Almost once a week David and I were able to squeeze in some kind of date. It was tricky to get all four of our kids taken care of while we snuck away, but amazingly, it worked out well every time.
For our second date David scored some major points…this baseball loving, faithful Oakland A’s fan didn’t just get us tickets to see my favorite team, the San Francisco Giants, play but he got us on the field, row 1, touch the players kind of seats. And he met up with me looking so handsome decked out in Giants gear. Be still my heart…
Next, one of my best friends and I had the idea to go on a double date together to see a concert. So she and her hubby and David and I all went to this little place that hosts small concerts and we saw Dylan Scott perform. It was such a fun night. It was also David’s first introduction to my friends. This relationship was getting serious fast and we loved spending as much time together as much as we could.
Eventually, it was time to plan a date myself so I scored some awesome Florida Georgia Line tickets, which is David’s favorite country group. Again, we had friends join us and we even met up with one of his sisters, whom I was able to meet for the first time that night. Another date on the books and another amazing time spent together.
My smile never left my face when I was with him. We continued to grow in our relationship and we started to tell more of our family members and a few more of our closest friends about us. I think both of us were still hesitant to make our new relationship public, especially since the most important people in both our lives still didn’t know…our children.
There were four precious kids that had to come first. Each set of kids had their worlds turned upside down already. My boys losing their dad and David’s son and daughter losing the marriage of their parents. Each of our new families of three were finally getting settled and into a new groove of life and we were afraid to upturn all of it again. We had no clue how they would react to the approaching changes.
I had a feeling my boys would be the ones to hate this new relationship. Especially my oldest son who was still trying to be the man of the house and take care of me. He was very protective and incredibly attached to me. Each time I left for a few hours to go out with David it was really hard for him, yet I knew it was also good for him to have little breaks from me. And boy did I need them myself.
After fervent prayer, long talks together, therapy sessions on this topic, advice from my parents and our closest friends who knew our situation, we decided it was time to start the process of introducing my boys to David, David’s kids to me and our kids to each other. This decision was made only after careful consideration. This was quite the process but it went more smoothly than we could have ever expected or hoped for given our respective situations.
We followed the steps and timeline we were advised to use and it was incredibly successful. Don’t get me wrong, there were some set backs and as I suspected it came from my boys but we worked through each problem that came up.
I can’t wait to share the advice we were given and the steps we took to introduce children into this new relationship.
