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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am divorced and have two small kids.  I can't imagine letting any unrelated man live in my home with my daughters.

That said, my unemployed, uneducated, homeless poor, overweight, bald ex-husband has been taken into a very nice home by a single working mom with two kids.  She doesn't seem to be worried at all about having an unrelated male in her home.

Desperation perhaps?  I dunno.  But your ex might be right that he will be snapped up.  [/quote]

So you do not ever plan to remarry, then?

I am the PP up thread living with my boyfriend, not currently engaged. I can't imagine letting any man in my life, not to mention my vagina, who I wouldn't trust around my daughter. But way to assume that all men are child molesters.[/quote]

What happens if the man living with you never proposes? You going to move out? Have a baby with him?

I'm not PP, but am definitely open to marriage. That said, I'm not going to let my child experience the "break up" should it not work out.[/quote]

If our informal engagement does not turn into a formal one soon, I'd start a conversation with him about it. If it turned out that his feelings had changed, he would move out. As for DD experiencing the break up, given that we have been together for a couple of years and she's known him for most of that time, she would "experience" our break up whether he lived in his own apartment or not. I would try to minimize the impact on her and certainly would conduct myself as gracefully and cordially as I did when divorcing her father, who remains a friend.

Listen, I'm not saying that the OP's ex isn't a loser. I'm also not saying that the PP's ex isn't a loser. Everyone's situation is more complicated than we reveal here (like, for example, I know the reason that I didn't get a ring in December is that we had an unexpected car expense in November). I just don't think that the oft mentioned axiom of "He can meet my kids when he gives me a ring" is a good idea at all. How could you possibly commit to a man without at least a glimpse of what his relationship with your child would be? How can you think that by not moving in with a man, you will protect your child from experiencing a break up? It's how we react to these situations that is important, not the nuts and bolts of the situations themselves.[/quote]

I'm the single dad PP - to me it's not about waiting until an engagement in order to meet the kids.  For me, I don't want to expose my DD to women who might only be short-term relationships.  i want her to see and know what a real, loving relationship is and what that entails.  Once I'm serious with a woman - and realistically this means being in an exclusive relationship for probably at least 6 months just to due to logistics of a demanding career and parenthood, dating is not a typical every weekend type of thing - then I would introduce her to my DD.  and the flip side is also true in that I would not want to her kids until I know we are serious (not just monogamous).[/quote]

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I just don't think that it's universally true that every single dating parent will take 6 months to establish that they are serious enough about a relationship to introduce their child into it. For me, it was 2 months of "dating" someone I'd already known for a couple of years platonically. For my ex, it was about a month of dating a woman he fell head over heels for. Their relationship did not work out romantically, but I don't think that he did lasting damage to DD by introducing her to a woman who was that important to him. Everyone's standards are going to be different. It's not out of the question that someone's standard might be "move my kids in with this guy who isn't that serious about me". [/quote]

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