If you are happy, it will help your children feel happy. By getting to know other adult men or women, your teenagers may be exposed to new ideas and new experiences. If people you are dating genuinely like them, they can become other supportive relationships for them. If your children do not like the person you date, or a person you date does not like your children, this can prove to be very upsetting. Perhaps they are jealous of each other, each wanting to control you.
Adolescents have a more difficult time than younger children accepting stepparents.
They have lived a much longer time than younger children in their original family and are often not sure they need or want another. Teenagers are also sometimes more difficult for a new person to get to know and love than a younger child. So there may be tension between your new adult friends and your adolescent children. If you are feeling conflicts and pressures over this issue, talk with a professional counselor a time or two to help you sort through what is happening. Both your children and your new love interest are important to you, hut you must never let any of them begin to run your life.