Divorced dads with kids under 18 shouldn't date women without kids

[Anonymous]

The title says it all. Women need to stop trying to make this work, especially if they're under 40 and want kids.

Any woman without kids can NEVER understand a dad's relationship with their kid.

These divorced dad with kids get star struck by a younger woman who shows interest in them. But they need to steer clear of these situations though because they're almost always doomed and will cause you tremendous tension as you try to be a good dad while being a good partner to the child-free woman. Even if you get married and have kids with her, the rest of your life is going to be a struggle as you figure out how to balance your first and second families.

[Anonymous]

All generalizations end up being wrong. There are always cases where they are not true.

I don't know why you felt the need to make an idiot of yourself tonight, OP.

[Anonymous]

I met my second wife when I was 42 and she was 34. We married 3 years later and we have a child together. I have 2 kids from my previous marriage. The fact that I had kids when we started dating didn't bother her. In fact she would always ask if I had something going on with the kids before asking to spend time together. She prioritized them before me. I couldn't let her go she was a catch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my second wife when I was 42 and she was 34. We married 3 years later and we have a child together. I have 2 kids from my previous marriage. The fact that I had kids when we started dating didn't bother her. In fact she would always ask if I had something going on with the kids before asking to spend time together. She prioritized them before me. I couldn't let her go she was a catch.

You got lucky and good for you for recognizing she was a catch. A childless single woman if she can convince her divorced boyfriend to relinquish custody to the ex wife she would do it in a heartbeat . Don't underestimate a woman's desire to have a man all to herself even if he has to abandon his children from a prior marriage.

[Anonymous]

This is dumb.

I personally feel women without kids who are, say, under 43 should not waste time dating men with kids. They should aim for men without kids. It’s so much simpler. So I’m a little with you on that.

But women who are mid forties and over without kids are a better dating option than women with kids for divorced dad. I started dating my husband when I was 43 and had decided I was not going to worry about finding someone to have kids with anymore (I was always on the fence anyway - I was pretty sure I would be a very anxious pregnancy woman plus I don’t do well with sleep deprivation). He has kids and I think the kids are better off with him dating me rather than someone with kids or someone who wants kids because we can prioritize his kids. We don’t have to worry about blending the kids or about which kid gets more resources or different rules. We rotate everything around his custody schedule etc. I’m not a mom, so I am more hands off about rules etc than I think a mom would be inclined to be. He’s the dad, he’s a good one, he runs the show on that front, and I’m an extra person in the house who is like a quasi aunt.

So your initial statement is overly broad, IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is dumb.

I personally feel women without kids who are, say, under 43 should not waste time dating men with kids. They should aim for men without kids. It’s so much simpler. So I’m a little with you on that.

But women who are mid forties and over without kids are a better dating option than women with kids for divorced dad. I started dating my husband when I was 43 and had decided I was not going to worry about finding someone to have kids with anymore (I was always on the fence anyway - I was pretty sure I would be a very anxious pregnancy woman plus I don’t do well with sleep deprivation). He has kids and I think the kids are better off with him dating me rather than someone with kids or someone who wants kids because we can prioritize his kids. We don’t have to worry about blending the kids or about which kid gets more resources or different rules. We rotate everything around his custody schedule etc. I’m not a mom, so I am more hands off about rules etc than I think a mom would be inclined to be. He’s the dad, he’s a good one, he runs the show on that front, and I’m an extra person in the house who is like a quasi aunt.

So your initial statement is overly broad, IMO.

And no he is not an every other weekend dad. When we started dating he had fifty fifty and now he has seventy percent.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes it works well when child-free people date people with kids because they're not trying to juggle two custody schedules.

In my experience, people should date other people with similarly-aged kids. I have a teen and my BF has two younger kids and it is really hard. I all of a sudden have so much freedom and he has none. I'm sympathetic to a point because I've been there, but it's really hard sometimes because we're just at such different life stages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The title says it all. Women need to stop trying to make this work, especially if they're under 40 and want kids.

Any woman without kids can NEVER understand a dad's relationship with their kid.

These divorced dad with kids get star struck by a younger woman who shows interest in them. But they need to steer clear of these situations though because they're almost always doomed and will cause you tremendous tension as you try to be a good dad while being a good partner to the child-free woman. Even if you get married and have kids with her, the rest of your life is going to be a struggle as you figure out how to balance your first and second families.

