I got divorced in 2025 after being with my ex-wife and having kids with her over 15 years. I've been out with at least 22 different women in the year since my divorce, and these are the key things I've learned. I hope they make it easier for you if you're dating after divorce, or if you just want to learn from dating instead of suffering through it.
Effort, persistence, and patience are attractive
The number one thing I've learned about dating is that effort, persistence, and patience are attractive and effective. There have been points where I've been dating and not texted women for days. I've felt like I couldn't even show up on dating apps and needed to delete them, that I should just give up on dating, and I didn't even know what effort to put in. The key I see is to keep making effort. At least if you're a man. Maybe if you're a beautiful woman you can just go around and some guy will approach you, but consistently, what dating needs is effort. The opposite advice is everywhere: just don't put in any effort, stop trying, don't think about it. No. I've seen no evidence of that consistently being successful. I've seen people stay single for years and years doing that.
What has been fantastic for me is that all the effort I've put into dating, the tens of thousands of dollars I've spent on matchmaking, dating coaching, dating apps, new clothes bought specifically for dating, even getting my car painted for dating, has made me grow as a person. I look better, I feel better, and I've built character. Dating after divorce has been one of the most difficult things I've done in probably a decade, since I got sober, and it's made my business look easy by comparison. It's made parenting my kids look easy by comparison. It's made almost everything else I do look easy. And the number one thing is, you need to put the effort in.
The biggest mistake: thinking it's not worth it
The number one thing I see people getting wrong with dating is thinking it's not worth it. Yes, in the short term it might make sense to just work some extra hours or hang out with your friends more. But in the long term, it's awful to go through your life as a single person all the time, with no backup, nobody you're living with, and no sex. I've seen so many people who didn't put the effort into dating, and they've been single 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years. They're so sore about the subject of dating and sex that if you bring anything up, they get uncomfortable and defensive and start criticizing everyone and everything.
The best thing I've done dating after divorce is put in the effort. I've asked women out in person. I've paid for matchmaking. I've paid for dating apps, deleted them, and paid for them again. I've paid for professional photos and dating coaching. And it's been fun. I didn't think I'd get to do this again, and it's been fun. I never know when it's going to end. I have two dates coming up with women who look extremely compatible on paper through my matchmaking service, and my dating life could be over in a week. It probably won't end that suddenly, but I could meet the woman I end up in a relationship with for the rest of my life at basically any point. So dating, to me, is a great adventure, and it's worth sticking with. There are all kinds of videos saying guys are withdrawing from dating, it's not worth it, women are giving up, guys aren't approaching. Get out there and try.
Dating after divorce has also helped me see all the ways I'd gotten sloppy in my personal life: the ways I had stopped being a good husband, how I'd lost track of myself, the compromises I'd made, giving up my point of view just so I wouldn't have to fight with my wife about something. When I act like that in dating, it's very unattractive. But I was able to get away with it in marriage for years.
Dating has changed drastically
If you've come out of a relationship you were in for at least 10 years, you are in an entirely different dating environment. When I dated before, we didn't text all the time. We called on the phone, and we focused on meeting up in person. Now, a lot of second dates haven't happened for me because I wasn't putting in much effort over the phone. Effort is attractive. I love when women put in effort with me. I love it, and it seems so precious when any woman consistently puts in effort with me. What I notice is that I need to be the one leading the effort. The women who've put the most effort into me were the ones I put the most effort into first. I don't think there's been a single woman I've dated all year who put in more effort than I did. But with the ones who put in the most, I put the effort in first: good morning texts, funny memes, pictures of myself, asking them questions. The best experiences I've had dating this year were where I put in a lot of effort and they put a lot of effort back.
A big lesson, too, is that if they're not putting in much effort, that's an opportunity to back off. I've had women I got really excited about who were taking 24 hours to respond to my texts, putting in almost no effort. Then it's no surprise when they flake and cancel on the date. So I've learned to invest effort in the people I'm interested in and be willing to walk away when the effort isn't coming back, while still being willing to take the risk of putting in more effort first.
