The divorce rate in the US has been at 50% for the past 10 years or more. The blended family is a social norm. About the time I turned 30 years old I realized that the likelihood of finding a life partner who had not been married was diminishing. Somewhere between 30 and 33 I accepted that my heart would have to be open to many situations. Many people in the dating scene will not date someone who already has children. I believe this is part of the reason for the number of families that are "mine, yours & ours". Singles don't want the burden of taking on children when they don't have any of their own. Thus many divorced single parents have to look to other divorced single parents for companionship.
Singles hold out for the fairytale we were made to believe in as kids. I don't believe there is ONE person for every ONE person. I believe in our lives we have free will. It is our personal decision to be open and committed to love. A decision to find someone that matches our level of commitment. If I had decided not to date a man with children I would not have found the wonderful life partner I now have.
Sometime in my early 30's I had decided that I would be open to dating a man who had children. This is not an easy decision, many complicated situations and decisions have to be handled delicately. The dynamics of dating a mate with children are extremly different then dating another single no strings person. Does the person have shared custody? How often are the children in the custody of your prospective mate? Are there pending custody issues? When is your relationship significant enough to be introduced to the children? Does the person want to introduce you? What will your role as the single unattached partner be in the existing broken family? So many issues that each has to be handled based on the situation. There is no magic formula for these situations, each one has it own unique blessings and curses.
In my experience the hardest part of dating a parent is that you are in a relationship with more then just one person. This means you are giving your emotional energy, time, and hopes not only to the partner you choose but also to his/her children and all the baggage that comes with it. Thus if/when the relationship falls apart, you are grieving the loss of not only the adult that you started the relationship with but with the children that you built a relationship with as well. It is a side of the equation that most people don't pay attention too. They will warn parents about introducing a partner to the children too soon for fear of hurting the children, but what about the partner who has opened up her/his life to the children? As a former single unattached dating partner, the pain and grieving that is normal when a relationship doesn't work out is multiplied by the number of persons you have given your heart too.
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