Who is the one paying your wife’s salary? I assumed it was a family business, in which case it’s amazingly, incredibly kind of whoever decided to keep her rather than fire her.
It’s a family business, but she’s easily one of our best employees. I can honestly say if she does leave, it’s going to be very hard to replace her. In fact, with the dynamics of our store, she won’t be ‘replaced’ but her duties will be sort of absorbed by a few other people. None of them can do everything she does (all at once), but they can all do aspects of it. They way it’ll pan out is that everyone we’ll likely shift around a bit and we’ll end up hiring another cashier since one of the people that will slide into my ex’s position also watches the register in the morning, but if she’s doing her own work plus some of my ex’s, she won’t be able to do that also. On top of that, another person who also has a shit ton of responsibilities around there just graduated college and may be leaving in the next few weeks…it could prove to be a tough few months for a place that only has 13 employees…many of whom do a lot of work.
K well point was moot tonight, she had a friend watch her son and she about kicked my ass to split the bill 
Ugh. Everyone seems to be acting like grownups, which is awesome (especially for your daughter’s sake), but still – ugh.
Rant away dude. I know how that goes, my ex is pretty much the same way. I’ve never meet my ex’s, well whatever he is, but twice. Once he brought my youngest daughter over. It was either that or I would have to drive 30 minutes one way to get her. I figured that sooner or later I’d be meeting him so I told her to have him drop her off. He didn’t say much to me.
You’d think that since they are getting married she would want you to know the guy, he is going to be living with your kid. My ex is supposed to be getting married as well, though I don’t know when as that’s “none of my business.”
You know, after a year or so you’d think people would at least try and act like adults, but they choose not to.
They’ve been living together more or less since a few months after she left me and my daughter is there about half the time. Like I said, I’ve never met him, but my daughter seems to like him. Regardless of my personal feelings toward the guy that my wife cheated on me with, my 5 year old talks pretty highly of him, though I do try to change the subject as quickly as I can. It’s not something I like to dwell on.
Anyways, I just wanted to get it out because I get worried when I have that kind of stuff on my mind any emails I send or dates I go on will be clouded with “Ugh, my ex and her boyfriend are buying a house together” or “Ugh, my ex is getting married”. IOW, I don’t want to be making decisions when I’m annoyed by some other aspect of my life.
I know how it goes man, I’m in the same exact boat. The only difference is that my ex doesn’t live with the guy, yet, and we have two daughters, 6 and 3. I just hope your ex isn’t trying to make you feel like crap for no reason and then says it’s in the best interest of the girls. :rolleyes:
I am so glad my ex is gone, I just wish it wasn’t so hard to find new people at my age.
20 year old guy here…
Alright folks, forgive me if I sound off or whatever, but I just got a few questions I’d like to get out of the way. Where do you suggest that somebody of my age and gender go out to meet women? I mean, from what I’ve seen, it seems that most people who register for online dating sites tend to be at least in their mid-20s, so I worry that if I were to sign up for a dating site I’d come off as being too weird or desperate or something (just given my age, really).
So where do I meet women? Should I just try out a dating site? The thing is, if I were 21 I would know the answer to these questions; just go to a bar, a club, or whatever. I’m not old enough to do those things yet, and frankly I’m tired of waiting to “age into” that type of scenario before I make any real headway on this issue.
I don’t want to ask out anybody that I work with (pursuing coworkers feels weird to me), and looking for women at school is essentially out of the question too (I mean, at my college, people basically just go to their classes and leave - there’s very little socializing going on).
What do you guys suggest?
No, in fact I’ll give her credit for going out of her way NOT to make me feel like crap. When he’s in the car when she get’s dropped off, they park a few houses down. At work (to the best of my knowledge) she’s not once mentioned his name and the other employees don’t talk about her personal life. She’s never really brought anything up about him.
In fact, one of the reasons for her leaving work is that she said it’s getting harder and harder to not slip up and talk about him. For example, she’s going dress shopping this weekend and she’s said it’s really hard not to talk about that at work.
I’ll still say that some day…some day waaay down the road I’d like to be comfortable enough that we all (her and me, him and some S.O. that I’ll have) to be able to at least get together for dinner once in a while. My daughter will never get to go on a vacation with her parents or do any of that kind of stuff so I’m hoping I can at least give her that. BUT, I won’t be able to do that until I can sit down at this hypothetical dinner party and think to my self “You can keep her, I don’t know what I was thinking marrying her when there was someone like this out there” That sounds bad…it makes more sense in my head.
Well I can’t give very good firsthand experience, because I was not a prolific dater at 20, but in hindsight perhaps I can contribute 
Even though your school is as you describe it, with not much socializing, I’ll be if you start paying attention to bulletin boards etc., there are plenty of student groups or activities. Ditto the school newsletter. If you school, or even better your academic department has a FB page, join it and participate. That gets your name and face out there. That won’t automatically get you a date, but it opens two possibilities: One, somebody may actually recognize you one day between classes, and two, you can always use it as a point of conversation.
Might a well try a dating site or three, it certainly can’t hurt.
What do you do? Find groups of people that do the things you do and do the things with them. Some of them will be women. Probably. For that matter, find new things to do.
