Dating After Divorce: Avoid The Biggest Mistake

Dating After Divorce: Avoid The Biggest Mistake

By Jim Duzak

on Monday, June 27, 2011

When it comes to dating after divorce, men and women both tend to make a big mistake, but it’s theopposite mistake. Men start dating too soon, and women wait too long.

THE DUDES...

Let’s look first at men. In the first year after a divorce is final, a man is five times more likely than a woman to get remarried. (In the case of thedeath of a spouse, the difference is even more pronounced: a widower isten times more likely than a widow to get remarried right away). No official statistics are kept on the number of recently-divorced men who move in with a woman without getting married, but I’m sure the number is large.

• He hasn't figured out his mistakes. In far too many of these situations, the man has started a relationship with someone new without taking the time to understand what went wrong in his marriage. A lot of men are simply not very introspective, especially about situations in which they may have been at fault. Other men find that their egos are bruised by a marital breakup, especially if their wife was the one who initiated the divorce (and, in fact, about 75% of divorces are filed by women); they need a new woman in order to feel like a man again.
• He can't stand alone. And then there are the huge numbers of divorced men who have never developed the life skills to function on their own. These are the men who can’t cook, or load a dishwasher, or pack a suitcase, or wear clothes that match, or pay bills on time, or any of a dozen other things that they’ve always relied on a woman to do.
• History repeats itself. When a man remarries too soon, or takes up with a new woman for the wrong reasons, he’s almost guaranteed to eventually replicate the same attitudes and behaviors that led to his divorce. And then, guess what? He’s divorced a second time, or his live-in girlfriend throws him out and his bitterness about women only intensifies. And he hasn’t learned a thing.

Men need to learn how to reflect and how to mourn before they move on. Will they do it? Probably not, but they need to, and they’ll pay a big price for not doing it.

THE LADIES...

On the other hand, divorced women have the tendency to reflect too deeply and mourn too long. I can’t tell you the number of divorced women I know who have been on their own for three years, five years, ten years or even more, and haven’t had a single date of any kind. Most of these women didn’t set out after their divorce to live life without a relationship with a man, but they sort of drifted along without really thinking about it.

• She waits until the kids have grown. In many cases, a woman will become the primary custodian of her kids after a divorce. (Although “joint custody” is very much in vogue these days, the big majority of kids of divorced parents live with their mothers most of the time). Having been a single parent myself many years ago, I can relate to the almost overwhelming demands on single mothers. And I know that a mother’s new relationships are often a sensitive issue for her kids. But I think it’s a big mistake for a woman to delay dating until her kids are grown.
• She gets too comfortable alone. The problem with waiting too long to begin dating after divorce is that, once the woman decides she’s “ready”, she’s developed all sorts of fears and negative attitudes that will make it tough to develop a new relationship. For example, after doing everything with her kids or her girlfriends for so many years, she may be uncomfortable around men; she may not know how to talk to men or relax with them. Or she may be hung-up on her physical attributes; she’s gained thirty pounds since her divorce and she’s acutely aware of it. Or she has a fear of sex, or of dealing with all the sex-related issues she never had to deal with when she was married: condoms, std’s, partners with unfamiliar expectations or demands in bed