Dr. Ramani: I think to get to that level of discernment and picking a partner that suits where you’re at in life means that you’ve given yourself the time you need. So yes, some people are gonna throw caution to the wind, but I’ll tell you, Kyle, if you do it too quick, I can almost promise you that you run an incredibly high risk of reproducing exactly the same toxic dynamics you had in the relationship before.
Kyle: I bet more than a few of you jump to this lesson specifically before going and watching the other lessons. It’s a big topic, dating after divorce. Dr. Ramani has shared some of her go-to pieces of advice for dating after divorce. If you miss that, we’ll recap it right here.
Dr. Ramani, what is overall your general insight and advice on dating after divorce?
Dr. Ramani: Slow down. Slow, slow down. After a divorce, you really want to make this about your healing, you are grounding yourself. You are grieving, because it wasn’t just the end of a relationship. A divorce is often leaving behind much heavier things like a narrative and belonging and family and all that other stuff.
Take your time. And that means get yourself into a new routine that feels like yours. Find yourself outside the confines of the marriage. Become the parent you want to be to your child as a single parent and as opposed to someone who is, doing it within the structure of a marriage.
It’s a lot of shifts and the more you can put on that versus trying to get into dating. And once we’re dating, we often do things to be amenable to the new person and make compromises for the new person. And these early, it’s in the early months. Even the early years out of a marriage, one of the best things you can do is give yourself time and space and approach it slowly.
And I know that’s tough guidance for people to swallow because a lot of people feel like, “I have been lonely for five years. I want to go out and meet someone.” So to feel what that sense of intimacy is like again, and don’t get me wrong, I hear that. But I think the challenge is that without a chance to properly grieve all the things that a divorce means and really waiting till it’s done, and you’ve really had that time, in some ways that’s why.
Waiting for that final decree to come through where you’re officially divorced. It’s not even about the moralism of oh, you’re married on paper. It’s not that as much as all that time that gets passed, it is all time that’s going towards your healing and puts you in a better position to be discerning with a new partner.
Kyle: What if I hear all that and I say, I don’t care. I’m dating anyway. I can’t wait. I’m going out tonight.
Dr. Ramani: You know what? If you say that and say, I don’t care, and I’m dating anyway, the one thing I’m gonna highlight is kids. So the one thing I’m gonna highlight is, are you doing this with children in tow? Meaning that you’ve got children in your life.
Is it going to affect the amount of time you have to spend with them? Is it going to be something where you’re trying to work your schedule around this? I think some people get sorely disappointed when they see what it’s like to be out there dating with young children or any children, and that makes it a little bit harder, frankly.
Or, I think that what does happen, Kyle, there’s also the risk sometimes that when people are dating and they have children, they run a little bit of a risk of undervaluing themselves. Who wants to put up with someone with kids and may put up with behavior that’s not okay in a relationship, feeling like it’s gonna be Slim Pickens when you’re trying to do this with kids in tow.
And that’s why I’m saying finding your own rhythm so you’re never devaluing yourself becomes really important. It’s hard enough. To be a single parent. It’s even harder to try to start getting into a new relationship. And while it could be very tempting, if you start dating someone and they step in and say, “Hey, I’ll help you with your kids, I’ll help you with this, I’ll help you with that.”
Do you really wanna bring someone into your kids’ lives that you don’t fully know? Number one. And number two, your kids might even get used to this person just for the relationship to not work out. And your kids now have to go through another process of grief. So I do think that moving very tentatively here becomes incredibly important.
Hard as it may be. And listen, some people actually do a very nice job of separating the two – saying, “I have a child or children, I’m going to date you and you’re never gonna be a part of my children’s lives.” And it might be a sexual relationship, it might be a companionate relationship where they enjoy each other.
Only at the times when the children are with the other co-parent and it doesn’t become more than that. But I think to get to that level of discernment and picking a partner that suits where you’re at in life means that you’ve given yourself the time you need. So yes, some people are gonna throw caution to the wind, but I’ll tell you, Kyle, if you do it too quick, I can almost promise you that you run an incredibly high risk of reproducing exactly the same toxic dynamics you had in the relationship before.
