--- title: "Our children don’t know we’re dating. We planned it that way | A Situationship Story | TheGreyZones" url: https://thegreyzones.com/stories/our-children-dont-know-were-dating description: "A real, anonymous situationship story: I’m 46, divorced and have two children who are 12 and 15. The person I’m dating is 44, non-binary and has a daughter of" lang: en --- # Our children don’t know we’re dating. We planned it that way TwoCalendars (https://thegreyzones.com/stories/users/TwoCalendars) · Posted 5 Oct 2026, 07:24 I'm not ready 6–12 months 40+ Man & Non-binary I’m 46, divorced and have two children who are 12 and 15. The person I’m dating is 44, non-binary and has a daughter of 13. We have been seeing each other for eight months. None of the children know. That sounds worse written down than it feels in our actual lives. We met through a local walking group. For the first couple of months it genuinely was casual. A drink when neither of us had the children, the occasional Sunday afternoon, messages that stopped when homework and school uniforms took over. By month four, we were exclusive. We still did not want to introduce the children. My divorce was fairly calm, but my youngest had only just stopped asking whether his mum and I might live together again. Their daughter had already met two of their ex’s partners in three years and had made it very clear she did not want another adult arriving with a toothbrush and an opinion about bedtime. Neither of us wants to blend families at the moment. We do not want sleepovers when the children are home. We do not cover childcare for each other or turn up at school events as “a friend.” If one of us has to cancel because a child needs us, the evening is cancelled. It is not especially spontaneous. It is also not a secret one of us is suffering through. We talked about it properly in June. We agreed to revisit it at the end of the year, not because December is a deadline for introductions, but because we did not want “not yet” to become a rule nobody was allowed to question. Last week tested it. We had booked dinner for Thursday. Their co-parent became ill, so their daughter came home unexpectedly. They rang me while I was getting ready and said we could either cancel or I could come over after she was asleep. I said we should cancel. For about half an hour, I was annoyed. Not with them exactly. I had bought a shirt, rearranged a work call and spent the afternoon looking forward to seeing them. A small, childish part of me also wanted them to say that eight months was long enough and I should just come round. Instead, I heated a supermarket pizza and watched something neither of us would have chosen. They called later. I admitted I had felt disappointed and slightly ridiculous sitting there in the new shirt. They said they were disappointed too. Then we looked at the agreement again. Nothing had changed. I still do not want their daughter finding a stranger in the kitchen on a Friday morning. They still do not want my children wondering whether every person I date is about to join the family. We are not ready for the practical and emotional weight of introductions, and neither of us is promising that we will be by Christmas. A friend thinks this means we are frightened of commitment. Maybe from the outside it looks like a relationship that only exists when the children are elsewhere. But it does exist. They know the irritating details of my work. I know which supermarket their daughter’s school bus stops beside because it affects when we can meet. We have keys to each other’s flats for emergencies, kept in drawers rather than on our everyday keyrings. We plan around two custody calendars and complain when the calendars win. The children are not being used to keep one person at a distance. They are the reason two adults are moving slowly in the same direction. Could one of us change our mind? Yes. I might eventually want shared holidays and Sunday lunch with everybody at one table. They might decide they never want that. If those answers separate, we will have a real problem. For now, the privacy is mutual, specific and regularly discussed. On Saturday we went for a walk, got caught in rain and ate chips in my car. I was still wearing the new shirt under a wet jumper. Not a grand romance. Not nothing either. It is the pace we have both chosen, until one of us says it no longer works. What should they do? · 0 votes Log in (https://thegreyzones.com/login) or create a free account (https://thegreyzones.com/register) to vote and reply. ## Replies (0) Be honest. Be kind. No real names. Log in (https://thegreyzones.com/login) to reply. No replies yet. Be the first voice here.