Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

ok this thread prompted me to reply to a couple of messages i let pile up, since i've been feeling fairly negatively about OKC. if only there were a similar thread for job hunting, since that is what i should really be doing instead...

or maybe i'll just update my profile...

my date has two little kids but i think parenting is hot and she's a hot parent and i work with kids so i figure it's something i can get by, besides since we're both divorced we got stuff to talk about

i went on a date with a child-haver a while ago -- she was pretty great, but it was fairly obvious that we were 'in different places' so to speak

In ten or fifteen years, my husband will be dead. Pretty much all of the people I date then will have teenage or older children. I'm not looking forward to having to deal with that.

what's wrong with kids? if kids didn't exist we wouldn't be here

tbh dealing with kids, or your ability to deal with kids, is a pretty good indicator of how you'd do in life's trying moments for some people.

i was the last good kid

Nothing's wrong with kids, I just don't really want to have to live around someone else's? And I want my own!

Shoot, when I say "live around" I mean "plan around and take into account in all/most parts of my life" not, like, live NEAR them.

wouldn't you have to do that with your own?

I don't have anything against kids per se, but they would almost certainly clash with my lifestyle i.e. being a lush. Presumably the people with kids have strategies for this.

World would be a lot better without people, if you ask me.

And to be honest, it's not actually kids I have a problem with. Most kids are fine. Their parents, however, are completely another story.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable to post: there is a huge gulf between people who have kids and people who don't have kids, in terms of expectations, priorities, all that kind of thing. (Or, rather if a person is a parent and those things haven't changed, they're probably a bad parent.) It's kind of a Catch 22, if parenthood hasn't changed them, I think there's probably something wrong with them. (It might be a sign that they are too selfish to change, in which case they would not make good relationship material anyway.) But since I have not had kids, I have not been changed in that way. So our heads are just not going to align.

This may not be theoretical much longer. I have agreed to meet a person who has kids. It used to be weird. Now it seems difficult to find people "my age" who do not have children.

I like children, but I prefer it when their families can take them home at the end of the day.

And I deal with "life's trying moments" by putting my head down and going into autopilot, which has fucked my life up something awful.

Yeah but they'd be mine--I would be at least 50% entitled to make decisions about parenting and stuff. Also I just have personal issues about someone putting their kids, who were born to another woman, first, before me. Even though I know parents are supposed to put their kids first, it's their job, it wouldn't be worth it to me to come second all the time. Everybody needs something different out of relationships, and that is what I need.

xp haha f hazel otm, although raising someone else's kids is a plausible way for me never to have to quit my vices for the time it takes to conceive, gestate, and lactate.

it wouldn't be worth it to me to come second all the time

you know this is going to happen to you when you have kids, right? part of having kids. a close friend of mine who has three kids said something like "having kids is basically sacrificing your life to make new ones"

It's also, like... I have come to term with the idea that I'm never going to have children. Someone else's kids might be the closest I get.

But I'm also an awkward child of a parent who acquired a new partner and had that person thrust into my life in the most awkward of ways, and I would not really want to do that to a small person.

tbh dealing with kids, or your ability to deal with kids, is a pretty good indicator of how you'd do in life's trying moments for some people.

For me, it's just that kids remind me of when I was that age and is thus uncomfortable and triggering. I'm fine with teenagers though.

Laurel, do you not want to live around someone else's kids who aren't yours (i'm assuming young ones) because you don't want their mom (oftencase his ex) around frequently, or merely because they're not yours? That is, if you were dating a guy you were really into who had full custody of a 3- or 4-year-old kid whose mother was completely out of the picture, would you have a problem with being a stepmom to a child who probably doesn't remember anyone before you?

xp I'm the awkward child of parents who were together for 60 years and should have split up after 15-20, and I wouldn't want to do that to a kid, either.

are you saying you'd rather not exist than be christine green leafy dragon indigo?!? :-(

i am always always afraid of turning out like my dad cause lord knows he made some big parenting mistakes but then i remember that i love my dad and he's my hero

warts and all

Yes but they'd be part of me, too! And I would have the same desire, presumably, to care for them at all costs. Someone else's? I kind of think they're always going to be a nuisance, if my reaction to my nephew and cousin's kid is anything to go by.

'presumably'?

