Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Saturday, May 7, 2005
Accidental Dating

• Dear Dell: In reference to the stance you take on dating before a divorce is final when you have children, I question...

...women in a divorce are allowed to have friends, I assume.

In fact, I would hope they are encouraged to extend their personal networks to get them through the throes of a divorce.

However, there seems to be a question about having male friends as opposed to female friends. I don't think that anyone would object to a female coming over for dinner, going to the movies with me and my son, and etc.

So is a male friend viewed differently if he participates in these same activities? Is he automatically considered someone I am "dating" just because he is of the opposite sex?

And what exactly defines dating?

I have a very good friend who spends time with me and my son. I have been careful about the interactions between he and I in front of my son. I don't know if you could term it as dating. And where do you draw the line between dating and friendship?

I know this is not a black-and-white issue. I just find it difficult to embrace the fact that I am not allowed male friends, dating or otherwise, because of some remote impact it may have on my child, based on perceptions and not facts.

Your thoughts?

• Dear Defined: Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, Volume I (1966) stands open before me on page 576. Thanks to the love and foresight of my dad's parents.

But before laying out any "definitive" answer, I want to make sure I'm as sensitive and respectful to this subject as I am to any struggle faced through divorce.

It's not at all uncommon for folks to date during divorce and too-soon thereafter. I see it quite often in the long-term divorce support groups I've been leading since 1998. It sounds like you are already cognizant of the risks and consequences that come part-and-parcel with these decisions.

But I'm also gonna let you in on a little secret that many divorce recovery workshops shy away from. Drawing on some of the most extensive research available on divorce, Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington finds that "For both sexes, the best single predictor of happiness and well-being two years after a divorce was a new intimate relationship."

The trick is finding the right relationship. (Note that "promiscuity" is one of the most devastating "risk factors.")

You asked me, "...where do you draw the line between dating and friendship?"

Dear Defined — it's hard to draw that line between dating and "acquaintances"!

Psychology Today confronted this challenge last year in the face of a temptation much lesser than yours: How likely are we to become attached to mere co-workers?

"Proximity is really the core of attachment," says Cindy Hazan, associate professor of human development at Cornell University in that article, titled, "Love Thy Neighbor" (January/February 2004).

"We might declare, 'I wouldn't date Bob if he were the last man on earth!' But Hazan thinks Bob would grow on us, and that a slow burn over time could boil into a full-blown romance."

You are absolutely correct about the value of social networks in the face of adversity.

But we must also recognize that it's that concentration of stress that persists through the first two years post-Judgment of Divorce that makes us susceptible to attachment factors that can easily transform friendships into "accidental" dating relationships.

If it's so much trouble to keep our feelings for "Bob" in check, just two cubicles away on the job, how "careful" can you really expect yourself to be with this man that you already view as "a very good friend"?

Here's Webster's line.

date \ n 5a: "...an appointment between two persons of the opposite sex for the mutual enjoyment of some form of social activity."

You're asking the right questions.

But even with the best black-and-whites our progenitors can give us, we still have to decide what risks we'll take in the face of them.

—posted by Dell Deaton @12:01 PM EST 5/7/2005 [675]

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