Today on the way to school, Bridget asked me if I had a boyfriend.

We’re both lucky I didn’t crash the car, such was my shock at this question.

I asked her if she thought I did and she said yes. When I asked her why she thought that, she said that we had dinner with “that man who had the Barbie game on his phone.” She was talking about my friend J, with whom she and I had dinner back in November. I explained to her that, no, he’s just an old friend of mine and that he is married with a little girl at home. Then I died a little because I never thought to explain to her that she wasn’t meeting a possible stepfather that night. But it’s nice to know that she likes him enough to approve of that scenario.

The conversation then turned to the fact that she is going to have a stepmother soon and how she wishes I would get married so she can have a “step-DADA.” I tried to get her to explain to me why she wants one of those, and the best she could come up with was that she liked having other people around. So basically she’s not so much a fan of me and The EX and wants other people around to amuse her.

I explained to her that maybe one day we’d find somebody super special like GF that we would want to be with, but it couldn’t just be anybody. She accepted that and then asked if she could listen to The Lion King soundtrack.  Then I threw up in  my mouth a little.

Again, I don’t want to say never, but I really can’t see the appeal of getting married again. And certainly I’m not going to be pressured into it by a five year old. But wow. I never thought she even gave any of this any thought at all, but this is the second time she’s brought this up. I feel like my answer is sufficient and it’s all I’ll probably ever give her on that topic.

I’m still gobsmacked. Dating pressure from my five year old daughter.

Another topic we covered was that boys could have boyfriends and girls could have girlfriends. She said, “They CAN?” and I said, “Yes of course. Boys can even marry boys and girls can marry girls.” (I didn’t want to go into legality and civil unions. She’s only FIVE.)  And she said, “That’s good.” Hopefully that lesson will stick with her and she’ll always feel that way about it.