Dear Rabbi Danny,
I met a great woman on JDate that I fell madly in love with after our first date. She’s everything I dreamed of in a girlfriend, except for one major detail: she lied on her profile page. She wrote that she is 33, never been married and does not have any children. On our fourth date she revealed that she is actually separated and has a 3 year old daughter! I was in complete shock and now I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what is worse, the fact that she lied or that her divorce isn’t final yet (I can live with her being a mum). Should I give her another chance or is this a woman you shouldn’t trust?
Please help,
Mark
The Advice:
Dear Mark,
You find yourself in a complicated situation. It is almost universally agreed that trust is an important recipe for any successful relationship, and with this in mind your fledgling relationship has certainly not got off to the best start.
One can understand that on a dating profile a person might not want to mention a child or a pending divorce. Would you have gone on a first date had you known what her situation really was? She might have felt that this was something she only wanted to share with a person that she could picture a future with. And the fact that she opened up to you about her situation could be conceived of as her attempting to move the relationship onto a new level.
I think it is important to acknowledge that there are three issues here. There is the matter of the pending divorce, there is the presence of a child and overall there is an issue of trust. You have said you ‘can live with her being a mum’ (although I am wondering how enthusiastic you are about this). However, with the divorce still pending it might be a case of waiting until there is a little bit more certainty over her personal situation.
Overall the question for you is whether you will be able to trust her in the future? If the trust is irreparably broken, then it is arguable that this relationship is doomed to failure from the outset.
All the best,
Rabbi Danny
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