According to many single parents, finding love again when you are a separated parent is far from obvious. Stuck at home in the evenings, overbooked between managing your career and organizing to the millimeter to ensure your role as a single parent ...
It's hard to find the time and energy to rebuild a love life when you're a single mom or dad.
The material obstacles are undeniable:
- find a babysitter (or be available only every other week)
- recreate a social circle, get out of isolation
- ask yourself where and when to meet new people (if you are surrounded by couples for example)
Internal psychological brakes are also involved:
- take time to mourn the loss of a previous relationship
- guilt, and the temptation to sacrifice one's love life, intimate life, for that of a solo mother or father
- the fear of another failure
- or the fear of impacting his children
Here, we suggest you take stock, quietly, to help you know where you are, what you want and don't want anymore 🙂.
Because yes, getting back into a long-term relationship is not an obligation, but a choice. And no, love is not a choice. But if your wish is to rebuild your love life, it is possible to give yourself the best chances to succeed.
And when it blocks, when it doesn't work, an introspection, a work on oneself can help you to move forward.
In some situations, being accompanied helps to step back, take a step aside, and deconstruct old patterns or limiting beliefs.
Single mom or single dad: accepting the separation to move forward
Tame the loneliness, manage the daily life
Before thinking about a new meeting, you should take the time to get used to your new life, to get used to an alternating or full time custody.
Organize yourself to manage the numerous daily tasks, sometimes without relaying, and without flinching. The post-separation period therefore requires a time of adaptation, more or less long.
What's next?
Beyond the management of daily fatigue, one must learn to tame loneliness, to know how to feel good about oneself. But also to mourn your former relationship, to heal your wounds, to overcome what can be experienced as a failure.
Reconstruction begins by taking time for yourself, without the urge to meet others, and enrolling in activities that make you feel good. Theater, art, sports, whatever. Thinking about you and only you will help create a new life for you, and help you find yourself 🙂
Finally, these activities can also be an opportunity to build a new social circle, the old one being sometimes only composed of couples (which can make you feel a certain "gap"!).
Take the guilt out of it: no, you're not just parents 🙂
Ha, guilt! The eternal companion of parents, and even more so of single parents...
"The idea that we should sacrifice ourselves while the children grow up is a fallacious argument and a detrimental excuse for the entire family. By doing so, we are giving the children a responsibility when they are not asking us for such a sacrifice."
This is what Sophie Cadalen, psychoanalyst and specialist in couples and love relationships, suggests. It is tempting, after a break-up, and under the pressure of "making sure", to put one's child at the center of one's life, even to create a fusional relationship with him/her.
However, no one is asking you to be a perfect mother, nor to make a cross on your life as a woman. For your balance, and that of your child, it is even essential to know how to be more than just a mother (or a father of course) 🙂.
A child is neither a refuge nor a barrier to a love life.
Take the time to rebuild yourself: love yourself!
A separation, a divorce, and even more so a widowhood, are life events that can deeply destabilize your confidence in yourself, in others, and in life.
If reorganizing your daily life, and taking the time to mourn your relationship are essential, it is necessary to find yourself in depth.
We sometimes hear that we attract what we "vibrate", and that to be happy together, we must already know how to be alone. This time to take care of yourself, restore your self-esteem, can avoid throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a "band-aid relationship".
Learning to love yourself, not "needing" the other person to fill an emotional gap that is too acute, is a healthy way to move towards a balanced and fulfilling relationship 🙂.
How to meet someone when you are a single mother?
One day, you feel ready to open up to someone else again. You feel the need to seduce, to breathe away from your daily life as a single parent!
And that's just fine 🙂.
Allowing yourself to meet new people as a single parent
Of course, having time to meet new people means finding a babysitter, or a friend to free you up, if you have full custody of your child.
But also that you assume you need this time of freedom. And that entrusting your child for a few hours does not make you an unworthy single mother, or a bad father.
If it helps, tell yourself that children need to feel their parents are fulfilled. Being the center of their parents' world is too much pressure for their little shoulders 🙂
The desire for a romantic relationship is there, but you wonder how to make it happen.
Maybe most of your friends are in a relationship, or maybe you don't see yourself going on a pub crawl with your single friends?
So how do we do it?
Obviously, we think of dating sites. A practical solution, but one that creates some fears. The virtual world is easy, but sometimes misleading, and above all it requires a certain "sorting".
Whatever your desires, light relationship or commitment, it is anyway advised to take its time, and yes still!
But not too much either: exchanging for weeks virtually could expose you to disappointments "in real life". At some point, you have to go for it 🙂
Also noteworthy today is the existence of sites by affinity (art, travel, cinema, etc.) which encourage connections.
If dating sites do not seem reliable to you, you should know that you can test dating sites specialized in "single parents". Exchanging with potential partners who understand your daily life can be reassuring.
