I respect all of you and your opinions. That said after dating sunshine girl #2 for about 2 months I asked my IC about when I should/could introduce D4 to her. I don't remember her exact words, but the reply she did not concur with the need for 6months plus of waiting. The "wait 6 months" seems abritrary to her and to me and then we talked about how unrealistic that would actually be especially given the holidays, or family events or whatever. The intent I get, it sounds good, protective, but it simply wasn't going to happen.
Then the more I got to thinking about it I realized no matter how much I do or how long I wait there is no way I can protect D4 from heartbreak. Now that's not to say I'm trying to rush it and for sure as well I would be a terrible example if I had a revolving door of women coming in and out of her life, but I have no intentions of that being the case. Also and especailly from this site, we all know at any time for any reason and in many instances no reason that we can actually understand, people leave each other. I could wait 6 months, a year, whatever think sunshine girl #2 is the one...and then she could leave. There is no certainity that after any amount of time and no matter how much I think a relationship is gonna last that it's guaranteed to do so and D4 at whatever age would have to deal with the loss of that person. A lady I had dated before my current had an 8yo and 6yo, they were wonderful children, very smart and she had introduced them to 2 other men prior to myself after her divorce. After she elected to stop seeing me, I've seen pictures of them on social media smiling, enjoying their lives, no signs of trauma from the heartbreak of me not being in the picture anymore. And then with my GF...she has a cousin who got married after 2 weeks!!! of knowing her husband. She and I both looked at each other incredulous thinking about how ridiculously fast that seems, BUT they have been happily married for 17 years now. Here I am having been twice divorced after dating each for 18 months before proposing and then to have neither of them last past 5 years. Bottom line there are no guarantees nor certainties with relationships and heartbreak is inevitable in life.
I value the help and support that each of us provide to one another on this site. It's truly a very valuable thing the support shown to many people going through terrible times in their life. Sometimes, however, the advice that I read I find to be overly cautious and/or too cynical to agree with. I wonder at times if given how badly many of us have been hurt, we've erred too far in our "don't trust...give it lots of time...etc" that we don't celebrate, encourage and enable people when/if they meet someone new/start dating. I just lean more towards the less cautious, give it a whirl, see what happens side of the house.
In this instance I know I chose to go a different direction from the prevailing advice. I do not discount the logic of what most of you have said and God knows I don't want D4 to experience any more heartbreak than she has too. I simply decided in my situation that the time was right for me to introduce D4 to Sunshine girl and it will be on me good or bad to deal with the consequences. I'd prefer not to discuss any further the rightness or wrongness of my decision especially as it's already been made. I hope that as I respect each of your opinions as friends on this site that each of you can respect mine. I very much do take your comments, thoughts into my decisions as I've found this site to be a great support. I only hope that given my stance I'm not ostracized for having a contradictory point of view.
