When Mommy Or Daddy Dates

By Amy Dickinson

As a divorced woman over 35, I'm well aware that my chances of marrying again are roughly equal to the probability of my being taken hostage in a terrorist incident. O.K., I know that statistic has been debunked, but from where I sit, it still feels true. Ten years after my divorce, I'm beginning to think I might actually prefer being taken hostage to any more dating. "So," I'd say to Osama bin Laden, "you come here often?"

Dating the second time around can be awkward and painful, especially when you're reduced to asking your three-year-old, "Do these pants make Mommy look fat?" I'd like to blame my dates, of course, but their only crime is that they show up. I'm the one with the problem. I have become ridiculously picky and demanding--I once rejected a guy just because he used Cremora in his coffee.

Raising children alone and trying to forge a new relationship with another adult are at opposite ends of the spectrum of human experience. Any mother who has reflexively reached over and cut her date's meal into toddler-size pieces knows she has a long distance to travel between Happy Meals and nights of passionate abandon. And fathers who hire a baby sitter in order to get out for an occasional blind date--aware they will have to pay twice for the evening--realize that being "out there" isn't as free or easy as it was the last time they were single.

Those of us single parents who date inevitably carry the burden of our previous experiences, and the ex-spouses and kids in our lives can make it feel as if a whole crowd of people is looking over our shoulder. The stakes can seem impossibly high as we wrestle with a very natural instinct to build a new nuclear family. We want to improve on the family that failed and reclaim that hopeful picture of husband, wife and kids we once had in our head.

Given all these complexities, it's a triumph for any of us ever to leave the house. But that's exactly what we need to do, actually and figuratively. Lois Nightingale, a clinical psychologist in Yorba Linda, Calif., notes that dating is an adult experience and advises parents to leave their children out of it. She recommends against bringing a casual date home to spend the night. In fact, she suggests that parents refrain from introducing their dates to their children until a firm relationship has been established, if only to protect the kids from prematurely developing an attachment to another adult. This may be the one thing I've done right as a dating parent; I've never involved my daughter in my romantic misadventures. The policy has paid off, I think, since she still seems to have a favorable opinion of me. But then, I use real cream.

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