agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR ABBY: I am a 42-year-old divorced father of two. I have had a girlfriend, "Dawn," for about a year. She has met my kids, but she's still uncomfortable with the "situation." She has concerns about me having been married before, such as having experienced many of the firsts she has yet to enjoy.

Dawn doesn't like being in my house because I had it when I was married, and she says my kids remind her of my past. She says she doesn't want to share me with anyone, including them.

When we're alone, we are absolutely phenomenal as a couple. We love and care about each other deeply. This is causing a tremendous amount of stress on us, and neither of us knows how to handle it or what to do. Please help. -- TWO'S COMPANY IN ILLINOIS

DEAR TWO'S COMPANY: Forgive me for being blunt, but you need to break it off with this woman before you waste any more of her time or yours. You may be crazy about Dawn, but your first responsibility must be to your children, and she has made it clear how she feels about them.

You may be phenomenal as a couple, but there are more people involved than just the two of you. She needs to find someone who has no encumbrances, and you need to find a lady who has a greater capacity for love than Dawn appears to be capable of.

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Man, is there something in the water lately? This is the second letter in like a week from a single parent that essentially amounts to, "my partner doesn't want to have anything to do with my kids; what do I do?"

THIS IS NOT A HARD QUESTION. I admit that this is easy for me, because I never felt any great need for a romantic partner (I have often told my spouse that it is proof of how much I love him that I overcame my inclination to be a single cat lady), but I can't think of a single person or thing that I would choose over my child. And any person who doesn't respect and understand that is not a person I want to be around.

Thiiiiis. Like what the shit dude. Also what the shit, lady? You want no past, don't go for guys with kids! Did he, like, keep it secret until they were already together or something? If not, what is wrong with you?

I cannot imagine having this even be an issue. Granted, I already have a "love me, deal with my cat" policy, so my children would go without saying. (And anyone who thinks men would be different has a low opinion of fathers."

I'm going to grump about the last line. Just because two people aren't compatible due to life situations doesn't mean either of them is incapable of love. And I just heart the implication that Dawn should sacrifice her own wants and needs because LOVE. *eyeroll*

The relationship is not going to work out. Neither person is under an obligation to force it to work. Move on and end of story.

I agree that Dawn should not sacrifice her wants and needs for love, but I don't think Abby implied that she should. Abby didn't say that the couple should stay together and Dawn should learn to fake liking the kids. She said the opposite: that they should split, and Dawn should find a less encumbered partner who can meet her wants and needs.

It's one thing to acknowledge that a relationship isn't going to work and move on. If Dawn had recognized the problem and ended the relationship, that would have been fine. It's a completely different thing to pressure a father to distance himself from him children. That's despicable, so I don't feel much sympathy for Dawn. I think Abby is absolutely correct that the LW needs a partner with a greater capacity for love: somebody who can love both him and his children. Maybe Abby could have phrased it without taking a jab at Dawn, but like I said, I can't feel much sympathy for Dawn.

Yeah, with you. If you can't stand kids, the loving thing would be to break up with a partner who had them. Dawn's lack of love isn't about being unable to handle the kids, it's being the kind of despicable person who tries to make a father choose her over his kids. That's bullshit and I'm cool with judging her over it.

If the LW were talking about, say, how Dawn's career ambitions means that she doesn't want to be a stay at home mom to his kids, I would totally agree with you. But I think that wanting a father to cut off contact with his children is a rather indefensible stance, above and beyond being merely neutrally incompatible.

Reading the other comments, I think I read less into the line "she doesn't want to share me with anyone" than everyone else did. Which is probably an indication that I got it wrong, and I'll accept that. But the way I saw it was less that Dawn is actively trying to break up the LW and his kids, since he doesn't really give any examples of stuff she did--rather, that she's expressed these feelings to him. I totally didn't come to the same conclusion that she has taken steps to try to cut them off from him (which would, yes, be despicable). And there is the possibility that if this has been going on for a while, LW was feeling pressure in that direction even if she didn't explicitly say more than that.

Anyhoo, it's purely a matter of interpretation of a poorly-described situation on the internet and I agree with the sentiments of everyone else if the facts are as they're saying they are, so I'll leave it at that and step out here.

The detail about the house says to me that Dawn seems to be very possessive, and I would run.

I feel like I have reacted very differently from everybody else; my first read on the letter was that the kids were adults, or at least late teens, or at least ... not in a position where the LW has substantial custodial/caregiver responsibilities? (Though now I reread, I'm less sure of my original interpretation.)

I dunno, Abby's "your first responsibility is to your children" struck me as a big assumption to make. If the LW does indeed have substantial parental responsibilities, then Dawn's discomfort with them obviously means they're incompatible (and it's just unreasonable enough that I think she's unlikely to rationally get over it). But if he doesn't, I don't see that Dawn's incompatibility with his kids would automatically be a dealbreaker (although her possessivness might be).

Maybe I'm projecting: my boyfriend is a 40-year-old father of two teenagers; the two in question live with their mother, and my bf sees them once a month, and for various special family occasions. In actuality, I quite like his kids and am happy to hang out with them once a month, but if I were uncomfortable with them, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker and I don't see why it should be.

Edited 2014-09-25 14:18 (UTC)

(Icon directed at Dawn, not you ;)).

I dunno. I'm older than the LW, and I only see my mother 3-5 times a year, but when I do, we stay in her house. If she had a partner who was uncomfortable with my presence and possessive of her time (of which I get very little), it would be a problem for me. And if his kids are older, there's a great big potential problem looming in the future: grandchildren. Maybe her attitude will change and she'll be thrilled to be a "MeeMaw," but if it doesn't, let me tell you: small children are simultaneously very, very sensitive to adults who don't like them and very, very unable to understand why and just let it go. Is Dad ready for every holiday to become a fight between spending time with Dawn and getting to see his grandkids open their presents/hunt for eggs/find the afikommen? Being a grandparent is one of the great rewards of parenting ;).

I know I'm biased because my daughter is the most precious thing in my life, sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, but I just can't imagine accepting a person who actively tried to keep me away from her, which is what it sounds like Dawn is doing.

I don't see anyone in the discussion faulting Dawn for not wanting to be a custodial parent. But her "I don't want to share you with anyone, even your children" goes a lot further than that -- it sounds like she wants him to not have contact with his children. Even 20 year olds need the occasional phone call or email from their Dad.

If you were uncomfortable with your boyfriend's kids, what would your solution be? Not visiting at the same time as they do seems to me to be a an example of a reasonable solution; asking him to cut off contact with them does not.

(To say nothing of grandkids down the line, as Cereta mentions.)