Do not introduce children to anyone you are dating until you have known them for six months. The reason is two fold; one is that you do not want them to bond with someone who could be a short term relationship and the other is that you do not want to use your children as a bonding tool.

In my case I told my children that I had met someone I liked and we agreed on the six month timeframe together.

My children are high school or older, and my thought was to eliminate anyone who couldn't get along with them, or the menagerie that comprises my household which is a little crazy, but crazy that I love.

The kids are not only OK with the idea of me dating, but very supportive. They have all enthusiastically commented that they would just love for me to be happy. They appreciate being able to meet him, and not only that, they relish the reversal of the "mom" role as they ensure that I am also living up to all of the boundaries that I have set for them and their boyfriends. I haven't handed any authority over to them, of course, but I do try to set the example for them of the same behavior I demand from them.

I certainly wouldn't have allowed any bonding with younger children, but I thought that at their older ages it would be natural for them to be introduced. Also, as long as my children are minors, their needs, safety and stability will always come first, before any new husband, even if it means no husband while they are minors.

I'm not picking up any warning signs about him having any designs on my children, though. I did not reveal much about anything personal - or even that I had any children (or daughters) at home - until our conversations had evolved quite a bit.

But I fully agree that it is my job to always watch out for my minor son and daughters with any male in their life, and always keep my eyes open. And so I have done so, and I think they would tell you that perhaps I have done so even to a fault (in their opinion). I have always told them that the man they LEAST expect - pastor, teacher, family friend - could be a danger to them. Always, always be on guard; do not be alone with men, etc. etc.

I felt that some of the posters were had become vicious with comments about how I was as bad as my xH in his behavior.

That was completely repulsive, hurtful and unfair. Few of my accusers had any clue about the hell I had been through due to his actions, and I felt their comments were hateful. I certainly in no was culpable for his actions or contributory whatsoever.

I didn't even want to try to defend against that, and having already gotten the answer to my question about whether it's normal for single guys to have teenage sleepovers, I didn't want to spend any of the small store of emotional energy I had available to me at the time defending against spiteful comments.

SusieQ, I appreciate the very caring way you voiced your concerns. Thank you.

I learned a lot about protecting my children through the incident with Steubenville. As mentioned in a post above, they think I am overprotective/over-warning. However, if Steubenville could do that to his friend's daughter, to the daughter of someone who knew and trusted him, anyone could do it to any daughter. It was a very hard life lesson, and I have been very diligent in and focused on protecting my sons and daughters with that in mind ever since then.

I do understand that new boyfriends - or even new husbands - should not be left alone with minor daughters. In the event that we would be married prior to the girls moving out to college, we will do some logistical planning around that. He owns his own home about 1.5 hours away, so that may be an option to plan with.

I feel the only outstanding question in your thread is what would Dr. Harley say about exposing the old situation, which I feel that during my close observations over the past 14 years has not been a danger. Is it a danger now that I am not observing? I don't know, but have no recent indications that it is. I will do as you request and send an email.

So they are nearly gone. All the more reason for not introducing him before you have dated for six months.


Of course they are and they sound like great children. But they do not have the judgement of an adult and neither should they be expected to. Remember too, that they are watching and will imitate your relationship behavior.

The reason why Dr Harley suggests the 30 dates is not just about finding 'the one'. It is also about approaching dating with the right mentality. Dating is hard but it gets easier with practice. Fresh out of a marriage, we tend to come to the relationship game with too much of a buyer's mentality. It is really important to start as a freeloader and then become a renter. Freeloader to renter should not happen until the sixth month and more serious conversations are expected. Migrating from renter to buyer should not happen till marriage.

Remember that your feelings about this person are an addiction, no different from the addiction of a wayward (except that you are obviously perfectly entitled to have these feelings). Let me ask you this; how much time have you spent as a freeloader in this relationship?

How old are his children? What is the reason he says he's estranged from his children?

About 2 weeks.

We had 1 to 2 hour conversations each evening, multiple substantive emails each day, and had spent 2 full days and an evening together before I realized that he was very special, and the contrast between his strengths where Steubenville's weaknesses became glaringly (and wonderfully) apparent.

At that point I started to fall for him.

