Hello everyone, I'm hoping maybe there's another guy out there that's been through something similar and can give me some advice...
I'm a 33-year-old single father with a 6-year-old daughter. I was in a relationship with a 25-year-old for the better part of a year, until things went south around last October. We've continued to talk since then, but she's never been able to make the jump back into a relationship with me.
We were talking earlier this week, when she tells me she has 'rules' she made for herself, which really boiled down to, "I can't be with a guy who has kids." (Although we dated for months while she knew I had a daughter.) She admits that she broke this 'rule' when she started seeing me, because, "I was different, mature and treated her right." She continues to show signs of jealousy, and gets upset when she thinks I'm ignoring her...although calling her out on these tendencies usually leads to her denying it. During our last talk, she said, "It's nothing to do with your looks, personality, or anything like that."
The root of all of this narrows down to the fact that I have a child...
I've been a single parent for five years, and I've never introduced my daughter to another woman I was seeing. I've always wanted to keep that for a time I knew she was comfortable meeting my daughter. The woman in question had never been around my daughter in a smaller setting. There were a couple of times we were at the same place, but it was in a large crowd and I kept my daughter's distance from her, because I knew she had some hesitancy towards it. But as the months passed, it felt like we were truly getting to a point where her meeting my daughter might happen.
I understand how people grow up with visions of what they want life and love to be. But sometimes love comes in a totally different capacity than you ever imagined, and not when you expected it to arrive on your door. It wasn't my plan to be a single parent, but that's a reality for me now. It wasn't her plan to fall in love with me, I'm sure, but it happened. She says, "I want you in my life, but we can only be friends." The problem with that is, we're not friends. There's too much between us to be just friends...
I know of her past relationships and know she's been treated poorly in the past. I know she's scared about being involved deeply with someone, and the issue of my child is a roadblock for her. But is there any way to make her see that we can have a healthy relationship...or even a marriage and family, with me having a prior child?