Maybe women your age without children should stay away from men that are divorced with kids. You will never understand why kids come first.

[Anonymous]

"Maybe women your age without children should stay away from men that are divorced with kids. You will never understand why kids come first."

I'm OP and this is my exact point.

[Anonymous]

I'm OP and I agree with this.

"But women who are mid forties and over without kids are a better dating option than women with kids for divorced dad. "

I wrote a few things that intimated this, but you're right that my OP came off as overly broad. A 42+ child-free woman who is comfortable with not bearing her own children could be a good match for a divorced dad with kids still living at home, so long as she can tolerate the situation.

But it's hard to have kids living in your own home that you can't discipline and try to shape if the BF and/or his ex-wife allow lots of unruly behavior. I know someone whose post-divorce live-in fiancée broke up with him, purportedly because his kids were not respecting her home and the rules she set whenever he wasn't around. (For example, they kept taking food into their bedrooms and they got ants and mice.) According to her, they'd talk back and ignore her when he wasn't home but would pretend to be little angels when he was around. I know these girls and I believe the ex-fiancée. Not many women who have lived on their own for 40+ years are willing to put up with that sort of BS in their own home, nor should they.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Maybe women your age without children should stay away from men that are divorced with kids. You will never understand why kids come first."

I'm OP and this is my exact point.

I apologize. Your title is misleading. Your title is placing blame on divorced men for wanting to date women without kids.

[Anonymous]

This is silly. Often the issue is the ex-wife is unhappy when Dad remarries, even if she's the one who cheated, already remarried and is jealous. It takes both parents to make a situation work. Mom's can go on and have more kids or not make her kids the priority too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm OP and I agree with this.

"But women who are mid forties and over without kids are a better dating option than women with kids for divorced dad. "

I wrote a few things that intimated this, but you're right that my OP came off as overly broad. A 42+ child-free woman who is comfortable with not bearing her own children could be a good match for a divorced dad with kids still living at home, so long as she can tolerate the situation.

But it's hard to have kids living in your own home that you can't discipline and try to shape if the BF and/or his ex-wife allow lots of unruly behavior. I know someone whose post-divorce live-in fiancée broke up with him, purportedly because his kids were not respecting her home and the rules she set whenever he wasn't around. (For example, they kept taking food into their bedrooms and they got ants and mice.) According to her, they'd talk back and ignore her when he wasn't home but would pretend to be little angels when he was around. I know these girls and I believe the ex-fiancée. Not many women who have lived on their own for 40+ years are willing to put up with that sort of BS in their own home, nor should they.

This is a parenting issue and has nothing to do with anything beyond that. And, why should mom be able to get remarried and not dad?

The two parents of these kids are the problem.

[Anonymous]

"This is a parenting issue and has nothing to do with anything beyond that. And, why should mom be able to get remarried and not dad?"

Are you responding to this thread or another one? Nobody here is talking about divorced dads with kids not getting married. This is about the problems that result from divorced dads in relationships with women under 40 without any kids. A divorced dad with kids should stick with women who already have kids, and perhaps with women who are beyond the childbearing years who are willing to tolerate living with kids that they aren't allowed to parent and discipline.

If you don't think that the parenting issue can poison and destroy a romantic relationship between a divorced dad and a new woman, you're deluded. Unless the divorced dad is willing to basically disengage from parenting his kids from the first marriage, the new wife is stuck with his parenting practices, good or bad, along with his ex-wife being part of her life.

[Anonymous]

"The fact that I had kids when we started dating didn't bother her. In fact she would always ask if I had something going on with the kids before asking to spend time together. She prioritized them before me. I couldn't let her go she was a catch."

I'm curious about how you met and were able to get to know each other well enough to decide you wanted to become serious (and that she could give up the precious little time a woman has with a divorced BF who has to balance work, his kids, and a GF) if you spent so little time with her. Did you work together or something? Live next door to one another??? This seems like a very rare situation, so perhaps there were some special circumstances? And did you spend time with her along with your kids right away instead of waiting the one year that most people on DCUM say is the minimum before introducing them? Generally, a woman dating a divorced dad has maybe 1 weekday evening/week with a man and maybe a lunch squeezed in during the week, and a Saturday dinner every other weekend at most (since dad is usually attending kids' events on Saturdays whether it's his weekend or not). It's hard to imagine how she would give up those few hours and somehow the relationship would still grow.