To be clear — I agree with the original man PP: men care about YOU, the other things are ALL negotiable. It will look different for every person, but in general, I agree and think he is correct.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Childless man here. Women are not commodities. The reality for most of us is, if we are into you, we do not care about your circumstances.

We don't care about your job. We don't care about your kids. We don't care about your master's degree.

We care about YOU. DCUM will say I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm a man, but it's the truth.

Ladies, find this man's number. Because almost no other man agrees with him. I'm a PP who was a temporary single dad. I wish everyone had an equal chance in dating, but it's just not true. Replace this guy's words with, "We don't care if you're short," "We don't care if you're bald,", "We don't care if you can get an erection." Because that's the magnitude of importance for a woman with kids. He IS correct about job and masters degree. 99% of men couldn't care less about your employment status or education. It's all about physical attractiveness, meshing of personalities, and NO BAGGAGE (baggage could include psych problems, family problems, KIDS, etc.)

The question, as always, is "care about... for what?"

A man who is looking for a ONS or FWB will not care about your job, kids, education, only about your physical attractiveness. In that scenario, looks are necessary and sufficient.

A man who is looking for an LTR or marriage will care about your job, kids, and education - at least, if he has any sense at all - because he will not want to get saddled with a trashy gold-digger no matter how hot she is. He will still require physical attractiveness - however, in this scenario, looks are necessary but not sufficient.

You are the only one assuming people make the choice based on looks alone. I have a wonderful male friend who was a total catch. He fell head over heels for a widow with 4 kids that he ran with. They're married and he has adopted them as his own.

Your reading comprehension is poor. Look at the bolded section again. It says, very clearly, that men looking for an LTR or marriage do not just care about looks. And your example of a "wonderful male friend" supports exactly that point. He obviously liked that widow for more than just looks.

Literal Larla,

You’re splicing and dicing. I wasn’t arguing that point - as you correctly acknowledged. Did you keep reading the paragraph that you deleted in your reply? Go back and read it again in case you missed it. You need to take my full statement and not just cut out and criticize the first paragraph pointing out something that at best could have been described with different phrasing, assuming you work for dcum as pro bono grammar police. You removed the entire second paragraph and tried to dismantle my larger point that one mans trash is another mans treasure. Baggage looks different for everyone. So maybe they will care, maybe they won’t. You can say that about anything: kids, cars, careers, kin, kindness, coin... All traits are things that you can/cannot care about and the formula for your relationship success will be different.

My reading comprehension is not poor. I considered my conclusion kinda rudimentary. I led with an example that addressed what was implied in PPs post. Itsa fricking anon board not a report or school paper

To this day I feel guilty that a single mom paid for a babysitter so I could go on a date with her and it led nowhere. What a waste of money for her

As a single Dad I try to avoid dating divorced women - kids or no kids - until they have been divorced a couple of years so that they have found their emotional footing. Listening to a recently divorced women talk about the divorce process, her awful ex and that she has had to suddenly adjust to a different lifestyle is a buzz killer. I’m sure this holds true for women meeting recently divorced men.

OP, married female here but I wanted to share some info you might need. Try to get full legal custody if possible. You want to be able to make decisions for your child without having to work with an unstable ex for every single of the millions of decisions you'll face for your child. There are so many decisions you'll face as your child gets older. It might be hard to comprehend now. Plus you want to be able to move wherever you want without factoring in the need for proximity to your ex to enable joint custody. I wouldn't say this if you had a non-abusive ex.

If he balks at paying more child support due to not having 50/50 custody, then let him off the hook. Having you and your child tied to the whims of an abusive man isn't worth the money, even if it means living very frugally.

That said, if he seems stable enough one day, then try to enable short visits with you present. Meet him for lunch etc. and take it from there.

Regarding your original question, I don't think you'll have a problem with the right types of guys. It's good that your child will weed out those who view children as a negative thing.

Anecdotally, I have two male cousins who are very successful, and both of them married women with children while they were single childless guys. One of them had more children and the other thinks he hit the jackpot by getting to skip parenthood but be a grandparent. They're both extremely involved grandparents now. The latter one used to swear up and down that he never wanted kids but then he met a woman with teenagers and all that was out the window and he fell head over heels. Now they take one set of grandkids every weekend due to circumstances and they love it.

I think you'll do fine once you're ready. Take care and hugs to you.