Adjusting to life after divorce
Q I'm 42, mother of two teenagers, a son, 15, and a daughter, 13, and I am also dating again. I've been divorced for more than one year, having separated 30 months ago. A close male colleague made my transition easier by visiting and getting to know my children, always boosting my spirits with his good humour. The problem now is that while I was grateful for his friendship, he's been hoping for and expecting more. When he raised this recently, he almost disbelieved that I had never realized his intent. I was mortified. He said I'd been “using ” him and that it's time I stopped playing the innocent woman whose husband left, when I'd long been aware that my marriage was beyond fixing.
Added to my guilt feelings about my friend, my teenage son added a new element to my situation. It happened when each of the children were invited to close friends' cottages for a weekend.
I took the opportunity to go with a girlfriend to nearby wine country for the same period. It was refreshing and fun with lots of ambience and plenty of flattering men around.
But I came home to a disaster. My son and his friends, realizing no adult was home, found a reason to take a lift home on the second day and held a party that afternoon and evening.
Neighbours later informed me about the noise. My garbage bins revealed the empty beer bottles. I now realize that I need to rethink what it means to be living as a single and dating while divorced. Your advice, please.
Mapping A New Lifestyle
A Your role with your children hasn't changed. Think of it as the business of being a parent who's divorced. It doesn't mean you can't date or have time with friends at adults-only gatherings. If your ex-husband is involved as a parent, scheduling safe opportunities for you to be away from the children is relatively easy.
As before, you still need to be aware of the factors now affecting your children: Choices of friends, social pressures, teenage issues regarding growth spurts, hormone changes, moods and challenges, etc.
It's as complex as the work that you regularly handle at a job, but has further-reaching effects on your children and you.
Recognize that early dating with new people is a form of socializing, part of the process of adjusting to divorced life.
Divorced daters need to keep a reality check on who they are at their core: Adults with past experiences in love and disappointment, who still have major responsibilities to children who need their guidance and care.
Together, you and your husband should tell your son the difference between asking permission to have friends over with a parent on site versus secretly arranging for underage, unsupervised kids to drink alcohol with the dangerous possibility that even one partygoer might be driving.