This past week, LA Single Mama has been sharing her story with us. In the last post, she shared that her relationship with her ex is such that other parents at her son’s school don’t realized they’re not married. She credits that to their decision-making philosophy of “what is in our son’s best interest.” It’s a philosophy that guides her in all her decisions about her son, including the contact her son has with her boyfriend.
She’s been dating her boyfriend now for about five years and considers it to be a steady relationship. However, as far as her son is concerned, her boyfriend is a friend. Here’s how she sees it.
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I guess technically I haven’t told my son I’m in a relationship. He thinks my boyfriend is my friend and the same is true for his dad’s girlfriend. We just call them “a friend.” My ex and I agreed on that and had the same philosophy – neither of us wanted to bring anyone else in for our son to get attached to and for him to have that loss, in case it didn’t work out.
I know a lot of people integrate their relationships a lot more with their children but I’ve been very careful, and so has my ex, about the amount of time we spend with our partners when our son is with us and what he think about their relationship to us.
My boyfriend will visit sometimes, he’ll come over for dinner or we’ll meet him for dinner or we’ll go to the park together, but I can’t say that it’s more than maybe three times a month. He’ll babysit for me sometimes but he’s not really part of a family with us.
My son is with his dad 40 percent of the time so I have all this alone time and that makes it easier for me to see my boyfriend. I have more recently wished that everything could come together. I feel I’m living these two separate lives all at once. I have thought about bringing my boyfriend in more but I have a hard time with it. I’m not exactly sure what my objection is. I know I don’t want my son to get to used to a family setup and then lose it, if my boyfriend and I split up. I just seems selfish to me when I can easily have a relationship when my son’s not around.
At first, my boyfriend thought I was severely overprotective, especially when my son was still a baby. I felt even more strongly about it then than I do now, probably because it was all fresh. My boyfriend doesn’t want to get married because he doesn’t think he would be able to handle a child all of the time, 24 hours a day. So he can’t ask for anything more than I’m willing to give him.
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This is a topic I have little insight on since I haven’t dated since my divorce 🙂 However, I can understand how LA Single Mama feels. I think I would hate the feeling of living two separate lives but knowing that my boyfriend didn’t want to get married and wasn’t sure of being around a child 24 hours a day, would make me want to keep the relationship at a safe distance from my son.
When I interviewed T of Life as a Classroom we talked about her philosophy for introducing your kids to your boyfriend after divorce. She’s had a couple of serious relationships and has introduced her boyfriends to her kids – she says by doing so she’s able to teach them “that people come into your life, some stay and some don’t; you take what’s good and you leave the rest behind.”
What do you think? Is LA Single Mama being over-protective? When is the right time to introduce your kids to your boyfriend?
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