Don't give up so quickly
Also, don't give up so quickly. I've had several women where I put in the effort initially and liked them, and then pulled back. With one woman, I didn't feel the date went that well, so I stopped texting her, and I ignored her text when she messaged me. This was a woman who was very interested in me. She was having a bad day the day I went out with her. Even though I didn't feel like the date went very well, she later told me, when I ran into her in person, that the date with me was a turning point in her life, where I showed her some opportunities and inspired her. From my point of view, the date hadn't gone well and I'd invested for no reason. From her point of view, it was a totally different experience, and she was hurt when I gave up on her. I've given up on people way too easily, and then been upset when people gave up on me too easily. It definitely helps if you can identify how much effort you have to give.
Let her suggest exclusivity first
I've noticed that, especially early on in dating, I have a bit too much effort to give to one woman. Ideally, I should keep trying until I'm in an exclusive relationship, and in my mind the woman should always suggest the exclusive relationship first. There's just very little in it for me otherwise. I shouldn't shut down my other opportunities until a woman is very interested in me and very interested in being exclusive with me. I do love being in a relationship. If I'm crazy about a woman, I'm happy to give up any of the other women I'm dating. But the one woman I called the queen, who I had the best chemistry and the best dates with all year, I invested too much in too fast. After divorce, you're very likely to be sensitive about this, because you're used to being in a relationship, and it feels like such a void not having one. That made it very difficult for me to give up on her, and very easy to over-invest in somebody too soon.
The easiest way I've found to avoid that is to constantly generate as many dates as I can, put as much effort as I can into anything that's going well, and stay diversified until a woman wants to be exclusive with me and I want to be exclusive with her. In the past, I was way too quick to offer exclusivity and shut down my other options.
Don't overwhelm her, and don't over-invest in a week
It can be very easy these days to overwhelm a woman. I was thinking that just sending too many texts might be overwhelming, and that's certainly true. I've seen text threads of guys sending 10 or 15 messages in a row with no response. Yeah, that's crazy. But I haven't been doing that. Even sending two messages that don't get responded to feels like a big deal to me. At the same time, telling someone "you're my queen, you're my person, my hunt is over" after you've only known them for a week is pretty crazy. It sets you up so that if you invest too much emotionally too fast, it can scare the other person away even if they like you. And when they pull back, it feels like, oh my God, I'm losing this, I need to put in more effort. There's a delicate balance in putting the right amount of effort into the right person, and I don't want to overwhelm anybody anymore.
So what I do now is try to get as many dates as I can with as many women as I can, have the best dates I can have, and say no very clearly to the ones I'm not interested in. The easiest way to do that, with the last two women I went out with, was to just not text them again. They didn't put in any effort to text me either, so it was just over. If I don't text you after a date, I'm not that interested. If I am interested and you're not texting me after the date, I will text. The women I went out with this year that I had no interest in, I didn't text afterward, and none of them texted me either, so it was pretty easy. And I love it when a woman actually texts me first after a date. I love seeing a woman put in effort. Persistence, showing up, and not giving up easily matter, but I can't put in too much either.
Dating should be fun
There's a lot of healing and self-care to do after divorce too. I've learned that dating should be a part of my life that's fun. I jumped into dating after divorce way too serious: I need to find my second wife and have more kids. Whoa. Getting that serious makes me too serious on dating apps with my profiles and too serious in person with women on dates, and it makes it harder to have fun with me. Almost a year after divorce, the first priority on dates now is fun. If we can't have fun together, why the hell would we want to do anything else? Bottom line, we should be having fun. We should be laughing, joking, teasing each other, playing, making light physical contact. It should be like hanging out with one of my guy friends, where the hanging out is fun by itself and not just a means to an end.
