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#2869110 10/22/19 10:50 AM
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ballast Offline OP
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ballast Offline OP
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I respect all of you and your opinions. That said after dating sunshine girl #2 for about 2 months I asked my IC about when I should/could introduce D4 to her. I don't remember her exact words, but the reply she did not concur with the need for 6months plus of waiting. The "wait 6 months" seems abritrary to her and to me and then we talked about how unrealistic that would actually be especially given the holidays, or family events or whatever. The intent I get, it sounds good, protective, but it simply wasn't going to happen.

Then the more I got to thinking about it I realized no matter how much I do or how long I wait there is no way I can protect D4 from heartbreak. Now that's not to say I'm trying to rush it and for sure as well I would be a terrible example if I had a revolving door of women coming in and out of her life, but I have no intentions of that being the case. Also and especailly from this site, we all know at any time for any reason and in many instances no reason that we can actually understand, people leave each other. I could wait 6 months, a year, whatever think sunshine girl #2 is the one...and then she could leave. There is no certainity that after any amount of time and no matter how much I think a relationship is gonna last that it's guaranteed to do so and D4 at whatever age would have to deal with the loss of that person. A lady I had dated before my current had an 8yo and 6yo, they were wonderful children, very smart and she had introduced them to 2 other men prior to myself after her divorce. After she elected to stop seeing me, I've seen pictures of them on social media smiling, enjoying their lives, no signs of trauma from the heartbreak of me not being in the picture anymore. And then with my GF...she has a cousin who got married after 2 weeks!!! of knowing her husband. She and I both looked at each other incredulous thinking about how ridiculously fast that seems, BUT they have been happily married for 17 years now. Here I am having been twice divorced after dating each for 18 months before proposing and then to have neither of them last past 5 years. Bottom line there are no guarantees nor certainties with relationships and heartbreak is inevitable in life.

I value the help and support that each of us provide to one another on this site. It's truly a very valuable thing the support shown to many people going through terrible times in their life. Sometimes, however, the advice that I read I find to be overly cautious and/or too cynical to agree with. I wonder at times if given how badly many of us have been hurt, we've erred too far in our "don't trust...give it lots of time...etc" that we don't celebrate, encourage and enable people when/if they meet someone new/start dating. I just lean more towards the less cautious, give it a whirl, see what happens side of the house.

In this instance I know I chose to go a different direction from the prevailing advice. I do not discount the logic of what most of you have said and God knows I don't want D4 to experience any more heartbreak than she has too. I simply decided in my situation that the time was right for me to introduce D4 to Sunshine girl and it will be on me good or bad to deal with the consequences. I'd prefer not to discuss any further the rightness or wrongness of my decision especially as it's already been made. I hope that as I respect each of your opinions as friends on this site that each of you can respect mine. I very much do take your comments, thoughts into my decisions as I've found this site to be a great support. I only hope that given my stance I'm not ostracized for having a contradictory point of view.

All the best...

-B


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Hi Ballast. I agree with much of what you are saying. In terms of introducing the kids to someone, I think it really depends on the situation...in particular, the vulnerability of the kids. In my case, my kids are very connected to their dad. They aren’t looking for a father figure and I’m not looking for anyone to be that for them.

My kids met my boyfriend pretty early on in a very casual, nonchalant kind of way. He doesn’t have kids and hasn’t been around a lot of kids so things were a bit awkward at first but now it’s been six months, there is a pretty good level of comfort on both sides but still not the kind of connection where I would worry very much about them being highly impacted if we broke up. Their primary concern would be my emotional state so if I looked okay, they would be okay too.

My kids are also turning 12 in December so are getting to that adolescent stage of caring way more about their peer relationships than their mom’s love life. Now if they were younger and their dad had disappeared from their lives, I would be much more cautious as I would worry about them becoming overly attached.

So, in short, I think every situation is different and depends on a lot of factors. I also think that you wouldn’t want to wait too long as you would want to know how your SO is around your kids. If there is a big problem, you are going to want to know that before you get overly attached. I would not want to be with someone my kids didn’t like or someone who had too many opinions about my parenting or was irritated by the presence of my kids. I also would not want to be with someone who is more interested in my kids than in me.

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Meh...so D4 became D5 on Saturday AND she was with me along with lots of my family. We had a wonderful time. I just dropped her off at day care though. Custody and sharing aka "LOSING" time with her...same ol' hating it.

