After divorcing my husband, two years later, I started a new relationship with another man. Everything was developing well, but I had my five-year-old daughter, so the question arose before me: “How will the child accept the new dad, how will the man accept my child?” Today I understand that this very wording “accept or not accept” gave rise to fear in me, negative pictures were drawn in my head, how to save myself from fears — I didn’t really understand. No one can guarantee you that your child and your beloved man will immediately become friends, but we can confidently say that you need to put the question in a different way, namely: “How best to arrange a meeting of two people I love so that they easily get to know each other and quickly recognize each other?” friend?» I’ll translate it again: it’s stupid to discuss “they will accept — they won’t accept”, they will definitely accept, it depends on me only how to help this.
I think I started right — with a conversation with my beloved man. It was not difficult to organize a conversation: we still discussed the «Questionnaire of the Family Agreement», and this turned out to be completely appropriate. Actually, the conversation about how we see the joint upbringing of our girl turned out to be an additional test of the seriousness of his attitude. I told everything as it is, what a golden daughter I have, and what troubles we will have in any case. In response, I heard what I expected — interest, willingness, initiative. Together we began to draw happy pictures of our life, the three of us. Hooray!
The second conversation took place, of course, already with her daughter. It turned out to be easy, she started the conversation. Having heard our enthusiastic telephone conversation several times, my daughter asked me: “Mom, are you hiding something from me?” I hugged her contentedly and cheerfully told about a good man with whom I became friends and with whom I want to introduce her. Here, I think, where would we go together? Where would you like to go? My daughter turned on immediately, we began to fantasize.
Actually, I have already thought of everything: choosing a place to meet is a really important point. It is better if it is a neutral place, some new territory where you can organize joint activities: it can be a park, attractions, a family cafe. It turned out to be a joint trip to nature for us, and a week later an excursion to the nearest beautiful city not far away. Everyone liked everything — walking is a simple matter, and a lot of ice cream and other delicacies were eaten!
Then we started spending the weekend together. This helped us to gradually recognize each other’s habits, find common interests, draw pictures of common leisure activities in the future.
Of course, I wanted to be with my beloved man more, but I tried not to make drastic changes in our lifestyle. I was careful not to give reasons for the jealousy of my daughter and gave her time, as before. Actually, fifteen minutes before going to bed to be only and exactly with the child is not very much, and my daughter felt that she was dear and loved to me. It was soon the birthday of my beloved man, and my daughter and I were already preparing a gift for him: when the daughter herself gave him her drawing, this finally cemented our already close friendly relations.
Of course, after that we discussed a lot more: both separately with our beloved, and separately with our daughter, and all three of us together. Together we thought about how we see our future life, we drew happy pictures of family life already together!
I think you can do it too.