Wait at least a year before introducing your 8-year-old to a new partner. Kids need stability after divorce, and you need time to see if someone sticks around. A revolving door of short-term relationships teaches them the wrong thing about commitment.
Chapters
Jose de Briones. Hola, Jose. Says, how to deal with new relations— new relationships, me having an 8-year-old child half the time. Well, my knee-jerk thought right away is do not introduce your new lovers, relationships, girlfriends, whatever you want to call them, to your 8-year-old until you've known this person. Give it, man, give it a year at least. Why? Because you get to see that person and how they are for real and let some of those new relationship energy puppy dog feelings, you know, subside a little bit and you become a more structured, genuine, dare I say, relationship. And then you can see, is this in fact a person I want to introduce to our world? Because that is a big freaking deal to introduce new people to your children. Um, you know, think about it from your kid's perspective. You just rock their world with a divorce, the separation. Everything they knew that was safe and secure and for sure in the relationship, assuming there wasn't horribleness in the family, you know, chaos and so forth, dysfunction. Assuming if you were to ask the kid, they'd be like, everything's cool between mom and dad. Let's say that that's the case. And then you suddenly go, oh, by the way, we're not gonna be mom and dad. We're not going to be husband and wife anymore, and you're going to have to bounce between two different places. You just threw a grenade in the room, is the phrase I often— you dropped a bomb on that kid. So his world's just been rocked. And that way, if he's like a lot— if he or she is like a lot of kids, they're looking for some semblance of normalcy, stability, and security, safety. And for a parent to go, uh, hey kiddo, everything's cool, everything's fine, your mom or dad, we're on top of this. Oh, by the way, here's a new replacement mom. That's how they view it. Here's dad's girlfriend that he's going to be spending a lot of emotional time on and ignoring you. That's also how kids internalize that. You damn well better make sure that that person's going to stick around, because the last thing that kid needs is to see a revolving door of dad's girlfriends coming in and out, in and out. Doesn't set a good tone for, uh, that, that kid down the line and his relationship, his or her relationship with kiddos or with people down the line, because they end up doing the same thing, bringing people in and out of their life. No, you need to show that kid stability.