The more I've dated while being overly serious, and the more I've watched other people date while overly serious, the more I've seen people wreck their lives by getting what they thought they wanted. They focused on the objective instead of paying attention to whether they had fun with this person and whether they were compatible. Then they find someone, have another kid, and get divorced again. The last thing I want to do is jump into another marriage, jump into having more kids, and get divorced again. I'd rather stay single than do that. I'd rather keep dating and look for a woman I can really have fun with, where we want to do everything together, where we're super compatible. If I'm willing to go out with 78 more women, the odds of finding an amazing match for me, who also thinks I'm an amazing match for her, are very high.
The transactional and the magical
Yes, I want to make the most of every opportunity I have, but I also want to put in the work to generate the opportunities. To me there's a business aspect to dating along with the magical aspect. Sometimes people have criticized me for being too transactional with dating. Other times I've been too magical with it. There's a balance. There are transactional elements to dating: your perceived market value, your looks, your clothes, your money, the way you talk. There's definitely an element of "here's what I'm offering you, here's what I want in return." But there's also the magical, beautiful human connection, and it's kind of miraculous whenever all of that lines up.
And there's a business side to it. The more women I have first dates with, the more second dates I'll have, and the more second dates, the more third dates, and so on. At this point, it's about optimizing the funnel. I want more first dates. I've got two lined up in the next week, which is great, and I'm not even on dating apps yet. I'm going to jump on there to get more dates. Then I need to convert more first dates to second dates, more second dates to third dates, and eventually a relationship. But it all needs to be fun and have real human connection.
Dating is how I healed from my divorce
I'm grateful that dating has helped me heal from my divorce more than anything else. I've blatantly cut people off and disagreed with people who start saying, man, you need to heal after your divorce, you need to take some time, you need to go back and do your inner child work. No, I don't. That is a pile of garbage that excuses not putting in the effort, being depressed, sitting at home, and getting into yourself. The person who told me this is, to me, a bad example of doing exactly that and spending most of a decade alone. I have a lot to offer a woman, and I'm not trying to keep that to myself. There are women who are desperate for a guy like me to partner with them and be together. I don't know if we've happened to meet yet, but there are probably thousands of women in this world, if not millions, who could have a happy life with me, and probably anywhere from 50 to 100 in my metro area I could get married to and have an amazing life and kids with. That's how abundant I see things.
What I find is that if I want to change and grow and heal, I need to do it with other people. When I go out with a woman and she triggers all these feelings I had from my divorce, that's how I heal. I don't heal sitting at home by myself doing content and making videos, sleeping, parenting my kids, and playing tennis. Going out on dates with women is what helped me rapidly learn what I needed to from the divorce, move on, get ready for a relationship, and even support my ex and the person she's dating. So I hope this is helpful. Dating after divorce can be awesome. It can be fun. It can be a learning experience, and it can promote a lot of personal growth.
I'm not settling
Finally, one thing I am doing well: I'm not settling. If I'm not attracted to you, it's not happening. If you're not intelligent enough to hang with me, not happening. If you've got a toxic personality, not happening. I'm going to be with a woman I'm really excited to be with. I'd rather be single than be with a woman I'm not happy to take out in public with my friends, or who bores me, or who isn't taking care of herself, or who brings me down. And I'm willing to put in the effort to find that woman. If anything, I think it's easier than ever. I think women who really have their lives together are having a harder time than ever finding a man who matches them. So if you're a guy who's having a hard time but has a lot to offer, I think it's easier than ever to find single women who will appreciate that.
I invite you to come talk to me if you want to talk dating with someone who's actually in the middle of dating right now, who's open and honest with you about exactly where I'm at and what I'm doing. I'm in a great position to listen to you, support you, share what's worked for me and what I'm learning, and be there as a coach, a mentor, and a peer support on your journey in dating. You can get that through a call, or you can join my Skool and message me, or join my chat on jerrybanfield.com.
Every one of these lessons is playing out in real time on my Dating playlist. Thanks for reading.