And I don’t suppose the importance of this can be overstated: Approach and talk to women. If you can do this, you never have to worry about where to go to meet women, because they’re freakin’ all over!
Join clubs at your college. Get involved. See if there are volunteering or tutoring opportunities. Meet people at these club events or tutoring events. Regardless of how small and insular your college is, I’m sure they have these things. Make it a point to hang out in common areas after class. Invite people in class to dinner. Make the first step. So many people are just damn passive. Some of my best friends were met by me doing the initiating and I’m positive they’d never have uttered a word about spending extra time (outside of work/class) if I hadn’t been the first to bring it up. That’s just how some people are. Don’t be one of them. College is the best time to meet people, period.
I have to say you’re really very impressive with all this. Really. I can’t say I’d be dignified enough to keep her on – despite how good of an employee she was. But it sounds like you two are model co-parents, honestly. That’s freaking impressive. You’re also fortunate that your kiddo likes him.
I just got an e-mail from OKCupid telling me that it’s raining.
I’m not kidding.
If you get an e-mail saying it’s raining men, you’ve accidentally logged into OGayCupid.
eHarmony is screwy. I still can’t make heads nor tails of it. I think I closed out, meaning we can talk anymore, to someone because it had a ‘close match’ at the bottom of the page so I thought she ditched me. Most of the others had ‘archive match’, but now they all say ‘close match’. So now I think I closed her out even though I didn’t want to. I think who ever designed the site was a bit nuts.
I’d also like to know where all the single mothers are. I haven’t seen one yet on eHarmony, and they are rare on OKCupid too.
Oh, they’re probably there, just not mentioning they have kids because (a) they don’t want to scare men off and (b) they don’t want to attract men who are looking for kids rather than women 
I wouldn’t think they would scare a lot of guys off, but then again since I have kids I’d rather have someone who understand kids.
ewww… I didn’t think of that, because well there’s no reason to think of that.
This morning I got an OKCupid message from a born-again Christian looking to have a baby with someone – even though my profile clearly states that I don’t believe in god, and am not interested in having children of my own.
:smack:
Do you think that’s a pretty common preference? Sicks Ate and Joey P, do you guys prefer/look for moms, too? Do you find that childless women really tend not to “get” the whole kid thing?
It makes me a little sad to think that some single dads might never see my profile just because I have no kids, but then again I guess it’s no worse than someone never seeing my profile because I’m short (or whatever filter they might use). Also, from what I can tell I’m kind of unusual: childless by choice, but I sincerely like kids, I’m good with them, I have a lot of experience with babies and young children, etc. I’m a great babysitter and an excellent aunt, and I like to think that I’d probably be a decent stepmom.
No not at all. Whether or not someone has kids it’s just one aspect of their profile that I take into consideration and it’s certainly not from the POV of “They have kids so they’ll understand” or “They don’t have kids so they won’t understand”. In fact, it’s more along the lines of “Gee, she has two kids and I have one, that’s going to make scheduling really complicated…OTOH she…”
But when I see someone that’s divorced it makes me thing that they’ll be able to relate to what I went through better then someone who hasn’t been through a divorce. But that’s different then having kids.
Having said that, if someone told me after we met that they had kids when their profile said they didn’t, they’d have to be pretty awesome otherwise that would probably be a deal breaker. It’s one thing to meet someone out and about and not learn about their kids but in OKC/Match you have to explicitly lie about not having them (assuming they said “No” to “Have children”)
If someone said they wrote “No” to have kids as a way to ward off child molesters or some other odd excuse I’d probably stay away from them. I don’t think I could spend my life with someone that was that uptight. That seems like the same type of person that reposts crap on facebook and about one step away from being a conspiracy theorist.
Now, the other day I had my first date in a while. I thought it went great. We didn’t meet until almost 10pm, stayed out for about an hour, talked a lot, laughed, had fun and when we walked to our cars she said that it was nice to meet me and I said good night. The next day (Friday morning) I sent her a quick email saying that I had fun and would like to get together again. I’m thinking I’m probably not going to at this point since…we’ll see.
Whew. 
Does that matter a lot? Is empathy more important than sympathy when it comes to divorce?
For me, any kind of lying is immediately a dealbreaker. (Relationship-wise, anyway…I like to think that I wouldn’t even fool around with a liar, but if there’s serious chemistry…maybe, depending on the lie…it’s been a while…)
That’s why I never let a first meeting/date end without having either the “I’d like to see you again” or “I had a nice time but don’t feel that we connected” conversation. Good luck!
It certainly doesn’t sway my decision one way or the other, and I’m not really looking for sympathy, but once it’s nice to see a divorced person and think that they know what I’ve been through. Of course, it’s meaningless (and I try to treat it as such) since for all I know they cheated on their husband and he left her and that’s why they’re on a dating site…That’s not really what I’m looking for.
I sent her an email that made my intentions clear (asked if she’d like to hang out again (or something like that)). All I can do is see if she responds. She’s working on her thesis so I know she’s really busy and there were times while we were emailing when she would go a day or two without replying so it’s possible she’s just busy right now.
We’ll just wait and see.