Dating After Divorce: Rebuild Confidence and Avoid the Traps
Updated: 6 days ago
There's the old saying: "You need to get on top of someone to get over someone else," and we wanted to know how true it is. Not necessarily the intercourse part, but dating. For this study, dating was defined as a casual meeting with the possibility of getting a little something-something.
Many guys wait till they're officially divorced but I'm not gonna lie, my divorce took almost 3 years. There was no chance I was going to wait that long. I wasn't some 15-year-old that couldn't get laid in TJ, I was an adult, reasonably good looking, I had needs, and let's be honest here, YouPorn could only hold you for so long. So I looked up the California laws and put myself out there and man it was fun. Fun as shit!
Today, as a divorce and recovery coach, I do my own research. I wanted to know if my personal experience actually works for other men. I needed to know, does dating really help you get over your ex? Turns out, the answer is a big, wait for it, "it depends." I ran a study called the QoL SALAD Study (Quality of Life Survey After Divorce Study), and what we found is a lot more complicated than just “getting back out there.” Dating by itself was not the most important finding. How well that dating was going was everything.
Should You Date Before Your Divorce Is Final?
A divorce can drag on for months or years. Waiting for the final decree does not automatically make a man ready to date. Time alone does not rebuild confidence, teach you how to meet women or show you whether you are using dating as growth or anesthesia.
There are exceptions. If you have not filed, reconciliation is genuinely active, you are in the military, or dating could affect custody, support or your legal position, talk to your attorney first. Do not hand opposing counsel free ammunition because you are lonely.
Dating during divorce does not have to mean replacing your wife. It can mean meeting people, rebuilding social confidence and learning what you actually want next. The data does not prove dating causes recovery, but it does show that dating well and dating badly are very different experiences. The question is not simply whether your divorce is final. It is whether you are dating deliberately.
See the full QoL SALAD Study and how the 717-man results were measured.
Does Dating After Divorce Help Men Recover?
Dating helped modestly. The QoL SALAD Study took place over 4 years, and its purpose was to determine what, other than time, helps men recover from divorce. It examined self-reported quality of life among 717 divorcing and divorced men. The study was observational, so the results show associations rather than proving that dating causes better or worse recovery.
Dating vs. Not Dating After Divorce
At first, the result looked straightforward. Men who were dating had an average quality-of-life score of approximately 66. Men who were not dating averaged approximately 56, about a 10-point difference.
But that average hides the more important story. Some men who dated were doing extremely well. Others were having a miserable experience. When I separated those experiences, the relationship with quality of life became much more dramatic.
Dating May Backfire if You Half-Ass It
Getting guys back into dating is actually one of my favorite parts of the job, and it will be yours because we're now creating the man. Hair transplants, getting in shape, figuring out how to look your best, building an online dating profile, taking the right pictures (sometimes with me literally behind the camera) this stuff is fun, and we work it to death until we get it right.
And the data suggests that matters. Men who described their dating experience as extremely poor averaged approximately 52 in quality of life. That's not only dramatically below the men who said they were killing it in dating. It's even below the approximately 56 reported by men who weren't dating at all.
That matters. A man can be technically “dating” while getting few matches, being repeatedly rejected, comparing every woman with his ex, or using every swipe as a referendum on whether he is still desirable. For a man coming out of divorce with his confidence already damaged, a bad dating experience may become another arena in which he feels unwanted.
The Men Killing It in Dating Look Completely Different
At the opposite end were men who said they were doing extremely well in the dating world. Their average QoL climbed to approximately 81. Men reporting extremely poor dating success averaged approximately 52. That is a 29-point spread. The overall QoL SALAD average was approximately 61.
This is why I do not think the interesting variable is simply whether a divorced man is dating. This is where the data became much more interesting. The biggest difference wasn't simply between men who dated and men who didn't. It was between men who were struggling in the dating world and men who said they were killing it.
Why Feeling Desired Again Matters
Think about the psychological position many men are in when a marriage ends. A man can come out of divorce feeling rejected, unattractive and uncertain whether another woman will ever want him. His self-esteem may already be in the toilet.
Then imagine his experience changes. He gets matches. Attractive women flirt with him. Women want second dates. He realizes that women he would actually like to date are interested in him. After years of feeling unwanted in a dying marriage, he is suddenly experiencing himself as desirable again. It can feel like an entirely different world.
My hypothesis is that this experience may matter far more than simply having a dating profile. Feeling desired again could reinforce confidence, optimism and a new identity after divorce. But the study cannot prove that mechanism.
Does Dating Success Cause Better Quality of Life After Divorce?
Let's put it this way. You date well, you start having fun again, you realize women actually want you, and suddenly single life doesn't look like the fucking death sentence you thought it was. You may eventually look back and think, "Damn, I deserved better all this time."
Dating success produced one of the largest differences in quality of life in the entire QoL SALAD Study. Men who were doing extremely poorly with dating averaged about 52, while men who were killing it averaged 81, a massive 29-point gap.
Only one finding in the entire study was larger: whether a man was still trying to get his former wife back or had embraced his new single life. That gap was 32 points.
And I don't think that's a coincidence.
One reasonable explanation is that men who already have higher quality of life are simply better positioned to date successfully. A man who is exercising, confident, financially stable, living independently, socially active and no longer consumed by his former relationship is probably going to feel better and perform better in the dating world. The study is observational, so it cannot tell us which direction the relationship runs.
There's another possibility worth examining: successful dating may be one of the experiences that helps a man begin embracing his single life.
A few of my clients started dating while they were still emotionally attached to their former wives. They weren't necessarily "over it" when they started. Then something changed. They met women. They had fun. They felt desired again. They discovered options they didn't think they had. The life they were desperately trying to avoid started becoming a life they actually enjoyed.
