To preface, I do not have kids and I stood pretty firm on not dating anyone with kids for that reason alone. Parenthood never seemed appealing to me. I like my freedom. And kids are a huge responsibility. And it doesn’t stop at 18 like some people think it does.
With that said, when I met my girlfriend, she checked all the boxes and we got along really well. I thought, maybe it’s not as bad as you think it will be? I was scared for months to get serious because of her kid, but ultimately things progressed and here we are a year and a half later. Her kid was sweet and mostly well behaved but.. Definitely still a kid who needed a lot of time, affection and parenting.
Around the one year mark.. She started joking about them moving in with me in my house. I never really took it to heart because… It’s only been a year. There is no way I’m ready to make that decision right now. I kind of thought taking things slow with a kid is the right thing to do. But apparently not.
Over this past weekend, it was supposed to be our weekend without her kid. Quality time, dates, intimacy, etc. However it turned out that the kid had a melt down and didn’t want to stay at her dad’s that night and so.. My girlfriend had to go get her. In my eyes, yeah it sucked. We were supposed to have our weekend together. I seemed a little deflated and my girlfriend said, are you ok with that? You seem upset.
I simply said no, it’s okay just a little dissapointed. She said, well it’s my kid sorry you’re disappointed. I tried to further clarify and say, I’m not trying to offend you I was just looking forward to our weekend together.
She was still upset with me and left to get her daughter.
From that moment on, the argument has spiraled into something much more. She said if I’m not ready now for her child to move in, she doesn’t think I’ll ever be ready. I tried to stress to her than a year and a half is not that long when it comes to moving her and her child in. She keeps trying to say that she doesn’t want it to be tomorrow or next week, but that I need to really start thinking about it and come to a decision on if it’s something I want or not.
Which in a way, I do agree with that. However I don’t see the urgency right now… And I’m not appreciating the pressure on such a huge decision. Any advice or insight on how I move forward from this? Anyone else been in this situation?
6 comments
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It really doesn’t sound like you should be dating someone with a kid.
Time to sit down with yourself and be honest: will you ever want to live with the 2 of them? If no, you know what you need to do. If yes, you should think about a timeline. At year 3? Year 5? Once the kid goes to college? All of those are valid btw. And then you need to be completely honest about your timeline. She can decide if she is willing to continue the relationship or not.
I mean, you’re proving to yourself why you made the decision not to date a single parent in the first place.
It’s fine that you tried things out, it’s not a bad thing to test the waters and see if the reality might actually work for you. However, it seems as though it was clear early on that nothing had changed in terms of your reluctance to be a stepparent. At this point your girlfriend is (understandably) thinking about a future together, and it’s not a future you want. She’s not wrong for wanting an answer as to whether you can see commingling your lives at all. It doesn’t need to be right now, and she’s said it doesn’t need to be right now, but if it’s something you’re not even sure if you want *eventually*, then she’s telling you she doesn’t want to waste her time.
The urgency is keeping her off the market and not available to find somebody else if a future with you isn’t an option.
The urgency is knowing her child is getting more and more attached each and every day to somebody who may never be “ready”.
The urgency is if you decide this isn’t what you want, did you waste the time she could have given to somebody who wanted a family?
She is not just dating for her, she is dating for her and her daughter.
If it’s not for you, no shame in that, just let her know. If you are about it, then that’s great. You just can’t keep her in the dating category indefinitely.
“Definitely a kid who needed a lot of time, affection, and parenting.”
Oh, so like every single other kid?
YTA.