I only have one close irl friend with kids and I have to stuff my irritation down when she cancels events or can't do things because of them. Doesn't bode well.

xp Oh who knows.

tbf I have friends who are overly involved in different sorts of organizations (publications, arts boards, public roles) outside of their careers and they're as apt to cancel or delay plans due to meetings running long or some sort of immediate issue popping up. It's really no different than friends with kids.

It's hard to say, like with a lot of dating stuff, bc you don't know what you can deal with until you find someone who makes dealing worthwhile.

Someone I know has been casually dating someone w 3 kids and a separated/ex wife still in the picture. It hasn't been going that well with cancellations and him trying to plan only at the last minute and not being there for her as much as she would like/needs, but all of those things could also be him being a bad person/date/boyfriend.

I'm the awkward child of parents who were together for 60 years and should have split up after 15-20, and I wouldn't want to do that to a kid, either.

Me too, and most of those 15-20 years were before I was born.

My feelings are nothing to do with whether my parents should or shouldn't have been together or should or shouldn't have separated - it's purely down to the idea that I think kids should have some choice in deciding when, where, how and how much they interact with their parents' new partners. And how quickly. Maybe this is down to my father's partner having extremely poor boundaries and massive control issues or my father having social ~issues~ but it makes me nervous about how I'd go about interacting with a potential partner's kids.

Hello, Jeremy Deller, why are you in my top matches?

This is just ultimately depressing because it's just like looking at this menu of all these amazing people who would never in a million years date you.

you know i feel weird saying this but i get extremely and parental, all the time! like even w/ random kids and shit, if someone is lost at the grocery store i'm on like orange alert

if the kid has one quality parent ... my ex-wife's dad married a single mom. he was from the middle east and she was from texas, he was a phd nuclear physicist (didn't want to get blown up by zionists) and she was an orphaned waitress who had left an abusive guy. he calls him dad, and people often think that he *is* his dad, because they have developed the same mannerisms and stuff. did he go through a crazy rebellious phase between, uh, 15-35? yeah, but kids do that w/ their biological parents too. i'm going to go out on a limb w/ science here but that connection is as much about time and proximity and groping towards "family" as it is genetics

That's exactly how I feel (xx-post).

obviously if the kids are shitty because the parents are shitty and that's the vibe then run like hell

Feeling protective of lost kids is the easiest part of that. I play with kids on the subways and give them my jewelry so they don't cry and make finger puppets at them and return lost ones on the beach to their parents, and take care of my neighbor kid when she's locked out and wrestle with toddlers and read to babies and stuff. I don't think it's comparable to raising them, though.

xp Yes, I'd rather not exist than have had my parents stay together as long as they did. They pretty much stayed together just because of me, and I've really done nothing in my life to justify my existence. (Actually, 15-20 years would have been enough to produce me. They were married in 1954, and I was born in 1970--16 years later.)

tbf you don't have to justify your existence to anyone, ever

a paper airplane's not comparable to an ultralight but you could build both w/ time and effort and i bet you'd be proud

I think that was kind of poetic

it didn't rhyme

xp I'm fully convinced "staying together for the kids" is the worst thing you could do for your kids. I could write a book about what it's like growing up between warring parents

xp also i stole it from gene wolfe's "shadow of the torturer"

I think "staying together for the kids" is one of those "well, I have this thing going, nothing else seems that great, this relationship blows, eh let's ride it out" things half the time

I actually convinced my dad not to leave my mom when I was 10. I regret it horribly, and I think about it at least once a week.

tbf, he had such strong feelings about it that he was able to be swayed and thought a 10 year old knew better than him, so I really don't think you were to blame

if a 10 year old, even if it was your kid, told you to jump off a bridge...

In my folks' case it was more staying together due to inertia and fear/dislike of being alone etc. than staying together for the kids. But yeah, my life would have been so much better had my parents divorced when I was 8.

xxp you know he could have decided for himself while you were talking to him, i wouldn't be so quick to judge yourself!

if you stay together for the kids and do the same shit different day that's evil

if you stay together for the kids and work hard on your issues for the kids and maybe negotiate a civilized separation w/ maturity for the kids that's commendable if not always successful

that sounds awful lee!

What I'm trying to say is, itt sure, we're talking about what we want out of relationships.

But if you are going to be dating someone with kids, it is actually quite important what those kids want. Not only what you want.

I'm going to stop trying to explain this now.