How do you decide who to date and who to marry?

Who would have imagined that I would find myself dating again over the age of 40? OK, at age 45…alright, closer to 50 years old? The world had changed after the divorce; the children were now old enough to ask questions. Where are you going? And, who are you going out with? How long will you be gone? How well do you know this guy? Be careful, it is dangerous out there! These were the questions and the cries of my older children. My preteen daughter, on the other hand, was far more curious about this “thing called dating.” She wanted to share her theories and to test them out on me. I feared that I was much too old for counseling, but life has a way of continuously teaching us all despite our age.

For months I tried discretely to hire the babysitter and proclaim that I would be going out for the evening. I deflected the questions regarding my itinerary by posing rhetorical questions like, “hey who’s the parent here?” Then the day came, when my 10 year old bluntly asked that most difficult question of all, “How do you decide who to date and who to marry?”