I had asked exWW twice if she wished to see D5 on her birthday, but WW declined. Then Saturday afternoon on her birthday, exWW texted me asking me to wish D5 a happy birthday for her. Ummmm...you could have called her to wish her that or you could have even seen her had you wished. Later that night I received an email from WW about a future Christmas party and some other randomness...all of it either matter of fact or already agreed upon. It was as if WW felt the need on the day of me having D5 and it being her birthday that she needed to interject herself for whatever reasons. I don't get it, but thankfully I don't have to. Maybe someone here can explain it. The absolute best feeling around this weirdness is that I know I have absolutely zero feelings for WW or that she has OM now. I'll be dealing with this randomness I guess all my life, but I know shes completely in the past of my life feelings wise.

-B


Me:34 W:40
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Well...

Been happily seeing the same lady for almost 6 months now, but now she wants to come to talk as she feels we're "off". Normally I would be panicked by the "hey I want to talk" line, but honestly I'm not anymore. The truth is while we've been going along rather happily since we met, we've never had a talk about us. Call it the honeymoon phase/whatever we've never done that to date and honestly I think it's beyond time that we do so. To me we're off not because we're off but because we've never had that type of talk between us.

I get the sense in her priors the men she's been with have never been able or wanting to talk like that with her. I do worry about my willingness to do so making me seem less manly in her eyes, but I also truly wonder if she's never had a man willing to talk about the relationship, does she even know how to express what she's feeling/needing. So yeah I get the thought of maybe this means the end, BUT I also know very well that if two people don't frequently communicate about what they need in and from a relationship, then it's never gonna work anyway. I'm hopeful that she does want to continue seeing me and will open up with me so that we can resolve what's bothering each of us and grow closer, but if she's not willing to put the work in, then I'll wish her well and move on along as there will come a time when some other lady will be.

Best to all...

-B


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Yo B you know the drill by now. Listen, validate and if she ends it wish her well and say call me if you change your mind. Walk and never contact her again.

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Yes, LH I do. It would be disappointing if she did end it without us getting our feelings out there and then giving it some time for both of us to try and improve things, BUT it doesn't have to make any sense to me I know. Like I said if at the first time we talk about US she breaks us up, then she was never the right lady in the first place. I'm hopeful and open to understanding her feelings and I as well even while I'm happy to be with her, have felt things are off as well. Bottom line there's been basically silence between us when it comes to the talking/working/understanding about us and if we don't start changing that, then we have no chance long term anyway. Really hope she feels our relationship is worth working on, but nothing I can do if she doesn't.


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How did the talk go?

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Funny thing happened LH...after she had said she wanted to have the talk, she never mentioned it again. If there was ever an example of how we say to people that "that is how she is feeling NOW, but it might change later" well this was that. Thing is when I have felt her feeling these "off" feelings, they've always come after a weekend or period of time when we've not had much physical contact. What I mean is when we just hang out, don't kiss/hug/hold hands much or cuddle on the couch is when she starts to feeling this way. And this is even when we're still having sex.

One time we were talking about this topic and I said something to the effect of "hey I was holding your hand" and she replied with "yes, but not for long". What I'm getting at is AND what I have realized I don't do well is that ladies need/want more physical touch kissing/hugging/cuddling etc than I realize AND I've never really associated those things with initimacy/connection/etc. Weird part is that I completely love and want to cuddle her, but find myself at times not doing so. Maybe she's not feeling good/tired/whatever and instead of going over and holding her it's like I'm thinking if she wanted that she would come to me.

Anyway I think I've identified the main issue for why she was feeling we were off. AND this past week while we were together I've been more proactive in kissing her, hugging her and cuddling her into me. I was talking with a girlfriend at work and she was like "when we're feeling bad we love having you wrap us in your arms, it makes us feel safe and we can relax and be feminine. also when you don't want to hold us we feel like you don't want us and/or that something is wrong" A learning experience for me for sure and I'm happy that these days when things come up in a relationship I can sense them and instead of her needing to tell me what's wrong, I at least feel I have a pretty good idea myself. I think her primary love language is physical touch at least from what I know of her so far. Giving her more hugs/kiss/cuddles I think was the answer to this "off" conversation coming up. Being on here and working with my IC has really helped me to become much more aware as a man of how to understand her feelings and what I can do to help address the negative ones if they come up.

-B


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B,

Sounds good B. Why don’t you give her the Love Language book so you’re not guessing.

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