I felt that. I also cheered on the Olsen Twins in It Takes Two as they plotted to avoid an evil stepmother with elaborate schemes like spitting gum in her hair.
For one thing, gum is very hard to get out of your hair, but also because dating as a parent seems incredibly difficult in just about every way that something could be difficult. There are no guidelines for how and when and if! There are a lot of tough questions with no good answers. Do you wait it out? Break up immediately? I was a little worried about it at first, like is it not safe to include that on my profile, but as a male, it doesn't feel as dangerous as if I were a single mom and talking about my daughter to random single men.
I asked a number of my women friends this exact question before I put up a profile and actually got a variety of answers. But in the end, I felt like it was kind of deceptive to not include it up front.
What if we are having a great first date but my kids are a dealbreaker for them? A lot of women I've dated seem to value spontaneity and that's just not possible for me. Also, I don't get child support, so there's a strong financial consideration. Like I have to really like a woman in order to be proactive enough to get a sitter and go through that whole thing.
So the upshot is, I just don't date as often as I used to because my motivation has to be stronger to even get to that level. Third, I felt that I had to be careful about how [my kids might view] casual dating and wanted to model good behavior for them. I am on full-time mom duty every other week and the time away from any potential prospects has given me time to look at things a little more honestly and realistically.
