the more she backed off. I killed her with kindness, so that she has no excuse to say anything ill of me on front of the children.

She has since gone on to be a mother herself, so she knows that feeling now, of being a parent.

We ahve since become good friends, which is so much nicer for all children involved, it takes the level of burden from their shoulders.

My advice would be that, embrace it, but your child will know who his father is and that will never change, you are the one thing that he can never be and that is your child's father and parent.

It worked, my children have a wonderful, healthy loving relationship with their father, as they should, their stepmother and they have their adored baby brother, why fight that?

My children love their father, their stepmother, me feeling bitter about it all would not serve them well at all, I would hurt them and myself.

Makes life easier all round, no torn loyalties, children who are worried that they may upset the other parent.

Just worked, and kindness and dinity will shine through, always.

Bitterness and anger will not.

Serious..take the BF to one side a talk to him.Tel him you are the father and he has a bit part in their (kids) lives..And if he doesn't listen(BF) give him a slap...

Phoenix, that is not the way to handle this.

The BF will know Patrick is the father.

I love you to death, but I could brain you sometimes.

Hi sommer..I'm serious. I had one of the BF's of the enemy trying to tell me what I could and could not do with my monsters..And the enemy backed him up...Sometimes in life you have to do un-necessary things. I was diplomatic and exausted every other avenue first.


One of the best pro's is using the other person as a sounding board...Ask them how they sorted out things or how they came to terms with certain situations..Or how their kids reacted to the separation..

One of the biggest cons is you have everything planned for a weekend away/out to dinner with your new BF and junior stubbs this big toe and is balling his eyes out.Dilemas...

Not excatly a con but a worry. If things started to work out and you both have kids with other people. Will the kids get on.And more imporantly how will they(his kids) react to you and vice -versa. But before either of you meet each others kids. Sort the ground rules out. The 'role' each of you will play or are prepared to play in each others 'kids' lives..

In a nutshell doesn't annoy me and I don't think about it as such..Only because of ther break down of the families today,you can nearly always take it for granted that there will be kids in the back ground from 30+...IMO

Now I´m glad I had my kids very young and they are adults, so I never had to suffer these problems.

My kids only want to advise me, they are often more sensible than me!

I know you are serious, gorgeous, even if a person did try to tell my children in 'parental' way, I am not possessive over them, I do not own my children and I would prefer them to have no acrimony in their lives, they do not, we kept that to a minimum, there were problems when he first left me, for his woman, but with me taking a step back it worked.

Getting belligerent with her, would have done nothing, it would have made her mad, me and the children are then surrounded by mad people, there are ways of making a point without being belligerent.

And if she had taken it too far, I would have approached my ex husband and told him nicely, to have a word with her, but for us two, we managed to get through it, my daughter was not keen on her at first, but I knew that he loved her, and I talked my daughter into being nice with her.

They are all very close now, have been for some years, and that is they way I want it to remain.

I suppose because I have always had many other people's children in my life, that I was more generous with my own.