Another blog post from a few years back. I think the advice is still good, but I’m so glad I’m retired from the dating circus! I never was any good at the trapeze. Just the thought of going on a first date now makes me shudder.

Dating… with children

There comes a time in a single mother’s life when she longs for someone to take her to dinner at a restaurant that doesn’t serve McChicken burgers – or McAnything, come to think of it.  Dinner… real food … with a glass of wine or two and some grown-up conversation. Is that too much to ask?

And so one ventures forth into the dating scene, which is enough of a seething swamp already, but is even more complicated when you have children as part of the package.

My friends know I’m an online dating veteran, so I was asked for advice the other day by another single mum who is thinking of following my dubious example.

“So, what do I need to know?” this sweet, innocent girl asked me, blissfully unaware of what lurks the other side of her modem.

Here, censored for general consumption, is my advice:

Check your spelling

I’m probably fussy, but I can’t stand poorly written dating profiles full of spelling errors. Gentlemen, if you are going to refer to yourself as a ‘knight in shining armour’, please don’t spell it as ‘shinning’ armour. That just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Prepare for porkies

Women lie about their weight, men lie about their height, lots of people lie about their age and everybody lies about their passion for art-house cinema and walking on the beach at sunset.

A picture really is worth a thousand words

Men complain about women who, in person, look nothing like their photographs. That’s because the photos were taken either ten years or twenty kilos ago, or in a photographer’s studio after the application of make-up and before the application of Photoshop. Personally, I think it’s better to provide something vaguely approaching reality.

Women complain about men who hide under baseball caps or scuba masks, or lurk in the background next to their car/boat/motorbike. Fellas, please take note, we would like to see your face — just in case you have “I am an axe-wielding psychopath’ tattooed on your forehead.

Dads rock!

In general, the fellas I have liked most are dads. Either we just have more in common, or sleep-deprivation really is character building. I also find that dads are more understanding of your commitment to your kids.

When you are dating someone who also has shared care of kids and you get to the task of comparing schedules, things get complicated. When your ex is doing the same, it gets really crazy, and you find yourself saying things like this:

“So on Tuesday fortnight, let’s pencil in a tentative dinner, and I’ll check what date the school concert is and you check the basketball fixture. Oh, hang on! I might have promised my ex a swap that week as I think his new girlfriend’s ex-husband is taking their kids on holidays with his new girlfriend…”

When do they meet the kids?

I’m pretty cautious about this. Not many of my datees have proceeded to the stage of meeting my kids. I’ve always had a horror of introducing them to a procession of men. (“Now children, I’d like you to meet Uncle Kevin. No, not Uncle Barry, he was last week. And Uncle Neville was the one before…”) I need to be confident that this bloke is likely to be around for a while before we reach that point.

Hang in there!

There are nice, genuine men and women out there. Honestly, there are. You just need to persevere to find them, and in doing so you may meet the not-so-nice, the insincere, the weird and the dull.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? At this point, my friend seemed to be developing a nervous twitch. She’d probably heard enough about internet dating for one day, so I didn’t let on that there’s a special name for beginners like her. They get called ‘Fresh Meat’. I think I might save that for our next little chat.