How long should you wait before moving a partner in if you have children? And what are the things to consider?

[thepeopleversuswork]

Interested to hear how others have managed this and what their experiences have been with moving in with partners when there are children involved. I know its massively sensitive and potentially fraught with difficulty and needs to be approached with extreme caution and I'm only really just starting to think of this as a concrete possibility for me.

Have been with my boyfriend nearly two years: I'm very happy with him. He doesn't have children. Have a nearly 10 year old DD. I didn't introduce them for six months and first year he never stayed more than once a week (mainly at my insistence): its now usually twice. My DD's dad was abusive and has severe mental problems so she has very little contact with him and I have sought to tread super carefully for a huge number of reasons but this was paramount among them. After a few false starts, she and my boyfriend now have a pretty good relationship but I don't want to move things too fast. I'm also pretty nervous of cohabitation in general, having had quite a bad experience of it with my ex-husband: I like my own space a lot and like being able to bring my daughter up by my rules and my rules alone. That said, I can now see the upsides of cohabitation at some point in the future for all of us. Obviously though I know I would need to be as sure as I could be that we were rock solid before I introduced him permanently to my household.

Boyfriend and I have talked about this a little before in the abstract as a goal but never really in concrete terms. We didn't see each other through lockdown and have only really been back to normality for a couple of months. I haven't raised the subject recently.

I don't think we're quite ready yet and I'm quite happy as we are but I think I'm ready to think about it as an option in the next year or so. Just keen to hear other people's experiences and thoughts on how they've managed it.

I’m just not going to do it. My ds is 12 and I’ve been seeing my DP (grown up child) for three years. We’re going to keep living apart for the foreseeable future.

I just don’t want my dc to have to compromise and I know from first hand experience in my marriage that it’s very difficult to manage family life with someone else’s child. So for me it’s not an option.

Could you explain what you mean by a few false starts?

1Micem0use my exH tried to sabotage my relationship with my (now) boyfriend when we first started seeing one another (well, technically when he first found out about him, which was about six months in). He told my daughter not to accept his presence in the home etc, tried to get her to hide my boyfriend's home etc. My daughter obviously found this confusing and upsetting and understandably wanted to understand why her father was hostile to my boyfriend.

She has slowly started to trust him but I think still has her guard up. Lockdown didn't help with this either as she didn't see him (my boyfriend) for over three months and has had to "relearn" this relationship.

It may well be that cohabitation isn't the solution for us and I'd be perfectly happy with that if that was the best way. I suppose its only in the past month or so that I've started even to be able to imagine it as a possibility.

my boyfriend's phone. Not home.

If she has had to “relearn” the relationship due to lockdown (which wasn’t long ago), I would think moving in together would be too soon. If it were me, I would leave it for at least another 6 months x

Norwegiangal Oh now is definitely too soon, no question. Wasn't even considering bring the subject up until the end of this year and only assuming things stay on an even keel between the two of them. Six months would be the absolute earliest.

Must have been confusing for her poor thing.
I can understand your ex being wary of a strange man being around his daughter, but that is not how to go about things at all. That isnt a caring concerned dad. That's a wierd control freak who doesnt want you to move on.
On a diff note, for safety I'd say before you move him in, better safe than sorry, clares law check him and ask for a scottish barring crim record check (only type an individual can apply for).
I know it may seem a little over the top, but you do get bad men who go after single mothers for a reason.

Wipe the slate clean. Start again. 2020 has been so tough on everybody. Your ex is worried about an adult male being around his dd. Quite right too. His trying to sabotage your newish relationship using dd is worrying.

The less she sees, the less she hears, the less he can manipulate dd and you.
Just keep it light and breezy.
Perhaps your ex thinks you should live like a nun until dd leaves home? Who knows. Maybe he thinks you should keep your knees glued together just in case he decides to give you another chance? He wouldn't be the first to think that.
You do seem to have a good time frame in mind.
Slow and steady wins the race.

You need to have the kind of relationship where you can be brutally honest with each other.

You especially have to be able to hear the things about your child that irritate your partner without getting super defensive and in a way that means you can differentiate between "Ok, that's fair enough, 4/6/10/13 year olds are irritating sometimes" and "No, sorry, that's just what living with children is like"

We were different in that we both had children, him one and me two, so we both had a good idea what it was like to live with children, but in my experience it's the little things that you need to think about and people don't always.

Yes, you need to sit down and work out the big things - discipline, bedtimes, house rules etc - but it's actually the wee things that cause the issues on a day-to-day basis.

The biggest two rows we had in the first few months turned out to be over shoes in the house - one felt strongly shoes should be left at the door and the other has no issue with kids wearing shoes indoors as long as they wipe their feet - and, believe it or not, whether the ketchup should be in the fridge or the cupboard.

Small day-to-day annoyances build up and up because they can be the hardest things to talk about as it seems petty to bring them up. You need to know each other well enough, and be open and blunt enough, to bring up the tiny things and also to not brush off when the other person brings up the tiny things.

I always made sure I was in charge of delivering rules, telling’s off etc - I had step parents myself as a child and from experience that was the stumbling point ... the child/ parent relationship generally means any discipline etc is delivered from a place of love and even if you argue with each other you know you are loved .... but that doesn’t automatically stand true for a new person, that takes a very long time. I always said to my partner that while thought he was great it wouldn’t mean my kids did - so I wanted them to just have the good times .... I was bad cop he was good cop!! And now 15years on ... he and I sadly separated but my kids still think he’s great and he sees them - so I feel that bit we got right xx