Dating With Kids: A Woman’s Desire vs. A Single Mom’s Choice

By SIL LAI ABRAMS

It’s 10:53 on a hot and humid summer night and you’re in a cab riding home with your not-so-new-ish boyfriend after a wonderful date. Warm air is steadily blowing through the window as you hold hands and the city skyline recedes as you ride down the expressway.  It feels like a scene straight out of the movie “Love Jones” and there is nothing more that you want than for as Luther Vandross would say “the night to stay.”

As you look into each others eyes, you become painfully aware of the dizzying heat between you. The tension is undeniable. He’s feeling it. You’re feeling it too as you hold your breath when he leans in for a gentle, lingering kiss.

You’ve pulled up in front of your building and as the cab’s engine idles, your blood begins to race.  Suddenly your mutual hypnosis is interrupted when the driver impatiently asks “Where’s the next stop?”  Heart pounding, you pull away from each other and your man asks the inevitable question “Do you want me to come inside?”

The woman in you is wants to exclaim “Yes!” but the mother in you wrestles with the bigger picture.  So as much as it pains you to do so, you exit the cab with a longing glance backward as your beloved heads off into the night.  You head into your apartment. Alone. For as much as you want him to come upstairs, as a mother you know your children’s emotional well-being first.

Almost every single parent has experienced some variation of the scenario just described. Many of us are struggling with how to integrate our sexuality into a lifestyle that is by its nature antithetical to free sexual expression.  As a single mom I’ve done my share of dating and one thing’s for sure: navigating a new intimate relationship ain’t an easy thing to do while raising kids…

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