Scruples

In the 80's there was a board game called Scruples. It was a funny game, for adults, that had you discuss great moral dilemmas and your friends playing the game would vote on what course of action you'd take..

I find that my entire personal life is now a living version of this game. Dating, introducing the girls to a new love in my life, etc. I'm very fortunate that I have found a beautiful, intelligent, and strong woman who sees enough in me to be happy to be my girlfriend. She loves the girls and the girls love being around her. For the first time in years the girls are seeing what it's like for two adults to love and care for each other. They're seeing the role model that demonstrates love, nurturing, and respect - something my ex and I were never really able to show them.

But here's the rub, my ex has a problem with all of this. My girlfriend isn't allowed to spend the night if the girls are with me and I can tell from the questions that the girls ask me that they are being primed to find out more information to take back to base camp. Now the lawyers have been brought back into the frame. Her position being that I am being monumentally selfish and irresponsible by allowing my daughters to see that an unmarried couple can share a bedroom. Apparently I am promoting and supporting the notion that it's ok to have sex if you're not married; a moral minefield that I am supposedly pushing my daughters into.

Personally, I'd like to focus on the issue of them having (or not having, more to the point) sex when they become teenagers. Giving them a foundation where they understand that sex is only appropriate in a loving, stable, and respectful relationship is only going to be possible if they see one of these relationships for themselves. Of course I believe that in a perfect world two people meet, fall in love, get married, and these two virgins have sex for the first time on the night of their wedding, they live until they're an old age, never straying, and they pass away in their sleep. But that's probably not what's going to happen so we do the best we can.

How frustrating it is to finally be able to show the girls all that they have been missing only to have it pushed back in my face. In this game of scruples it's not the children who win.