Once you reach a certain age as a single, you may have children of your own or you may not have children, but perhaps you are meeting people to date who do.  This definitely makes dating more challenging and possibly very rewarding at the same time. 

In today’s dating advice for women and men, let’s look at dating from each perspective as we explore these very prevalent relationship issues.

Dating As a single parent…

Finding time to date can be an issue.  Between work and your children, that leaves little time for personal time, let alone dating.  That means you have to be very efficient with your time. 

It helps if you have a support system – either friends or family that would look after your kids while you go out.   Many single parents have their kids every other weekend, so they can plan adult activities for when they are solo. 

A lot depends on the age of the children.  Younger kids are more pliable than older kids to accepting a new person in their parent’s life.   Often times, relationship issues develop quickly as the children may struggle with acceptance of the new person in their parent’s life.

There is the perspective among single parents that they are less selfish than those people who don’t have kids because they have to focus on others and not only themselves.  

The comments that I have heard from my single parent clients are:

“The person I am dating has to accept me and love the entire package- children and all.”

“ I really need the person I am dating to be flexible and understanding because I can’t always control things when it comes to my kids” 

“I wait awhile before I introduce my child to the person I am dating.  I want to make sure that it’s serious.  I don’t want my child to get attached and then have to deal with a loss if things don’t work out.”

The benefits that the single parent gets from dating are having an adult companion and someone who can offer emotional support.