Andy Cohen knows it takes a village to raise a baby.
In a chat with PEOPLE and Entertainment Weekly Editorial Director Jess Cagle for this week’s issue of PEOPLE, the 50-year-old Watch What Happens Live host introduces son Benjamin Allen and says he “didn’t want to wait” any longer to become a father, even if it meant doing it as a single parent.
“It’s not something in your mind — ‘Oh, I want to do this alone.’ But I like being alone,” explains Cohen. “I didn’t want to wait. To me it would have to be a very special person to say, ‘Let’s do this together.’ And I would love that, and that person could be having coffee down the street at this moment and I’ll meet him soon.”
“I will say, my first night back in New York City, I had a moment where I was in the apartment and [Benjamin] was upstairs and I was like, ‘Wow, man, this is on you,’ and it was heavy,” admits the Bravo personality, who welcomed his baby boy via surrogate on Feb. 4.
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Cohen says that alongside his willingness to raise baby Benjamin in a single-parent household, he has a ton of support from friends, a baby nurse and “a swarm of women around who are ready to love on this boy” — likely at least in part referring to the Real Housewives.
And his approach to dating will likely shift a bit, now that he has a child’s interest to take into account.
“I think that I will probably be looking for different types of guys,” Cohen tells PEOPLE. “I’ll be looking for guys you want to bring home to Mom or bring home to your son.”
“It’s not going to be a revolving door of ‘This is your new uncle,’ ” says the star, who split from boyfriend Clifton Dassuncao last March.
Watch the full episode of The Jess Cagle Interview: Andy Cohen, streaming now on PeopleTV.com, or download the PeopleTV app on your favorite device.
RELATED VIDEO: Meet Andy Cohen’s Baby! The Bravo Host Describes His Experience In The Delivery Room
Cohen tells Cagle that he “always knew [he] wanted a family” but “as a gay man, I never thought it was in the cards for me.”
“When I came out to my parents in 1988, my mom said she had to mourn the life that I wasn’t going to be able to have. And that life meant getting married and having kids,” he recounts.
“[At that time] people were dying of AIDS; [that’s] what was happening in the gay community. So all these years later, gay men are raising families and getting married. There were points where I thought that it was too late for me or that I was really focused on my career, and I was having too much fun to think about it. It was still there nagging at me in the back of my head.”
“Turning 50 also played a big part. I just realized that now was the time. From the time I decided, ‘Okay, I’m doing this,’ which was December 2017, for the entire year of 2018 I lived my life as though it was my last year on the planet,” Cohen continues. “I knew that I was turning a page on that chapter in my life. It’s not to say that I can’t go to a party anymore, but things are changing.”
For more about Andy Cohen’s life as a new dad, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
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