Dating & Loving A Baby Mama
by Eric Payne
Before I became a husband and a father of two, I was the boyfriend of a mother of one.
Within five minutes of first meeting my wife she told me she dropped out of college five years earlier at nineteen to have her child. In that same five minutes she went on to tell me she was on the Dean’s List at Fordham University where she was finishing her degree at night. After a few dates, I learned she made a solid seventeen thousand dollars more per year than I did. And although her parents were divorced, she spent her formative years growing up under the same roof with both her parents. Nothing was wrong with her. I didn’t get it. Why did she have a kid?
Back then I made it a policy to steer clear of women with children who weren’t divorcees. I was filled with prejudices and judgments I made based on the horror stories I heard up until that point. Women with children got drama. What are they smoking that would make them go through with having a child without a man? Why would they put themselves through that? Or even better, why would they put a child through that?
Clearly, I didn’t have a clue.
Even though I’ve always had my mother’s love, back then I had no idea what it meant for a mother to love her child, or to create and carry a life inside her. I still don’t, but now as a witness who has a front-row seat, I can say I’m awed by it.
As my relationship grew from casual to serious, I had a decision to make: either stick to my misguided guns or take a chance and go down a path where I’d never been before.
For superficial reasons, I opted for the latter. My wife was too fine for me to let her simply walk away on a “technicality.” But with my decision came a mountain of challenges and tasks to overcome. The first and most difficult of them being a combined effort to convince and assure her that vulnerability was not a weakness. The second was using love (even when I didn’t want to) to fill the deep chip on her shoulder that had developed over time from wearing both the pants and the heels at the same time for her little family of two. It was quite a challenge navigating my way through this, but in the end, it definitely was worth the effort.
The lesson I had to learn was that when building a life with a woman with a child, the child is as much a part of her as a limb. Being an only child, at times this was a hard lesson for me to learn. But by no means did this mean there wasn’t room for me. In my particular case I took the lead in making this room. I also took an active role in the life of my son-to-be. With a little bit (actually a lot) of patience and effort I earned the trust of an amazing little boy. This had far reaching consequences I couldn’t have anticipated back then. Nowadays it’s easy to be his father and just as easy for him to call me, “Dad.”
Achieving this wasn’t easy. Not even on the good days. It’s easy to feel left out and even rejected when courting a mom you don’t have a child with. And it’s easy for her to forget that she’s human too — deserving of all the excitement and joy a relationship can bring — and responsible for contributing her share as well. Determining where this happy medium lies can be the test of any relationship with a woman, or a man, with a child. It requires many conversations and plenty of understanding and patience to get there. But keep in mind it’s not about playing second fiddle. A child is not a fiddle. Anyone who believes otherwise is in for a rude awakening. You have to ask yourself, if the shoe was on the other foot, would you have it any different?
Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Eric Payne lives with his wife and kids just outside of New York City, where he works in the non-profit sector. He writes about married life and fatherhood at MakesMeWannaHoller.com and is the author of I See Through Eyes, a book of poetry and short stories.
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