Okay, so I have met a guy that I like. Now, I want to meet his eight-year old son, and I’d like him to meet my two children. I am very proud of my children, I love them very much. Of course, I want my acquaintances to know these two lovely creatures.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” you may ask.

Well, there is no problem for me. Quite the contrary. It would make my day to meet another young person, especially someone so important to this guy.

I imagine that this guy would like to meet my children. It would make his day.

It’s the dear children that must be considered. They are the ones with one parent in one house and the other in a different one. They really don’t need a third person to triangulate. They simply are not equipped at their ages – three, eight and eleven – to grapple with the uncertainty of whether the new guy and I will stay together.

Introducing one another as “just a friend” is not an option because the eight- and eleven-year olds will sniff that lie out right away. Even if we have no physical contact, they will figure out they we are sleeping together.

“And so?” you may ask.

A conservative would jump right in here and yell about the extramarital sex thing, and he/she had a point forty years ago. But, times have changed. What’s the figure? You might know it. Let’s just say that the vast majority of Americans don’t have a problem with sex before marriage and sex after marriage.

I don’t understand how Dr. Laura expects divorced people to abstain from sex until their kids are eighteen years old and out of the house. Either she is patronizing her audience by failing to mention that level-headed people can take good care of their children and date without harming the children. Or, she is a cruel person that actually believes that a normal person can simply switch off his/her libido, and then switch it back on at a future date.

I fall squarely into the group that knows that it’s normal and natural to want intimacy before a marriage, in a marriage and after it.

That said, my kids do not need to know about my love life.

My having an intimate relationship with someone very much does matter to them. In their young minds, such an arrangement would mean that maybe the new guy and I as a couple, a little closer to the husband/wife ideal relationship, might/could/would become the new gravity point in their lives. Therefore, the relationship with the remaining parent shifts in some imperceptible but certain and disquieting way.

And they really don’t need to go there, not now, not until I am sure that the partnership between me and a new guy is serious, strong and lasting. Asking them to assimilate a new member to their family is a lot. It ought not be another exercise in hope and loss.

By Vicki Inglis

Labels: Vicki Inglis

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