Dating Daycare
Welcome to "Dating Daycare," the ultimate safe space for women navigating the unpredictable world of modern dating. Join hosts Melissa Firpo and Allison Waterman as they dish out candid advice, share hilarious anecdotes, and tackle the toughest dating dilemmas faced by women today.
In a dating landscape filled with frogs disguised as princes and a jungle of jerks, Melissa and Allison offer a nurturing haven where women can laugh, learn, and empower each other to find love on their own terms. From ghosting to breadcrumbing, from disastrous first dates to navigating online profiles, "Dating Daycare" covers it all with wit, wisdom, and plenty of wine.
With Melissa's no-nonsense approach and Allison's comedic charm, each episode feels like a heart-to-heart chat with your best girlfriends over brunch. Whether you're swiping left or swiping right, "Dating Daycare" is your go-to guide for surviving and thriving in the wild world of modern romance.
So grab your favorite beverage, kick back, and join Melissa and Allison as they navigate the highs, lows, and hilarities of dating life. Because when it comes to matters of the heart, everyone could use a little TLC from "Dating Daycare.
Dating Daycare
When He Won't Help: Navigating Marriage with an Uninvolved Partner
Feeling alone while being married is a special kind of heartbreak that too many parents experience. We dive deep into a raw, emotional question from a woman who's been married less than two years but already feels like she's drowning as a single parent despite having a husband at home.
The conversation takes an honest turn as we explore the warning signs that were present from the beginning - a pattern of uninvolvement that extended from his first child to their now shared children. Through both tough love and compassionate understanding, we unpack why some partnerships devolve into one-sided caregiving arrangements and what options remain when communication repeatedly fails.
This episode delivers crucial advice for anyone considering parenthood with a partner: observe their current parenting style carefully before proceeding. The reality is stark - people rarely transform their fundamental approaches to family responsibility after marriage or having more children. We also tackle the intense demands of stay-at-home parenting without the structure or breaks that traditional employment provides, while emphasizing the critical importance of financial independence for every parent, regardless of marital status.
Perhaps most powerfully, we examine the red flag that too many people overlook when dating someone with young children from a previous relationship. When a person has chosen the challenging path of single parenthood over staying in a relationship, there's almost always a significant reason - one that new partners should thoroughly understand before committing. Your most consequential life decisions will always be your career choice and who you have children with - choose wisely.
Ready to make better relationship choices or understand your current situation more clearly? Subscribe to Dating Daycare and join our TikTok lives every Tuesday at 10am on Healthy Chef One where you can participate in these important conversations in real-time.
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Welcome to Dating Daycare, where we help you navigate through the jungle of jerks. And today, ladies and gentlemen, you are lucky. Once again. I am on my own today, single as usual. Allison is not here, so we are going to do a fishbowl. For those of you that are just joining us and haven't joined us before, welcome. And for those of you that are fans, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Real quick, I print out different questions, put them in a fishbowl. They are dating questions, real questions from real women and men. We take one out, we read it and I'm going to help you answer the question. I'm going to give you my advice let's dig deep, let's dig real deep today, and also as something new that we've added to the podcast, just so you know, we are also on TikTok live. So if you are home and ever on a Tuesday around 10 am, check us out. Go on to our TikTok Healthy Chef One and see if we are live, because it gives you the opportunity to comment as we're reading it. And for any of you people that are out there on TikTok following the live right now, please listen to our fishbowl and let me know your opinions.
Speaker 1:Okay, here we go. This is a long one, so patience is a virtue, as they say. Okay, mamas, I'm getting ready for all the negative comments bashing me or whatever, but I just have to express how I feel and get insight. This is going to be a good one. I think so. Me and my husband will be married two years in November. I'm getting more. I'm getting more ready to leave every day.
Speaker 1:Oh Lord, here we go. I just feel so alone. I feel like a single mother. He doesn't help me with my two-year-old or our 10-month-old Hell, he barely takes care of his three-year-old. He gets every weekend. I've expressed how I felt several times over the last two years and it just seems like I'm unheard and not taken seriously. Now he works from 7 am to 7 pm, but that's not an excuse to not be involved with our kids. Our daughter doesn't know him. She cries and cries every time he holds her. He raised my son since he was four months old and now he barely wants anything to do with him. I clean the entire house, I cook, I wash clothes, I provide food, drinks, formula, while he pays the rest of the All right, we need to break this down. I feel like I'm drowning and me talking to him like he doesn't hear me. All right, we need to break this down. So she's been married for two years. She's getting frustrated because she feels like she does everything and the man does nothing. She has a two-year-old with him and a 10-month-old with him, and he barely takes care of the three-year-old with him and a 10-month-old with him, and he barely takes care of the three-year-old. He has a three-year-old with another ex-wife it doesn't say, or, as we say, baby mama, and she's basically just getting frustrated. He works long days. She's a stay-at-home mother. All right, this is a good one, because I'm gonna comment this two different ways. For any of you that are following Cub Lisa, please give us your opinions here on what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1:And so, after you had the two-year-old, you had plenty of time because you've been married for two years. I'm going to go in tough right now. Tough love, tough love. You had two years. Well, right, you're pregnant. For nine months, you had a year Plus. You had the experience of this three-year-old that isn't yours, to see how this man contributes when it comes to taking care of the children. You also had ample time to see how he helps you around the house. You've lived together since you've been married, I'm assuming, which is two years.
