How to Introduce Your Senior Mate to Family During Holidays

With Thanksgiving opening up the November and December holiday season, if you’re a senior single with a new beau or lady friend on your arm, you are facing the modern dating dilemma of mature singles, that quandary of how to introduce your new senior mate to your family this holiday season.

Forget the logistics of divorce diplomacy and whose house you are visiting for the meal. That is its own challenge for another dating article.

We’re talking about bringing your new mate with you, how you behave, and how you introduce them to your family, especially to your adult children.

First of all, when your adult child opens the front door on Thanksgiving or Christmas morning with all of the nostalgic emotional expectations at work, that is not the time for them to see your hands intertwined and canoodling with another adult other than their birth parent. Surprise! Look who I brought with me!

Please do aim to have some kind of a conversation before the holiday occasion.

“Treat your senior mate at the

holiday parties with respect.”

It also depends on how long it has been since the end of your former marriage. Was it in divorce 25 years ago? Or was it just last year? Was it from the death of a spouse last decade, or was it just last January?

If the marriage ended recently, you will need to introduce the topic of your socializing and dating again with a bit more preamble and advance time than just the week before the holiday.

“Becky, it’s been awhile since your dad and I divorced. I’ve been getting back out and meeting new people and making new friends. There’s one special man I’ve been seeing. I don’t know if we’re serious or not, but we do enjoy each other’s company.”

However, if your marriage ended a long time ago, a light phone conversation can be had.

“Jane, I’ll be a party of two. My new lady friend Patricia will be coming with me. We’ll plan on bringing the centerpiece for the table, OK?”

Your children are adults themselves, and while they might initially be taken aback that Mom is in her 70s and has a beau, they are probably delighted for you. Do give your adult children some advance warning so they can be prepared.

Most of all, how they react and respond will come from you. Treat your dating and having a new mate as something completely natural and normal for a senior single, because it is.

Treat your senior mate at the holiday parties and family get-together with respect, expressing by your behavior how important the relationship is to you, because it is.

Your children will follow your behavior. You trained them to long ago. Then you can all enjoy a happy and healthy holiday season!