Over the past years since divorce and continued child custody, I’ve made friends and dated. Some of that worked out, some of it didn’t. Along the way, I met Heather. At first, we were just friends, going out occasionally to eat or spend time, but we didn’t go past side hugs or handshakes. Then, one day, after I had just explained to someone else that she was not going to work out because we just weren’t a fit, Heather asked me over for dinner. And explained that she was feeling more for me. We kissed. Dating officially started.
That was about 18 months ago. About six months ago, I moved my family into Heather’s house and we combined households and made one big family of 5. This past weekend, I proposed marriage. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do, given that we’d talked about it and were sure it was going to happen. My popping the question wasn’t even a surprise to anyone involved, really, as we’d already been pretty open about marriage as a thing that would come about.
But it was still a big deal. At least to me. So my official title of “single dad” is now defunct. That doesn’t change much, really, as I’ve been in an exclusive relationship with Heather for 18+ months already. It also doesn’t change how I feel about single dads and the kind of things they’re faced with daily. I still face many of them, including custody issues and the integrating of a family together as step-family things are worked out.
So I may not be single anymore, as it were, but I’m still an at-home dad with responsibilities that match. So I’ll keep plugging at this. To celebrate my engagement, I’ve created a SingleDadOver40 Facebook page. OK, not really to celebrate, but it was time to make a Facebook presence for this site. So I’ve done it. Go check it out, hit “Like” and so forth. I’ll post stuff from the blog there and funny pics and so forth too. Plus occasional highlights of what’s happening around here.
Congrats Aaron! š