After that, we continued our 1 - 2 hour conversations on the phone each day, exchanging emails and continued seeing each other for the full day each Saturday until approximately a month into this he came with me to visit my sister.

During the visit, I saw even more very special aspects of his character. Both my sister and BIL came to like him very much. He showed a lot of wisdom and grace in how he handled situations.

He is a very deeply believing Christian, evident not only by the way he conducts himself but also by his ready ability to get very deep into Biblical concepts and knowledge. He clearly spends a substantive amount of time studying the Scriptures. Now I know a lot of frauds do, too...so this is just one of several indicators that I have been observing about his character.

The overwhelming message I'm getting from everyone is that yes, this is going too fast. I appreciate your advice and will defer any decisions until I have known him for 6 months, and even then, will come back to this thread with an update and any concerns first.

I really value the wise counsel of experienced voices for this decision. I know that I'm the least objective person in this conversation, and I appreciate everyone chiming in with more objectivity.

Yup too fast and I suggest slowing down the contacts to maybe once a week or so. That will help.

And until you are completely satisfied that you understand how he became estranged from his own children, guard your heart. You do know how unusual this is don't you?

His children are the same ages as mine.

His divorce is for the emotional abandonment/abuse from his wife who was unwilling to change or sincerely engage in the marriage. Yes, I know that I need to keep my eyes wide open with respect to his perspective and verify it.

There's this old phrase "takes one to know one", and having been married to an abusive husband the several things he has recounted could have been a page out of my own marriage. But I am certainly staying aware until the veracity of his account is confirmed.

He filed?

Thank you.

Yes I do know it is unusual, which is why I have my eyes open. Part of his wife's abuse included saying derogatory things to their children about him. Additionally she taught his kids to disrespect him; for example when he asked the children to do chores she would interject for him to do it himself.

It looks like he is breaking through to a daughter incrementally and I may be able to meet her soon. I feel that will help me verify his perspective on that.

Yes. He realized that to continue on as things were would only hurt his children more.

Then how do you reconcile this with your faith? You said you two shared the same faith and that your church would not accept your divorce to Steubenville if you had filed so you wanted him to file. New guy now has an unacceptable D if that is the case and a remarriage will not be accepted.

I'm a wee bit concerned that he may have cast himself as a knight in shining armour. Not totally, just something to bear in mind while assessing.

Men who are looking to profit from unhappy situations are just so common. However it is also totally normal for a nice guy to sympathise with a bad situation.

Personally, I wouldn't have confided serious problems in someone this early on. I think one of the best tests is not to show blood, lest you attract sharks. Of course that doesn't mean he is one.

I would shore up boundaries around guys you don't know well and who are still married. I don't say it's wrong to be open with people but holding back just makes it easier to see ahead, you know?

I think you will be able to tell with close watching. I'm just concerned that this friendship has snuck up on you both, which is maybe a boundaries issue, or a targeting but one you can easily identify if so and tweak.

Why does your H have any kind of access to your home? You need stregnth and peace in order to be ready to date.

We need to have a dedicated thread for Indie Specials. This is so wonderful and so true :-)

You are awesome, Black Raven. That was way back in another thread. Impressive!

One day when I was wrestling in prayer about my marriage about 2.5 years ago, I felt very firmly that God finally, after 20+ years of praying about what to do with my failing marriage, revealed a text for me to apply to my situation. It was in Isaiah 28 where God instructed the Israelites that they had made a covenant with death - that the bed would not be long enough or the covers wide enough to ever find comfort - and that they were to take a stick and beat it out. Within the limitations of the filter of my faith, I didn't know how to do that, so did nothing.

Well, things only got worse and I sought help from MB here where everyone told me to separate from Stuebenville. This was a shock to my system - particularly as I associated separation with divorce, something I thought I could not initiate. Well, things only got worse and my health started to crash from stress. Still I knew God wanted me to fix my problem; still I didn't know how other than to follow the MB forum advice. (those threads were deleted prior to Steubenville coming to the board). So, after a bad situation, i asked Steubenville to separate for 6 months while he worked on his anger and we dated & spent UA time working on our marriage. This did not go well.

Enter the thread that you were reading titled "A difficult conversation".

