When should you tell a potential partner your intentions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm imaging sitting down at the coffee shop for the first in person "get to know you" meeting and the first thing out of her mouth is "I want to remarry and have more children!" then she looks at me expectantly. Uh, OK then!

Not necessarily on the first meeting, but yes, this needs to be brought on early on. If you have same reaction you mentioned above, then you’re the wrong person for her and she has saved a couple of months of her time. It takes 1-3 months to decide whether to be exclusive with someone and being this up, totally ok in 20’s and early 30’s where a person still have 1-2 decades. At 39, she has 3-6 years at most. She needs to find someone who knows what he wants and what he is looking for, not someone who wants to experiment and let things flow naturally.

If you expect a man to commit sooner than 1-3 months to "let's get married and have kids", you're not being reasonable. Even if he is looking for a wife to have kids with, it takes longer than that to determine if she is suitable for him as a wife and mother. Any guy that commits to this plan faster than that is, furthermore, not a good choice because he thus demonstrated poor judgment and extreme lack of prudence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think this is as weird as some people are making it out to be.

Even in my 20s I talked to dates about what I wanted in my future. Things line wanting to get married and have children, parts of the country where I wanted to live. The big difference is that back then the time line didn’t matter. It was NBD if a guy said he never wanted children because it felt an eternity in the future.

The only difference for OP is that now, it matters.

Which, by the way, is her problem, not the problem of any man she meets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm imaging sitting down at the coffee shop for the first in person "get to know you" meeting and the first thing out of her mouth is "I want to remarry and have more children!" then she looks at me expectantly. Uh, OK then!

Not necessarily on the first meeting, but yes, this needs to be brought on early on. If you have same reaction you mentioned above, then you’re the wrong person for her and she has saved a couple of months of her time. It takes 1-3 months to decide whether to be exclusive with someone and being this up, totally ok in 20’s and early 30’s where a person still have 1-2 decades. At 39, she has 3-6 years at most. She needs to find someone who knows what he wants and what he is looking for, not someone who wants to experiment and let things flow naturally.

If you expect a man to commit sooner than 1-3 months to "let's get married and have kids", you're not being reasonable. Even if he is looking for a wife to have kids with, it takes longer than that to determine if she is suitable for him as a wife and mother. Any guy that commits to this plan faster than that is, furthermore, not a good choice because he thus demonstrated poor judgment and extreme lack of prudence.

Pp, it’s not getting the guy to commit to marrying OP and having a kid with her. It’s finding out that marriage and kids are within the realm of possible for him, and to ascertain that this is what he is ultimately looking for in a partner. No need for op to date and find a guy is suitable, just to find out 6 months down the road that actually his divorce was too traumatic and he does not want marriage, has 1 kid and does not want to repeat the journey again, or wants marriage and kids in 10 years time (which does not work for OP).