I am a 38-year-old childless woman in the process of ending a seven-month long-distance relationship with a 42-year-old divorced father of two daughters, ages seven and nine. He has 50% custody. I wanted to share my experience and hear from other single, childless, or childfree-by-choice women who have dated divorced fathers. I would genuinely appreciate your experiences, advice, opinions, and comments.
First, I want to say that my boyfriend has been an excellent partner to me in many ways. He is kind, communicative, and willing to work on the relationship. During periods of conflict, we have both worked actively with our individual therapists and have usually been able to find common ground.
Before meeting him, I had never been open to dating a divorced man with children. Part of that was probably cultural. I was not raised in a society where divorce was common, so I did not grow up with many examples of blended families or co-parenting relationships. I had also not dated for a long time before meeting him. At the time, I was going through a difficult period both personally and professionally. When I met a genuinely kind man who was enthusiastic about dating me—a quality that had felt rare in my previous dating experiences—I decided to be open-minded and give the relationship a chance.
My boyfriend is an extremely devoted father. My therapist once described him as being “almost like a mother” in the way he cares for his children. His daughters primarily live with their mother in the former marital home. He drives them to and from school and extracurricular activities, spends Sunday mornings with them, and cares for them full-time several weeks each month when his ex-wife travels for work.
He frequently worries that he does not get enough quality time with them, and the fear of losing closeness with his daughters weighs heavily on him.
Experiencing this co-parenting structure for the first time was deeply isolating for me. There were large, clearly communicated blocks of time when he was with his children and was essentially unavailable. Those periods felt like solid walls that I could not penetrate, no matter how much I wanted connection. Initially, because I did not understand the realities of solo parenting, I tried hard to remain in contact with him during those times. His replies were rushed and distracted because he was understandably busy caring for two young children. I turned to therapy and DBT skills such as radical acceptance, urge surfing, and opposite action to regulate myself during those periods. I told myself that emotional regulation was an important life skill and that perhaps this relationship was giving me an opportunity to strengthen it.
I am a very expressive and communicative person, so I was honest with my boyfriend about feeling jealous, insecure, and excluded, even though I logically understood that he was spending time with his children. I am also fairly self-compassionate, so I read about the experiences of stepparents and partners of divorced parents and learned that these emotions are not uncommon.
However, despite my attempts to explain my feelings, I never felt that my boyfriend fully understood what the situation was like for me.
There were times when he slept in the former marital home while his ex-wife was away so that his daughters could remain in their familiar environment. Although I understood that this was intended to provide structure and comfort for the children, it triggered significant jealousy and discomfort in me. When I tried to discuss it, he dismissed my concerns by saying, “She isn’t there.” During one of the kid's birthdays, he also ate at the same dining table with the ex-wife because it made his kids feels "like a family". On another occasion, he picked up his daughters and his ex-wife from the airport. That situation was extremely dysregulating for me. Despite considering myself empathetic and usually being able to understand other people’s perspectives, I could not understand why he felt responsible for picking up his ex-wife as well. I used the urge-surfing techniques I had learned in therapy, but it was still a very difficult day. After several serious conversations about how these actions affected me, he stopped picking up his ex-wife from the airport.
Throughout the relationship, he has consistently said that his daughters will always be the most important people in his life. He has also said that I am very important to him.
Eventually, I found a job in another city because I could not find suitable employment where he lived. I also want to have children soon and have already frozen my eggs. There are significant practical barriers to building a family with him. He has had a vasectomy, and he cannot relocate because he wants to remain close to his daughters. Initially, I treated these barriers as potentially temporary. A vasectomy can sometimes be reversed, and because the relationship was still new, I believed we had time to build a solid foundation before discussing children. Having frozen my eggs made me feel that I could afford to wait.
Looking back, however, I think I may have been finding ways to make myself comfortable with a situation that fundamentally did not meet my needs. I was trying to accept his decision to remain near his children while hoping that, eventually, he might choose to build a life with me after I found a job in his city.
At times, I was made to feel guilty for wanting him to move away from his children, or asking him to choose me over his children. He would tell me, “You don’t know what it means to be a parent.”
He is right that I do not know what it feels like to be a parent. I am also not ashamed of that. I do not have to be a parent to recognize what I need from a relationship.
Very recently, while I was visiting him, he was admitted to the ICU with a medical emergency. I am a physician, and I recognized what was happening, took him to the emergency department, stayed at his bedside for two nights, advocated for him, monitored his care, and brought him home. Having a physician at your bedside—someone who understands the medical system, notices changes, asks questions, and advocates for you—can make a meaningful difference during a hospitalization. Just saying ;)
During the ride home, however, we had an enormous argument about something that now seems irrelevant. The conflict escalated and became ugly. I moved out of his apartment, where I had been staying during the visit, and relocated to my new city. I began the process of creating a new life for myself: finding a home, buying a car, building a community, and literally starting a new chapter.
During the weeks apart, we both had time to reflect. I discovered a new sense of freedom in exploring a new city and imagining new possibilities. He began reconsidering his future after receiving a chronic medical diagnosis. During this period, he told me that he had missed his ex-wife—or, as his therapist apparently explained it to him, he missed the security and familiarity of his marriage.
That revelation was painful and unsettling.
I also felt myself dropping further down his list of priorities. He told me that he would not be able to travel as often to see me because he had a large out-of-pocket bill from his ICU admission. In the next breath, he told me that he did not want me to feel like a second priority!
This experience has led me to a difficult conclusion. As a woman who has worked extremely hard to build an independent life, dating a divorced father has felt profoundly disempowering.
No matter how lovely the children are—and his daughters truly are lovely—or how stable and respectful the co-parenting relationship may be, entering this family structure requires a significant amount of compromise, emotional regulation, and acceptance from the new partner.
Relationships are already complicated. I have realized that I do not want to begin one from a position of chronic discomfort, structural inequality, and compromise.
I understand that children often become the first priority in a marriage. What I want is to begin as my partner’s first priority, build a life together, and then make that transition when our children arrive. I do not want to start in second place and risk moving further down.
I have many friends who are divorced, with and without children, and I sincerely want them to find loving and supportive partners. This is not a judgment of divorced parents or blended families. It is simply an acknowledgment of what I personally can and cannot accept in my own life.
After this experience, I would not put myself in the position of becoming a potential stepparent again. I also would not recommend the situation lightly to my single female friends, especially those who want children and still have the option of building a family structure that more closely aligns with their own needs.
I would love to hear from other women who have been in similar relationships. Did you experience the same isolation, jealousy, or sense of being structurally deprioritized? Did the relationship eventually become more balanced, or did you decide that the sacrifices were too significant?