Source: Reddit
I think I have a different dating history than most people my age. I was married for two years from age 19 to 21 to my high school sweetheart. We had an amicable and quick divorce, which was finalized a month after my 22nd birthday.
The marriage allowed both of us to learn a lot about ourselves. He wanted to take on a potentially very rewarding, but also unstable career in filmmaking. The life of short term gigs involved lots of traveling, long days, stress, and giving your life up to your boss 24/7 was not a situation either of us wanted to bring children into and I strongly wanted to have a stable family and just be a homebody.
After my divorce I got a job as an administrative assistant at a commercial real estate firm while I was studying to get my real estate license. I met my boyfriend when I was at an industry event with my boss and coworkers. I immediately felt bad for him because he said he was a single father to two daughters and that their mother had died of cancer two months ago.
A week after we met, he asked me out for coffee and I declined, thinking it was too soon after his wife died. But we continued talking over text and the phone and two weeks later I agreed to go out to dinner with him. He told me that he and his wife were in the process of a divorce but that he had moved back into the marital home for the final month of her life to take care of her and the kids. He said that it might seem like he was rushing into stuff but the marriage was over for a while but the divorce couldn’t exactly go quickly when one party was ill and he had kids to think about.
I met his kids for the first time two months ago because his older daughter was turning 8 ( his younger daughter is 3.) He introduced me at the birthday party as his friend. His late wife’s sister, who hand made the decorations and baked the cake for the birthday kind of gave me a CIA background interview line of questioning until my boyfriend dragged me away, but I understood her position.
My boyfriend has a development and property management firm centered around shopping plazas, and I have been shadowing him a lot. Our romantic relationship is also great- he is very affectionate, always big on displays of affection, and very spontaneous, while also being a stable family man. When I told him I wanted to have kids young and hopefully have one of each, a boy and a girl, he said he supports my goals and would love to have kids with someone who would be such a great mother.
But the only thing that made me sort of uncomfortable was when he’d have the kids’ nanny spontaneously bring them to surprise me. Not him, but just me specifically. Once we were going into a a mall his company managed after hours and when I met him at the door he said surprise and I saw his two kids were there. He then said I could just shadow one of his staff who was doing a walk through of a vacated store and take the girls with me for some quality time. And then he just left us and his three year old, who had easily taken a liking to me, got cranky because she was obviously tired and his older daughter looked like she didn’t know what to do.
After that event, his former sister in law texted me and told me about the kids’ daily routines and their likes and dislikes. She also asked me on multiple occasions to remind my boyfriend to respond regarding letting the kids go out with her for an afternoon. But she also admitted that she wished that I would not have been introduced to the kids yet.
Since our relationship has progressed, I have spent time at my boyfriend’s house, sometimes sleeping over. He has insisted on meeting my parents and asked me if I moved in before or after my ex husband and I got married. He has also talked a lot about his far out future plans and asked if he fit into my future plans.
I have gotten close to both kids, especially the younger daughter but I was in for a surprise when yesterday his younger daughter called me mom. His older daughter said that her dad said that her dad said they should call me mom.
When I asked my boyfriend about the mom thing he said that he’d be very happy if they considered me their mom and that his younger daughter will not remember his ex wife that much, if at all. I told hi that this was a lot to take in, and he told me that this didn’t mean that I had to think of them as my kids yet, and that he still wants my one boy and one girl family to happen, and that it would with him I wanted it.
What do I do?
His former sister in law will likely hear about this eventually. My boyfriend is busy and often cannot speak with her so most of the communications about the kids have somehow fallen on me. I really want kids, and I really have fallen in love with this man, but this is a lot. I can interact well with his kids, but I tried to tell him that I didn’t have the skills to jump head first into mothering, and he just dismiss it and said that when I have a baby of my own it will come so natural and quickly and I won’t have any problems with children, but until then, it is just trail and error.
