Dating the Single Parent

Here's a secret, there is no secret. But there are definitely things I did that I can attribute to helping me find love. There is no road map, but there are markers along the way that can point you in the right direction. 

When I was single, married people would ask me, "how hard can it be to meet someone?" I wanted to bitch-slap them on the spot. Now that I am married, I ask, "how hard could it be?" Before you bitch-slap me, push play. 

All my dreams came true and the guilt & shame grew! I have an untested theory that because we waited so long to meet our person we unintentionally take on guilt because we try and cram in all the experiences and moments we missed out on for so long. 

I have been mistaken for my son's grandma. I could be a mom to the other mom's a pick-up. I'll hit menopause before he graduates. And I love it! I love being The Old Mom! 

Timing is a huge piece to the puzzle of finding love! I've always believed this but it makes so much more sense to me now that I realize my husband would not have picked me if we'd met at a different time in my life.   

One of the hardest parts about finding love later in life is letting go of the way we always dreamed it would be. Some of the dreams we had for the way we wanted out life to turn out unfortunately die.  This was a tough episode for me to record. It actually took me numerous recordings over the last few months but I didn't want to skip it. There are things I wanted to address, I wanted to talk about even though it was so hard. 

I claim to be a planner. Nothing about my love story went as I had planned. It's beyond my wildest dreams! Even after my dream of finding love came true I still attempted to plan the next big moment and I'm so grateful that didn't go according to plan! 

It's no secret dating was a real struggle for me. I thought once I found my person I'd be on Easy Street and everything would be simple. The joke was on me! At 40 years old I decided to live with someone for the very first time! 

I crashed into a wall with this podcast this year. Instead of pretending the elephant isn't sitting in the room, I'm going to address it. I want to share with you why I got stuck this year and what I decided to do about it. 

Single parents need loving too! But I wasn't going to be the person to do it. I had a rule. I wouldn't fall for someone who already had someone else to love. Please know all the rules get tossed when you're dating someone who has a kid.