I was able to endure until Steubenville left and filed. However, I always thought about what God meant with the text, and how I could have done that. I knew He meant for me to get out - but how? Clearly God didn't mean for someone to stay in a marriage that would drive them to the grave with stress. It was a mystery but I lost my curiosity about it since it no longer applied.

Well, enter the "new man" into my life. Same situation as me, but he didn't get the fluke (the other person to file). This drove me to a lot of soul searching. Clearly it was very personally hurtful for him to hear that I didn't think he was eligible to pursue me (or anyone) because he didn't get the fluke. He didn't become offended but he was very taken aback with hurt. His very beautiful, calm and careful composure through POJA'ing a topic so personal and devastating to him was what caught my attention that he was a very special person.

I had to admit to myself that God shows more grace than my viewpoint allowed, and that God was willing to show that grace to me but I wouldn't take it. In searching the Scriptures and researching Christian research on the topic, and in aligning them with my experiences as well as what I am certain was God's instruction to me, I came to realize that my viewpoint was too narrow, and narrower than the viewpoint of God himself.

I came to understand the references throughout the Bible of how to separate yourself from an angry person and to protect yourself did not say "unless that person is your spouse". I came to understand that the woman's submission to the husband was not unconditional, and was not to be offered at harm to herself. I came to understand at a deeper level a lot of things.

In a way I think God introduced me to this relationship to close the loop of education that He had started with me but I had dropped.

So, the short story is, this forced me to face my own convictions and realize they were too narrow.

And in the process, I started falling in love with the beauty and tenderness inside this man's heart.

Thank you, Indie. My sense is that both of our feelings became sincerely and genuinely carried away too quickly. I think a 6 month coasting period will help prove that out.

My oldest son, DDIL and DGD2 live with me. Sometimes Steubenville comes to visit them, which I truly didn't mind. I'm out from under his control, I was able to release all of my bitterness and resentment towards him and it really didn't matter if he hung out in my house to be with the kids or not (that just gave me more time with them too!).

However, recently I've started to want more distance so I don't need to be self conscious about him arriving unexpectedly and I'm in my PJs, or the day I caught him going through my mail, and now certainly this Thanksgiving incident after which I asked DS23 and DDIL to not invite him over anymore. Also, since he has realized I'm dating someone he has kept more distance from my home (and stopped going to church with us - we used to pick him up at a park and ride on the way).

Now that this has evolved, I've realized that I am happier with more distance from him and want to keep it that way.

The "new man" is not interested in having Steubenville hang out there, and other than a pre-arranged doing Christmas with the kids together this year so neither of us had to miss it (which the "new man" has said would be OK with him this once since it was already set up - BUT that Steubenville better not disrespect anyone in my home), so Steubenville's visits will become a thing of the past.

In light of what happened with my DD15 over Thanksgiving, I'm not sure I should have Steubenville over for Christmas anyway, especially if they are not reconciled.

Sunny, thanks for posting this, I totally have all the same questions for my own situations, and they have been answered, but it really helps hearing the same things again. I put off my wedding to my first post-divorce boyfriend to the 2 year mark, and learned some things at a year and a half that I would not have known otherwise.

And then in retrospect we had a serious value clash from the beginning. I am a very involved parent, and my ex boyfriend hadn't seen his son in years. He told me he had gone to court to fight it, but that was actually pretty far from the truth and there was a lot of evidence for that that I was overlooking because of that chemical thing. The disparity between the picture he painted and what the facts were, the little facts that we knew, were so drastic that my mom stopped letting him come over. Still, with all this discord, I didn't see through it until after we broke up.

Things are going great with my current boyfriend, and at 6 months. We were talking future plans, and he talked about getting married a year in. But I know, if this is the man that God intends for my partner, then a two year wait will only bring more clarity. "For God is not a God of confusion but of peace." 1 Corinthians 14:33

We do have a few members who got married quickly, and are very happy. So I think it's okay to look at this as a yellow Slow flag instead of a red Stop one.

You are so soon out of your divorce, and I would have liked to see you go through the holidays without a partner, to experience that, to see God's grace, comfort and protection whether you have a partner or not. But maybe you already had that experience from the past.