Should you live together if you have kids?
Sara, her new beau, and Sean and I had gone out to Rancho Nicasio to hear some music, eat and dance.
At one point I caught Sara watching Sean and me in a slow dance out of the corner of my eye.
“You guys are so cute together,” she whispered to me later at the table, when Sean went to the restroom. “When are you going to move in together?”
Good question, because I’m not sure we’re ever going to move in together. But certainly not now.
“I don’t know, Sara; not before The Kid’s out of the house. Plus, his kid’s at home, too, remember.”
“Oh, kids, schmids —That’s so old-fashioned. They know you two are sleeping together, right? So, what’s the difference?”
It seems like a pretty big difference to me. Living together when you’ve got kids is sending the wrong message — that marriage doesn’t matter. 
I know, I know — I’m divorced. If marriage really mattered to me …
No one goes into marriage expecting to divorce. But, marriage does matter, if you’re planning to have kids.
Marriage is under attack lately, perhaps rightly so given the insane expectations people place on it. Fewer people than ever before think it’s necessary. Let’s face it, marriage certainly isn’t for everyone. And people often get married for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes couples marry because they’ve been living together for a while and it seems like the next logical thing to do.
Often, it isn’t.
Couples who live together before marrying tend to argue more and communicate less. If they eventually marry, they divorce more often than those who don’t. Plus, they get fat, and that alone is reason to make me say, no way!
But it you’re going to have kids, it makes no sense to live together without getting married first. Shacking up is marriage lite, with all the daily annoyances and relatively predictable roles of marriage without the commitment. And if you think it’s any easier to split if things aren’t going great, well, just look at Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry.
Scary.
And once you have kids — who’ve gone through the trauma of a divorce — it’s all the more reason to tread very carefully on mixing families. Yes, it sure would be nice to go to sleep and wake up next to Sean more often, and to feel more like a family (although we sure do like our “space”). But I’m aware of the message we’d be sending our kids, and it isn’t the message I want to send.
There are like 5 million or so couples shacking up nowadays, and a lot of them are probably like Sean and me — single moms and dads. So I’m pretty sure we’re the minority. But, I’m OK with that. Plus, there’s none of the real or pseudo “step” or “half” things going on — stepmom, stepdad, half-brother, etc. Or worse — “mom’s live-in lover.”
I’ll bet that’s why we’re still so cute together after all these years.
- Is it OK to live together if you and/or your boy/girlfriend have kids?
- Do you think it’s any easier to split if you’re living together with kids than if you were married?
- Did you live with a parent’s boy/girlfriend? How’d that work out?
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Can you masturbate too much?
It was 2 a.m., but I couldn’t sleep. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours (but was only about a half-hour), I turned on the light and started reading.
That’s when I heard a mini-commotion in The Kid’s room.
“Good Lord; I think I heard The Kid masturbating this morning,” I said to Sara, calling her on my lunch break.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard him before, given his age,” Sara observed. “Was he doing it to porn?”
“How should I know? I certainly not going to ask him!”
“Well, did you hear any other moaning, like a woman’s?” 
“Not really.”
“Because you know he’s watching it, too.”
“Duh! He’s a guy.”
“Just don’t let him watch too much porn, or no girl will ever satisfy him.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do, don’t you?”
I don’t know. My gut (a little looser than usual lately but, hey — it’s a post-holiday gut) says no: How can a guy prefer to watch porn and whack off instead of having a real-live naked babe writhing all over him? I watch porn and as nice as it is to see hard-bodied men with rather, uh, generous members going at it, I’d much, much rather have a guy with a member of normal size (oh, OK, I’ll accept larger, too) naked in front of me.
So this fear about porn seems silly to me. But now sexuality counselor and author Ian Kerner warns that guys are masturbating way to much, and women are suffering because of it:
(M)en are masturbating 50 to 500% more than they would normally without Internet porn. So if a guy normally masturbated once a day, he might now be doing it two or three times a day. …
(T)oday’s woman faces more challenges to her sexual satisfaction than ever before. An increasing number of men are suffering from a syndrome I’ve dubbed Sexual Attention Deficit Disorder. Just as people with real ADD tend to be easily distracted, guys with SADD have become so accustomed to the high levels of visual novelty and stimulation that Internet porn provides that they’re unable to focus on real sex with a real woman. Men with SADD tend to find themselves getting bored or impatient during sex, and suffering from mechanical “male-functions”: They may be physiologically aroused and even have an erection, but they’re not at peak mental arousal. Guys with SADD may also simply lack the mojo for real sex because they’re depleted from masturbation. They’re not running on a full tank, physically, mentally, and certainly not sexually.
“Depleted from masturbation?” What a great way to be exhausted!
But I’m not sure about this SADD thing. I’ve been bored and impatient during sex from time to time — haven’t we all? That’s why women fake orgasms; they just want the guy to get it over already so they can go to sleep!
My problem with porn addiction isn’t the porn; it’s the addiction. Anything in excess — drinking, drugs, gambling and, yes, porn — is unhealthy. But, it’s the “excess” part that’s unhealthy, not the activity.
So, what’s the “right” amount of porn to watch? 15 minutes a day? A week? And how many times should guys be jacking off? Daily? Weekly? Kerner doesn’t say, and maybe that’s the problem — there’s no right amount for everyone; it depends how it’s impacting your relationships, if it’s impacting your relationships.
At least Kerner gives teen guys a buy; a few times a day isn’t excessive for them, he says. I’m sure The Kid will be relieved.
- Is porn a big problem fin your relationships?
- Are men masturbating too much?
- Are women?
- Would you rather watch porn and jack off, or have a willing naked person in bed with you?
- Have you ever been bored and impatient during sex?
© Cristian Ilie Ionesc – Fotolia.com
Should your boyfriend sleep over?
“So, are you and Sean getting together tonight?” Mia asked me as she, Sara and I trudged up the Matt Davis trail.
“Nah, The Kid’s with me tonight.”
“So?” Sara asked.
“So, he doesn’t sleep over when Trent’s with me. You know that.”
Sara stopped abruptly. “Still? Are you kidding me?”
“No, why?”
“Haven’t you guys been together for, like, years?” Mia asked.
“Yeah, about three or four, I guess.”
“So why can’t he sleep over?”
“Well, he could but he doesn’t
feel comfortable with it, and
I want to respect that.” 
“Kat, that’s crazy!” Sara insisted. “You guys are in a committed, monogamous relationship. You know Trent knows you guys are having sex! Why not be out in the open about it?”
I have no problem being open about a lot about sex with The Kid — just not about my personal sex life.
And, really, what kid even wants to think about his
or her parents having sex?
It’s just one big eww!! Most kids think they’re parents stopped having sex when the last kid was born, and they didn’t enjoy it anyway. So if I were still married, my sex life most likely even be an issue.
But when you’re a divorced parent and dating, it’s hard to hide what’s going on, beyond just the noisy sex thing. Having a man who’s not quite our dad, but more than a family friend shuffling over to the breakfast table in his jammies, bed-hair and morning woody — or that look on a guy’s face that only comes from having taken care of that — feels a little too in your face. And there’s always the chance that a kid’s going to accidentally see a boyfriend or girlfriend naked.
Of course, Trent knows what’s going on. But, I don’t feel like I have to fill in the details for him
- Is it OK for a boyfriend/girlfriend to sleep over when you have kids?
- Does it matter how long you’ve been together or how old the kids are?
- If one of your parents did that while you were young, how did you feel about it?
Photo © Angelika Bentin – Fotolia.com
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