A viewer writes: I am dating a widower with a 16 year old and 26 year old children. I am divorced with 3 minors. On my weekends without children, my boyfriend (widower) is not willing to have a date night and rather hang out with his kids. He expects me to hang out with his kids all weekend and he gets upset if I want to do something else. I asked for two date nights a month which doesn’t really happen. We have to squeeze in alone time during work hours or when his kids are busy with other activities. Am I asking too much to have two nights alone without kids? Also he wants to get serious. I keep talking about a new life with new traditions. He seems to want to just continue his life he has with his wife that past. He gets upset if I point it out. How do I start a new life with him if he really wants his old life back?
Transcript of video:
Hi. It's Wednesday, and that means it's time for another video edition of Widower Wednesday.
I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a Widower, and today we are going to discuss what to do if your widower doesn't want to do date nights.
And this comes from a comment on my blog, and this is how the comment reads.
It goes: Abel, I'm dating a widower with two kids, a 16 year old and a 26 year old. I am divorced with three minors on my the weekends without my children. My widower boyfriend is not willing to have a date night and would rather hang out with his kids. He expects me to hang out with his kids all weekend, and he gets upset if I want to do something else. I ask for two date nights a month, which usually doesn't happen. We have to squeeze in alone time during work hours or when his kids are busy with other activities. Am I asking too much to have two nights alone without kids?
Also, he wants to get serious. I keep talking about a new life with new traditions. He seems to just want to continue his life he has with his late wife. He gets upset if I point that out. How do I start a new life with him if he really wants his old life back?
All right, so a couple of issues in there.
By the way, great questions.
These are something I see a lot in my inbox and in coaching sessions.
So let's start with your first question is, are you asking too much to have two nights alone without the kids?
Answer is no, you're not being unreasonable, especially when you consider the age of the children.
We have an adult child here who's 26 and a 16 year old.
Might be a different story if these two kids were like, say, three and five or really young kids.
Probably a little bit of a different story here, but we have an adult child and a teenager, which I'm going to assume at 16, is fully capable of taking care of him or herself if you guys wanted to go out for a couple of hours or hang out there.
So, no, you're not being unreasonable.
And asking that all couples need some alone time to get to know each other, to bond, just to spend time together, you're not being unreasonable.
I think the overall issue here, though, and sadly, this is something I see quite a bit, is that I think there's this expectation that widows and widowers have when they start dating again, is that they're just going to find somebody and this person is just going to plop and kind of take the place of their late spouse and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're the same person, but it's like they have these traditions, they have this life, right?
So this widower obviously has things that he does on the weekends.
He enjoys spending time with his kids, which is cool.
But he just kind of expects you.
This is probably what he and the late wife did, and he's just expecting you to come in and plop down and take that place.
And the truth is, if you want to build chapter two with somebody, you have to start a new life.
That's not the bits and pieces of the old life can't fit into that, but it really is.
There's a price you have to pay to start a new life.
And the fact that his actions are showing that it's a pain in the butt for him to start a new life with you, I think that speaks volumes.
It's like he's looking for someone who will come in and just fall into the way that they've done things.
And if you can find somebody like that, cool.
But I do not recommend that.
Again, if you want to have a long, happy relationship, you need to start a new life, and he's not willing to do that.
So you asked, how do you start a new life with him if he really wants his old life back?
The truth is, you can't start a new life with someone who wants their old life back.
To start a new life, it takes two people, and it takes two people agreeing on what that new life looks like, and he is not there.
So the best thing you can do is give him the gift of missing you.
I think it's time to end the relationship and go and find someone that will give you the life that you want and the attention that you want.
Someone that'll treat you like a queen.
There's probably widowers out there that'll do it.
But this person, he wants his old life back, and you're walking into a trap if that's what you want to do.
I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating the Widower.
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I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a widower, and I'll see you next Wednesday.