Speaker 1:Even though you saw that this man barely took care of the three-year-old, you decided to have a baby with him and then, when you saw that he barely took care of your two-year-old, you decided to have another baby with him. Unfortunately, that's on you, because the leopard is not changing its spots ever. I always say this Little spots. Yeah, can you please take out the garbage? Can you please pick up some milk on your way home? Yeah, men will do that. They're involved, help you out, but starting to be fully involved with the formula and the bathing and the playing with the kids, and maybe you're thinking about providing food this man isn't tomorrow, all of a sudden, going to change his ways because you want him to. So that's the tough love aspect. Now I'm going to go to an old school aspect.
Speaker 1:Listen, being a stay-at-home mom is not easy. I was a stay-at-home mom and now I work. Right, I'm a single mom now, but when I was with my ex, I was a stay-at-home mom and I did absolutely everything. So let me name the things that I used to do besides work a full-time job. I cooked, I cleaned, I did all the bottles, the formula, the diapers, went out and purchased it all, played with the kids, took them to any sort of tummy time or mommy and me bathed them, put them to bed. My ex worked from like 5, 6 in the morning to 8, 9 at night at the time. So some days he didn't even see the kids because they would be asleep by 7 and my son at the time would wake up at 5. I did everything. He never helped. On the weekends he would help a little bit but he would do stuff take out the lawn, furniture outside, or he never did the food shopping. He never cooked a meal. He would play with the kids a little bit, but I did the naps. Listen, that's what stay-at-home moms are supposed to do all the stay-at-home work.
Speaker 1:And listen, I'm not saying that that's not an easy job. It's harder than going to work. Every day you get a lunch break at work every day. You get vacation time at work. You get personal and sick days at work. You don't get that when you're a mom, no less a stay-at-home mom. When you're sick, you still gotta take care of the kids.
Speaker 1:Now I'm gonna go even into another aspect of this. We always say this on Dating Daycare Make sure that you have some sort of education and some sort of job background. I don't care if you worked in a store as a cashier for a few years before you got married or anything cashier for a few years before you got married or anything doctor, lawyer, vet, nail technician, plumber, teacher make sure, when you decide to be a stay-at-home mother, that you have a little of that money you had pushed to the side, a few thousand or thousands, so that when you get fed up, or if you ever do get fed up, like this woman, that you're not sitting there saying oh my God, I got two kids at home under three and I haven't been out in the work field in three years. How am I ever going to get out of this and support us and find a job? At least if you have a few thousand in the bank 10, 20, that's what I mean by a few when you get fed up, you could take your kids and go rent an apartment. So, ladies, financially, never leave yourself vulnerable because you don't know. And then guess what If that never happens and you have a great marriage and everything goes wonderful? Take the 10, 20 grand, go on a vacation, put it towards your children's car, put it in a mutual fund, invest it, make it 30 grand, I mean, gift it to your husband on his birthday, do whatever you want with it, but at least you have some money. Which money is freedom when you're a stay at home mother, right? So I don't think your situation is going to change. I'm sure that's why the ex-wife I'll call her is a single mother. I also say this, ladies, this is really important too, and I'll keep repeating myself Exes are exes for a reason, especially if there are children involved.
Speaker 1:I will always say this there's not one mother I've ever known that said, I want to be a single mom and do this all on my own daily. That is not what us ladies grew up aspiring to be. So if we are an ex or you meet a man that's divorced, especially if he's divorced with young children, that means that the woman decided to leave him and become a single mother rather than stick it out. That's a red flag. That's a huge red flag. When there are young, young children, and I'm going to say below the age of 13, okay, 14, 15, 16, 18, when you meet a man and he's divorced, they stuck it out, maybe for the children, not saying whether that's right or wrong and then they left.
Speaker 1:When a woman has a baby with a man a 10-month-old and a 2-year-old and she's like I'm out of here, there's a reason for that, ladies. It's not because we're crazy or um, we're a bitch, or uh, we were lazy, or 98% of the time this is going to flip to the man, because who wants to? I'm sure this woman, who has the three-year-old that you get every other weekend, doesn't have it easy on her own, and that's why a lot of women stay in horrible marriages, because they don't want to do it all on their own. So, unfortunately, I don't think that your situation is going to get better. I think that the red flags were there before you married him and decided to have two children he even had a one-year-old at that time that you could have waited and saw how he was with this one-year-old that he had with another woman on the weekends, and that should have told you everything there. I think you're going to end up being a single mother eventually, with a two-year-old and a 10-month-old, which is very doable. We all do it.
Speaker 1:There are plenty of viewers here on Dating Daycare. Like myself, I have two kids. I'm a single mother. You just need to get your shit together and learn and grow from the experience and pick better next time. Use those key points I just said. No woman wants to be a single mother. So if they are with a young kid that you're dating, the father red flag and really get to know the person before you have kids with them. I always tell my daughter the two most important things you'll ever do in life is your job and the man you pick to marry or have kids with. So take that advice to heart. I hope that was helpful. I hope I was able to help this anonymous member and this was actually from a bad mom's group, in case any of you were wondering where I print out or get any of the questions and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Join us again for another Dating Daycare. We will be back soon. Bye.