And if you really don't want to go to a website, participating in group sports or cultural activities allows you to expand your network without the "pressure of dating".
Local Facebook groups, associations, or single parent forums: new encounters are always possible :)
To commit...or not: transition periods
Finding love again when you are a single parent, looking for a serious relationship: this is the wish of a majority of single parents. But this is not the project of all single moms and dads, or in any case, not necessarily right away.
You may want to enjoy yourself, have fun, have one or more lighter relationships before you commit again.
Reaffirm yourself as a woman, not just as a mom, and compartmentalize your different lives.
Nothing obliges you to go more or less directly from a love breakup to a blended family! Being only lovers, or simply each one at home, is an option that allows time for things to become serious...or not.
But also to keep a fair distance, and not to rush your child, to get to know each other gradually.
The sociologist Jean-Claude Kauffmann, author of "La Femme seule et le Prince Charmant" (The Single Woman and Prince Charming), calls this time of separated parents the "period of weak ties".
Finding love again as a single parent
If you are a single parent who is not interested in casual relationships, your criteria, your approach - and your fears - will be different.
Dating a woman who is a mom, announcing that you are alone with a baby....How can you not think that this situation can chill many?
Living a love story with a single parent obviously implies accepting the other's child or children. Take it or leave it!
But today, there are many single parents, both men and women. It is no longer a stigmatizing situation to start a new life.
You may even consider the acceptance of the other as a criterion of reliability 🙂
Clearly, you should not be afraid to assume your situation. And to deconstruct your clichés about single moms. On the other hand, perhaps your fears are unfounded, or amplified.
According to a Meetic survey, 43% of men do not see the fact of meeting a single mother who has the main custody of her children as an obstacle to a relationship.
Moreover, an Internet Data survey indicates that 48% of singles on the application are parents.
Of course, even when it works out, it doesn't mean that things are always easy. You have to juggle your role as a solo mom or dad with your love life, to try not to hurt anyone.
Reassure children that you are not abandoning them or loving them any less!
But also find a balance with your partner. No, you are not as available as a single woman. Yes, you will have to make some concessions.
The love life of the single parent: when things get tough
Repetitive patterns and limiting beliefs
In life, there is theory...and reality 🙂 .
You have the impression to have "digested" your previous rupture, and to be ready for a new love story. You take care of yourself, you (re) open yourself to the other, multiply the opportunities to meet people...
And yet, it doesn't work.
You do not succeed in falling in love again, or you are attracted in spite of you in complicated or toxic stories.
It is sometimes difficult to step back from our psychological functioning, to be lucid on the attitudes that can be harmful to us.
Much of our behavior is unconscious. In some cases, childhood traumas, low self-esteem and a tendency to feel guilty prevent us from moving forward.
An awareness, a work on oneself, may be necessary to "liberate" us symbolically, and allow us to be happy 🙂
Blended family: conflicts and difficulties
All is not always rosy in the land of blended families!
You may feel like you are "stuck" between your children and your new partner. But for them as well as for him, things are not always obvious.
For the child, the fact that his mother has a new partner shatters his secret hope of reconciliation with his father. At the same time, he must accept to share his life with a "stranger", whom he did not choose.
And maybe get out of the comfortable bubble of the single-parent home that had just been built.
The time of adolescence is also the occasion of conflicts: the well known "you are not my father/mother! "
The place of the step-parent, depending on the animosity of the other's child, and one's own background, can be very complicated to manage. Finding one's place, being respected without exceeding one's role as a stepfather or stepmother...
On your side, the fear of another family failure can put pressure on you that is difficult to channel.
For the ex-solo parent and his or her child, it takes time and adjustment to successfully transition between these different periods: original family, single-parent family, and blended family.
And sometimes a little outside help.
Be accompanied to overcome your blocks...and (re) find love
In France, 25% of families are single parents. Being a single parent is therefore no longer an exceptional situation.
However, there are few sites that offer concrete help adapted to all the moments of the life of a single parent.
It is from this observation and this need that Noo Family was born, co-founded by Marina, a single mother.
Designed by and for single parents, divorced moms, widowed parents, Noo Family was conceived to accompany single parents in their daily life.
We know the specifics of the issues and problems that may arise for you. That's why we put you in touch with professionals (carefully selected 🙂) who know the reality of single-parent families.
If :
❌ you stagnate in your love life,
❌ you fail to rebuild,
❌ or conflicts weaken your blended family
Consulting an expert by phone or video can help you to unblock the situation, to have a professional and benevolent outside eye on your brakes and blockages to overcome them:
✅ from your home,
✅ at a time that suits you, from 7am to 11pm Monday to Saturday
✅ no waiting
✅ an affordable and transparent rate, with no commitment
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Do you have any questions? Contact us, we'll be happy to answer your questions as a parent 🙂