I also want to make something clear. Many guys reported moments when thoughts of their ex would suddenly creep in while they were physically intimate with someone new, whether they were hugging, kissing or having sex. That can fuck with your head and make you wonder if you're dating too soon. But for the men who described it to me, those moments were temporary. They didn't mean the guy needed to stop dating. They were simply part of adjusting to intimacy with someone new while the emotional attachment to his former wife was still fading.
That was my experience too. I didn't wait until I had completely embraced being single before I started dating. Fuck no, I needed to do normal things a man needs to do when they're single and dating was one of them and it was a major part of what helped me embrace it. On one occasion, I was naked in bed with a beautiful blonde and completely zoned out thinking about my ex. She literally and gently touched my chin with her index finger and moved it to her field of vision to remind me that she was there. That's how emotionally attached I still was to my ex while I was already sleeping with someone else.
And that's the point. Starting to date didn't mean I was already over my ex. Dating became part of the process of getting over her and beginning to embrace being single.
That doesn't prove dating caused the 29-point difference, nor does it prove that dating caused men to embrace single life. The QoL SALAD Study wasn't designed to establish that causal pathway. But when the two largest quality-of-life differences in the study are embracing single life at 32 points and dating success at 29 points, dismissing the relationship would be incredibly obtuse.
And while this last part is strictly anecdotal, I can't think of any of my clients who waited to date and later told me they were glad they waited. To the contrary, the consistent response has been that they wish they'd done it earlier.
What the QoL SALAD Dating Data Actually Says
The useful conclusion is not “dating after divorce makes men happier.” Dating status alone does not tell the whole story. Men who were dating reported higher QoL overall, but men having a miserable dating experience reported some of the lowest scores, while men who said they were killing it reported some of the highest.
So “get back out there” is incomplete advice. Dating may not help every man, and a bad experience may correspond with even lower quality of life. The strongest dating-related pattern in this study was success in dating, not merely participation in dating.
How MeDiCo Improves Your Online Dating Pictures
I'm not exaggerating when I say that you're going to be on the top 5% of the dating pool. I've done it repeatedly and I tell my guys that the only thing I cannot fight against is their age and height but anything else including weight, or baldness, I can work with ethically and without cat-fishing. In other words, I'm not here to get you 2 dozen likes a week. I'm here to get you over 100 likes a week. I have the formula and have repeated the formula. This is one of my favorite parts of the work because we're not just building a dating profile.
Through the coaching process, I'll recommend a new wardrobe and show you HOW TO WEAR IT. Most of this can be done virtually, but some clients choose to have me work with them in person for an additional fee. When I do, I'm right there teaching them how to take their own pictures, sometimes hundreds of them. I'll take pictures of them too, but I strongly encourage them to use the ones they personally took. I'm not there to become their photographer. I'm there to teach them what works: lighting, location, posture, angles, clothing and how to actually look comfortable in front of the camera. The goal is that when I'm gone, they can do this shit themselves. You don't need a professional photographer following you around. When we're finished, I want you looking at your own pictures thinking, "Dude, this is so good, I'd fuck me."
Don't believe me, watch my webinars or look at the pictures of before and after from my clients. Because while you're out there taking car selfies, my clients are stepping up and locked in.
Hopefully you're a little more muscular, by then you already have a wardrobe, paying for a great haircut, learning what actually fits you, and figuring out how to take pictures that make you look attractive without looking staged. I usually have guys buy a tripod and learn to take their own pictures rather than relying on professional dating photos. We work on clothing, fit, location, lighting, posture and which pictures actually produce results.
Then we build the profile. I prefer very little in the About Me section because most guys talk themselves out of matches. Once the account is live, we watch what works, rotate photos and adjust.
I've had men go from getting almost nothing to getting hundreds of likes a week. And once that happens, something interesting occurs beyond the dating app: the guy starts seeing himself differently. They develop an incredible confidence boost as they realize they underestimated themselves
That's why the dating findings in the QoL SALAD Study interest me so much. Dating has always been a major part of what I do. Before I became a divorce coach, I actually considered building my entire channel around dating because of how much getting back out there helped me after my own divorce. But I wanted to do something with more substance than becoming another "get laid" guy on the internet. I wanted to help men rebuild the entire man.
Dating still became a major part of the MeDiCo curriculum. We work on getting in shape, style, hair, confidence, photographs, dating profiles, messaging and actually succeeding once you're back out there. Not because getting laid is the goal of divorce recovery, but because I believe learning that you can build a life you actually want after your marriage is part of recovery.
That's what makes the QoL SALAD findings so interesting to me. I believed dating mattered long before I had the data. Then the study found that dating success produced the second-largest quality-of-life difference we measured.
About the QoL SALAD Study
The takeaway isn't that every divorced man needs to start dating. It's that getting back out there and succeeding out there are two very different things. The men in the QoL SALAD Study who struggled with dating reported some of the lowest quality-of-life scores because they haven't let go and are stuck. The men who said they were killing it reported some of the highest.
Dating may not be what rebuilds a man after divorce. But when a man has rebuilt enough of himself to walk back into the world and discover that he's wanted again, the data suggests something very different is happening.
If you're ready to date again but the apps are destroying your confidence, don't just keep swiping harder. I work with men on the entire process: getting in shape, style, hair, confidence, online dating profiles, photos, messaging and learning how to date again after years of marriage.
If you want help figuring out what's holding you back, let's talk about coaching. Ongoing packages begin at $1,900. The consultation is free and helps us decide whether we're a good fit.
Have a question before booking? Text me at 562-644-4425.
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