5 Signs You Are Ready to Date After Divorce

Yes, a divorce brings chaos and destruction to your current life and the future life you had planned and dreamed about. Eventually, you realize your future dreams haven’t died. Those future dreams were just intended to be lived with someone else.

When the time comes, inevitably, you’ll ask yourself, “Am I ready for this?”. That’s where I was two years after my divorce was official and five years after my ex-wife and I separated. I was scared. My confidence had taken a huge hit, and it had been around ten years since I dated anyone.

Things done changed — Notorious B.I.G.

So much was different since my last foray into the dating market. I was now coming in as a 30-something divorced dad with parenting and career responsibilities and no accurate free schedule due to parenting duties. I also knew that A LOT had changed in the ten years since I had last been on the market. Not only within the market but also internally inside me, how I viewed myself and the world.

Despite feeling like the odds were stacked against me (they weren’t), I was ready to get back out there. Besides the old and vague “when you know, you just know” advice people tend to give, how do you know when you are ready to put yourself back out there and date again?

These are the things I pointed to as proof I was ready. I also share these with other divorced people that ask me how I knew.

Here are the Five signs you are ready:

1. You are comfortable being alone.

This is the #1 thing you must work on after a divorce, or a breakup, before jumping back into the dating world. You can’t base your happiness and fulfillment on a relationship alone. If you aren’t comfortable being alone, you are more likely to jump into a bad relationship and disregard red flags. Even worse, you’ll continue to jump into worse connections when that relationship ends.

Everyone is familiar with rebound relationships and how many don’t last. People who move on too quickly are trying to fill a hole within themselves with other people. Instead of rushing into something, take time to build yourself back up. Learn or re-learn to love yourself and become comfortable with yourself. I believe youngsters refer to this as “dating yourself.” Become your own best friend.

2. You’ve taken the time to work on yourself.

Divorce tears everything down. You will have to work on yourself to heal and rebuild yourself. Based on the statistics that say 60% or more of second marriages end in divorce, are enough people doing that work? Working on yourself will require you to take a long and honest look at yourself, your flaws, and the role you played in your relationship ending. It will require you to accept your responsibility for the part you played in that divorce taking place. As the saying goes, it takes 2 to tango.

It’s hard for most people to take an honest and unbiased look at themselves and admit they need to work on things. You must push your ego aside and accept that you played a role. You made mistakes too. It’s okay. The first part of any change is realizing that a change needs to be made. Internalize that you can improve anything if you do the work.

This was the hardest one for me. I wanted to play the victim for the longest time. I had to take a long hard look at how I showed up in the relationship, my behavior as a husband, and what I could have done better. It’s hard to admit that you could have done better when blaming your partner is easier. Blaming someone else keeps you stuck on repeating the same mistakes over and over. You need to learn, grow, and keep moving forward. I’d say that’s good advice for life, not just post-divorce.

3. You can talk about the divorce without letting your emotions take over.

This is a hard one. I promise you that whomever you date will ask why you got divorced at some point. If you turn your answer into a therapy session where you vent and get angry, you’re not likely to get another date or hear from that person again. Divorce is a highly emotional thing. It makes perfect sense that if someone asks you what happened, it drudges up emotions as you recall what happened. That’s normal for everyone who has gone through it.

You should, however, be able to abstain from pointing fingers and blaming your former spouse. You should be able to avoid playing the victim. You should be able to accept some responsibility for your actions. If all you do is point fingers, your date will see right through you. Nobody wants to get attached to someone still struggling with their divorce.

4. You are open to new possibilities.

A large part of your early post-divorce life will most likely be that you think you’ll never find love again or that it doesn’t exist. Your confidence will probably be in the gutter. The idea of dating will sound exhausting and undesirable. All of the above was true for me.

Many days, I wondered what the point of dating even was. (Trust me, early on, when you’ve gone on some bad dates, you’ll wonder even more what the point of dating is, but that’s another article by itself…..) You will reach a point where you start to get curious and wonder, “what if?”. Suddenly, dating won’t sound like such a bad idea anymore, and you will find yourself becoming more open to navigating the waters of life with a partner in crime. And the idea of building something with someone no longer sounds exhausting; it inspires a little hope.

5. You can ask yourself, “Would I date me?” and give yourself an honest answer: “YES!”.

Look, nobody is perfect. EVERYONE has things to work on. If you answer no to this question, look at your reasons and then chart a path to change those negatives to positives. They may be simple fixes or deep-rooted issues that will require the help of a therapist or counseling. And that is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. Whatever they may be, every issue can be worked on, and you can improve. One of the amazing things about life is that you can change. You can improve. And you can do it at any time.

You can’t force yourself to be ready for something you aren’t prepared for. There is a saying, “hurt people hurt people” for a reason. If you rush into dating after your divorce without considering where you are, you risk hurting someone else and setting yourself back even further. Take the time to reflect, heal, and process your emotions and grief. Rediscover yourself and learn, or relearn, how to love yourself.

When you’ve gone through a divorce, done the work on yourself, picked up all the pieces, put yourself back together, and come out on the other side in a better place, you’ve done something remarkable. You’ll even realize that quite a few people aren’t aware enough to know they need to do what you’ve done or outright refuse to do it. You’ve placed yourself in a limited group of people and made yourself a catch.