If there’s one thing I know about being a single mom blogger, it’s that dating and relationships are hot topics. Over my 15+ months of being a single mom, I have read plenty an opinion on when it’s appropriate to take the risk of introducing your children to a significant other. I was never looking for a “right” answer — since none exists — but it was very beneficial to see how others have handled this situation.
Now, I feel like throwing my own experience out there for others to read so that someone could potentially benefit from it.
Anna technically met The Yooper before we started dating — heck, even before we started casually hanging out this summer!
If I want to be really cutesy, I could say that she first heard his voice when she was in the womb. I was 2-3 months pregnant and still living away from home near my college. The Yooper had come to my school for some event, and we hung out and talked for one hour when he had some down time.
Her first “real” encounter with him was when she was about 10 1/2 months old, because we ran into him twice while we were out and about town. At 14 months old, she met him for a third time. I invited him on a spontaneous trip to the beach, knowing that one short afternoon with a stranger wasn’t going to have an affect on Anna.
After that point, the period of unofficial dating began, and I didn’t bring Anna back into the mix. It just worked out that she was either gone with her grandparents or asleep when The Yooper and I hung out.
This week, though, things changed, and she got to spend time with The Yooper on two different occasions. Both were just casual get-togethers out in public, and I had such a fun time seeing them finally start to interact. Anna, like most 15-month-olds, is very shy around strangers and needs some time to warm up, but this past week was definitely the beginning of her warming up to The Yooper 
And then, at the end of our second time together as a group this week, I kissed The Yooper goodbye right in front of Anna’s face — I experienced my own old-school Ms Single Mama moment. (Yes, my very first thought after it happened was “omg! I read about this in a blog post!”).
The Yooper and I have been officially dating for about a month now, and there are three main reasons behind my decision to let him interact more with Anna:
- Trust. I need to trust that The Yooper will not suddenly turn into some douchebag and cause any emotional damage to me or Anna. We’re going on 8 years of knowing each other, and the time we’ve spent together so far this summer has shown me that he is the same person I knew all throughout high school. (The only thing college changed about him was make him even more like the person he already was.)
- Anna’s age. If The Yooper and I broke up at any point in the next year or two, there would be a very good chance that Anna wouldn’t remember one bit of our entire relationship. We have almost no memories of our lives from ages 0-5 (there might be a vague memory or two, but that’s about it). Of course, a traumatic event could still cause damage to her in the long run, but that’s where my point about trust comes in.
- The Yooper’s big move. He’s moving to a neighboring state next month, and I’ll be planning most of my visits to him over the weekends when Anna is with her paternal grandparents. His time with Anna will continue to be limited throughout the fall, and then… well… at this point I have no idea what comes next after I graduate in December. By the time he gets to see Anna on a more regular basis, I’ll have a better idea of how long-lasting our relationship will be.
And there you have it. The Yooper and Anna have met and are starting to get along. It’ll be exciting to see where things go from here
