I’m going to share something with all of you, and don’t forget: this comes from not only my perspective as a single dad but also the perspective of 20 years’ worth of coaching.

Sometimes when you Google articles on the Internet, you don’t really know who the hell these people are and why they’re writing what they write or what even gives them the permission to write it.

I’m going to tell you something. When I was single, years ago, I tried dating single moms, and to tell you the truth, it was almost next to impossible. It’s not that they weren’t great people, it’s not that they weren’t beautiful women inside and out, but I just didn’t understand what they went through in life. I didn’t get it.

My life was all about me.

My pleasure, my vacations, my friends, my free time.

I loved it. I didn’t have to report to anybody at any time. I didn’t have to show up for soccer practice. I didn’t have to show up for anything.

I lived that way for a long time. Literally 47 years of my life. So whenever I dated a single mom, I just didn’t understand any of the things that she was going through, and I’m a pretty understanding human being.

Now that I have a kid, I’ve dated women who didn’t have kids, and they had no idea what I was going through at all. None. Nothing. And it was annoying them because they didn’t feel like they were number one in my life.

They weren’t number one because, you know what, it had nothing to do with my kid. It had to do with the fact is that, to be honest with you, they weren’t a priority to me.

That might sound cold, but at least I’m honest about it.

Because let me tell you something. If I find somebody and I’m with somebody, they are a priority to me. I will see them, I will talk to them, I will call them, I will text them all day long and I’ll be thinking about them. They are my damn priority.

I understood where they were coming from, too. They didn’t get it. They didn’t get what it was like to deal with an ex. They didn’t get what it was like to have a kid. I have coached for years and I’ve dealt with single moms and single dads. And every time they dip into the no-kid pool, the other person — as understanding as they could possibly be — doesn’t fully understand, because the old saying is, “Unless you’ve walked in someone else’s shoes, you most likely won’t understand what they’re all about.”

It doesn’t make you a wrong person, a bad person, an evil person at all. It just makes you a person, and that is perfectly okay, because that’s all you are: a person having the human experience.

That’s why, when it comes down to dating somebody, meeting somebody, being with them, you’ve got to come from similar backgrounds. It’s so important to understand what the other person is going through.

I’ve dated people who grew up on layaway and didn’t have money, didn’t live in a house, and their perspective around money is different from my perspective around money. Some people have overcome it, some people still have their programming.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t overcome that, as well. Everybody can overcome whatever they want to overcome.

We have the power to change, the power to evolve, the power to grow, the power to do all this wonderful stuff. But to me, I need somebody who understands by background, how I grew up, how they grew up.

And I need someone to understand my life right now. As a man, as a father, as a single father, and all the rest of it.