Search Results for: blog the jealous single friend

Fighting Against Jealousy

It’s easy to look around and find someone who appears to have it better than you. You see your friends getting married and having babies and wonder how you ended up with the short end of the stick. You may even be experiencing this within your own family. My little sister got married about six months after my divorce. It was hard to watch her starting her own little family when mine had just fallen apart. I often found myself feeling jealous of those around me. So many appeared to have a perfect family and I was struggling to be … Continue reading →

The New Girlfriend

One thing I never thought I would have to deal with when Hailey was born was another woman coming into her life and either trying to keep her dad away or trying to be her mom. The part about trying to be her mother doesn’t really bother me, Hailey and I have a great relationship and I figure all kids need more people to love them and care about their well being. So as far as I’m concerned my ex husbands girlfriends can exercise their maternal instinct with my daughter to their hearts content. It’s the other scenario that bugs … Continue reading →

Why Kids Can be Jealous but the Date Can’t

Evaluating potential dates and partners gets even tougher when one is a single parent. Perhaps that is why we spend a fair amount of time as single parents talking about dating—the hows, whys, and other tips that only come from experience. One thing that does occur is that our expectations raise—we really need to choose dates and potential partners from those adults who are total grown-ups. It may seem unfair that our expectations have to be so high and it may definitely cause some contention when the other person realizes that we have different expectations for our children than we … Continue reading →

When Our Kids Feel Jealous or Hate Our Jobs

While the “job jealousy” issue is not the private domain of single parent families, I have found in my experience that many of us single parents do have to contend with our children seeing our work or jobs as being in direct opposition to them. After all, many of our children learn quite young that what “takes us away” from them and home is our work. As single parents, how can we foster an understanding, appreciation, or at least a “truce” with our children when it comes to our jobs? When I first became a single parent and my children … Continue reading →

Jealousy and the Single Parent

Oh jealousy…that little green monster that can do so much damage! As a single parent, we might have more than our fair share of opportunities to wrestle with jealousy—and when we give into jealousy, it seldom turns out well! We might be jealous of our ex, or our child’s other parent; we might feel jealous of friends or family members who seem to have it better than us; an ex’s new partner; a coworker or the neighbor across the street. There are ample ordinary life situations that might be exacerbated by the fact that we have been through the crisis … Continue reading →

Friends: His, Hers, and Ours

Going out with other couples or having guests over to your house is not always fun and easy when you are married. Just because you have a group of friends that you hold dear does not mean that your husband will feel the same about them. My husband and I graduated from the same high school during the same year. We know mainly the same people from school. We dated beginning our sophomore year and basically had the same friends. However, after high school we attended two different colleges and now work in two different schools. Therefore our friends are … Continue reading →

Can Married People Have Single Friends?

Of course! But it’s not always easy. By nature, single people and married people lead different lifestyles. Case in Point The other day I wrote about my single fantasy and how I’m sort of living it at present due to the fact Wayne took a new job out of state and we’re currently separated until the house sells and I can rejoin him. Well, in some respects Wayne’s living his own single fantasy. He’s bachin’ it up eating out every night, doing whatever he wants after work, and hanging out with friends as much as possible. We have a lot … Continue reading →

Top Five Rules for Single Parents

Top Five Rules for Single Parents (In no particular order) 1. Be your child’s parent, not their friend. You do not have to be your child’s friend to gain trust or have fun with them. When you become your child’s friend, you no longer hold the position of authority, but instead hold the position of peer. How many of your friends do you allow to make rules and enforce them? How many of your friends do you absolutely unequivocally believe that their love is unconditional? Also, when you fall into the role of friend, you may start slipping and using … Continue reading →

Couple Visits Disneyland Every Day in 2012

At the end of 2012 I came across an interesting post on the official Disney Parks blog: a couple visited Disneyland every single day in 2012.  On December 31, Jeff Reitz and Tonya Mickesh received special gifts personally from Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Tom Staggs.  It was a typical fancy Disney ceremony: as the two made their way down Main Street, Staggs was waiting for them to present their honors in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. Their honors included being made honorary citizens of Disneyland, and a stay in the Disneyland Dream Suite, a luxury apartment off the … Continue reading →

Capture the Holiday Magic

It took nearly six years for me to capture a photo of my daughter with Santa. I can’t remember a time when my daughter wasn’t deathly afraid of the holly, jolly, chubby guy.  She’s not a fan of skinny men with facial hair either, but I digress. My daughter’s exceptional fear of Mr. Claus made it impossible for me to snap a picture of the two of them together, so when it finally happened, I crafted a double page scrapbook layout commemorating the event. Two pages for a single trip to see a mall Santa may seem like overkill to … Continue reading →