While I doubt the validity of many of the stories on "90 Day Fiance", I continue to watch the show and it's spin-off out of...well, habit. That and the Mrs. likes to watch it. She wonders how our relationship would've played out if she'd never left Greece and I'd never left the U.S.. We'd still have ended up together, I'm sure, but the series of events bringing us together may have been quite different. When I started watching this show a few years back, it was because I was intrigued. I continued watching because all the terrible decisions these people were making made my past relationship decisions look like the gold standard. But this season has brought more single parents than seasons past and I'm disturbed by how they're handling these "marriages". It's one thing when you wanna marry someone on a whim, but it's a whole new can of Spam when you have children in the mix.
This season of 90DF introduced us to Darcey, 42-year-old divorced mother of two tween/teen daughters, and Molly, a 41-year-old mother of 17-year-old and 7-year-old daughters. It also brought back Nicole, a 23-year-old apparently part-time mother to a 2-year-old daughter. Darcey is one of those women who is not okay with aging and has gone to great lengths to try and reverse the curse, so to speak. She's Botoxed and extensioned to high heaven and travels to Amsterdam for six weeks in the hopes that the object of her affection, 24-year-old Jesse, will propose to her. She says her daughters are the most important thing in her life, yet has no problem leaving them for a month and a half to go chase down a much younger dude halfway across the world. Molly met the 26-year-old object of her obsession while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Supposedly, he was bartending and said he would like to marry a woman like her and now here they are. Molly's oldest daughter says her mom has put her on the back burner since meeting Luis and that's why she's not supportive of the relationship. Molly seems to have canceled a trip for her and the daughter to New York in order to fly to the DR to see Luis. She's also moving him into the home she shares with the daughters for the 90 days prior to their wedding. Nicole is basically a spoiled child in a grown ass body. She's in love with Azan, a 24-year-old dude from Morocco, and already has her toddler referring to him as "daddy", even though he's never met the kid. Nicole left the States to spend six weeks in Morocco sans daughter, during which she and Azan fought more than they did anything else. He did propose to her at the end of the trip but it certainly didn't look like he was doing so willingly.
There have been people with kids on this show in the past, but most have had grown or nearly grown children. They won't have to deal with the day to day of a stranger living in their midst. The little ones who have parents that can't make responsible decisions chap my ass. Darcey wears an obnoxiously large faux diamond ring on her journey through Amsterdam and never misses a chance to tell Jesse he can propose at any time. This despite his not having met her children, something he thinks is necessary before they proceed to an engagement. When they call her daughters so he can speak with them for the first time, she asks if he's ready to meet his step-daughters and the look on his face is priceless. When Luis arrives in the U.S., Molly brings both of her daughters to greet him and the older one is very standoff-ish. She's cordial to him and hopes for the best, but she's clearly not okay with any of this and her mom could not care less about that. Nicole, a barista who doesn't meet the financial requirements to sponsor her fiance's visa, emotionally blackmails her father and step-mother into being co-sponsors for Azan. She decides to take her 2-year-old with her to Morocco so she can see how Azan handles fatherhood, which is funny because Nicole isn't even the girl's primary parent. From the looks of it, her mother and sister are the ones raising that girl, Nicole is barely mature enough to handle her damn self. All three of these relationships have major problems that should be red flags; Darcey is obviously obsessed with staying young and sees marrying a younger man, a man who talks down to her, as the way to stay hip, Molly and Luis have only spent about a month of actual time together, and he'd never met her daughters pre-engagement, and Azan rarely answers Nicole's messages and looks like he'd rather be anywhere but with her whenever she visits him (he also frequently comments on her weight). But they all charged ahead, kids be damned.
I was a single parent for years and I cannot fathom marrying someone who had never met Miss N. How can you commit to spending the rest of your life with someone when you don't know how they will treat and love your kids? I can see thinking someone is "the one" very early on, and falling for them, that's exactly what happened with the Mrs. and me. But it wasn't signed, sealed and delivered until she met and got to know Miss N. Hell, I even asked Miss N how she felt about the whole thing before we charged ahead to the altar. When you're a parent, you're not just living for yourself and you're not the only one affected by your relationship choices. Whoever you choose to marry will be an everyday part of your child's life. If your kids are young enough, they will have a lasting imprint on the rest of their lives. That's a big responsibility and it's irresponsible as hell to just throw caution to the wind and marry someone you barely know, who your kids don't know at all. I have heard far too many stories of single parents running down an aisle within a few months because they're in love and that's all that matters. And the majority of those stories have not ended well. I certainly hope the ones on 90DF end better.
