As parents, we many of us pay plenty of attention to who is influencing our children and where the influences are coming from that affect our kids—but do we ever take the time to consider our OWN influences? Are they healthy, encouraging, and supportive of our single parent status and our development as a human being? When was the last time you took a good, hard look at what and who was influencing you and decided if it was healthy for your single parent lifestyle?
As an example, I realized several months ago that while a few of my friends were perfectly decent human beings, they were not necessarily good influences on my forty-year-old, single parent life. In my years of being a single parent, I have met and gotten to know some people who are single and my age, but they are NOT parents. While it is great and can actually add some perspective to have some friends who are childless—it can also feel unsupportive and oppositional to your single parent status in some situations. These are people who still want to go out to bars for darts and karaoke and who have a hard time understanding why I cannot drop everything to “hang out” or “get together.” There is nothing unreasonable about forty-somethings still hanging out in bars or dances or living a carefree life if they are single, childless and that is their choice—but it definitely wasn’t a good fit for me. I found myself feeling either like a dull, boring matron, or feeling like I had to defend and explain my lifestyle and family-focused choices. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t imagine much I would rather do LESS than sing karaoke at my age and temperament.
We’re full grown adults and we no longer have other people looking after us so we get to decide what sort of influences we want in our lives. Unfortunately, many of us just don’t give it much thought and we take whatever comes our way. It can be tough to decide that an otherwise perfectly fine, nice person is not a great influence! Still, it is important to decide what and who actually feels good and adds to our quality of life, and who and what does not.
Also: Strong Enough to Withstand Judgment
There Are Other “Relationships”
If I’m Not Partnered, Why Don’t I Feel Single?