When I’m posting someone’s series I don’t usually like to interrupt the flow with posts on other topics or guest posts. The disadvantage with this is that sometimes there are posts I have to hold off writing and right now I have several dating advice related posts I want to share. So first up:
First Date Follow Up
After my first first date didn’t call me, several of my friends urged me to take the lead and to call him but I was reluctant to do so and still haven’t. I know that I’m not completely comfortably being the chooser or being the initiator when it comes to romance but I didn’t think that was the reason for my reluctance this time. As a pondered about it, I realized the issue was my son.
You see, several months back I had had a casual conversation with him about dating and the upshot was he said he’d rather I waited until he was in college which would be about three years. I agreed with a comment from @mightbeatranny that I shouldn’t let my children dictate my dating life but at the same time it just didn’t feel right doing this in secret. I’m not embarrassed to be dating – it’s normal and reasonable to want to do this. I don’t want to have to think about only going to places my son isn’t likely to go … we live in a small town and he’s driving now so us running into each other at a coffee shop could easily happen.
My daughter who is now away at college, knew that I was going through the Fit4Love program and that I had signed on to eHarmony – she’d seen that I had changed my profile picture on Facebook, said she love it and asked when I had had it taken. So I took the opportunity to update her. She was fine, didn’t ask too many questions but did ask if my son knew .. “you might want to talk to him, mum.”
So I had another conversation with him which went really well. He said that while he would still prefer me not to date, I shouldn’t not date just because of him especially since he had been talking to a girl about dating. I felt so much better after that. He’d cleared the path for me AND demonstrated a sense of equity and respect I admire.
The bigger, and more significant benefit to me about this conversation is that I hope I’ve opened the door for conversations between my kids and I about their dating. I like to think that because they know I’m dating, they could turn to me about questions …and not because they know I have the answers because I clearly don’t but rather that they know I can help them figure out what they want.
So back to the beginning … even though I have my children’s blessings, I have not called my date. Should I? It’s been about a month and I’m feeling that maybe I’ve left it too long? Is not having called him a true indicator that there isn’t the chemistry? What would you do?
Photo credit: PoliCardo