Kyle: I’m pausing for dramatic effect there, y’all. I wanted you to hear it and think about it. Let’s say on the opposite, we waited two years. We have some new hobbies. We’ve got a great support system. We’ve got a new routine. We’re feeling good. We think, all right, you know what? I’m ready to date. They’re going back in for the first time.
What advice do you have for that person?
Dr. Ramani: I think that when you’ve given yourself the time, you feel like I’m in a better place. I know who I am, I feel like I grieved what my marriage was, and while there’s still little pangs I’m very resolved. You feel like your kids are in a better place and you’re on a rhythm. Okay?
So you’re coming from a much stronger foundation and you’re ready to go out there and date. You’re gonna face all the problems that anyone in our culture has. Starting to date in the mess that’s online dating. In the mess that’s just dating in general. And so get ready for the mess is all I have to say.
And that means all the usual stuff. Be discerning. And if you’ve been out of dating for a long time, let’s say you were in a 30 year marriage, okay, long before dating apps and right swiping and all that stuff, right? And then you get divorced and your kids are adults. And you take the time to heal.
You are like, I’m gonna throw my hat back in the ring. Get some training on how to use these apps because this is not normal.
Kyle: You need a course for the apps.
Dr. Ramani: You need a course and you need a reality check because I’m gonna tell you one thing, hun…
I never went there. I never did a dating app even though I came out of my marriage just at the time they were coming up. Of course, being Dr. Ramani, I was like, I don’t trust anybody and everyone’s lying online…ended up being a bit of a Nostradamus there because that clearly is the case.
I think that if this is a very new space for you, there are other ways. Meeting people through friends, meeting people through affinity groups, even meeting people through matchmakers. There, there’s something to be said about going old school on some of this stuff, if you don’t feel quite comfortable with some of the technology yet, or are meeting people and it feels uncomfortable, I always remind people who are trying to date, especially after long-term marriages and complicated divorces, I’ll say…
“I don’t care if you have to put a post-it on your mirror that says remember how difficult the divorce was. And just that reminder of seeing that…so when you’re at a date and you’re like, ew. No. Then no, don’t call back. You don’t owe anyone anything.
And some people will say they took the two years they got on their feet, they feel more confident. They go out and date and say, oh no, I need another year. And then they go back for another year or two and then they put themselves back in there again.
So I think that you have to trust yourself and Kyle, the one thing I also wanna tell people, that there’s more than one way to have a relationship, right?
I think that this idea that you’re gonna meet someone, you’re gonna have the whole dating, and then you’re gonna share a home together, maybe ’cause you’re married, maybe ’cause you’re not, and you’re gonna be each other’s person. Sometimes it’s not always that.
I have talked with people who meet people a little bit later in life, especially after they’ve had kids or their kids are grown and say, I never gave up my own place and we’ve always lived in separate places.
Or I deliberately chose someone who was long distance where we travel together or that we don’t see each other as often, or they’re in one place for five days and then we come together for the weekend.
Some people say this really is my person where it’s not really a sexual relationship, but we go to concerts and we take trips together and I know they’re having sex with other people.
There’s many different ways people construct relationships and I think sadly there’s so much shame around relationships that don’t conform to the traditional model. As we get on in years, what a lot of us are looking for is companionship. That shared experience with someone and not trying to have the whole sort of white picket fence fantasy, if you will, or have the more conventional model of a relationship.
And I think being open and saying, there’s elements of a relationship I’m interested in. I would love to share parts of my life, but I don’t know that I ever wanna live with someone again.
That’s okay then. That’s what you need and that’s what you want. And it’s okay to communicate that. And when you find that person who says, cool, ’cause I don’t want to give up my spot either, that you have two people that might fall into a really nice rhythm with each other.
No one gets to judge. So I think being open to what it is that works for you isn’t weird and may simply be what works for you.
Hold out for that.
Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard more and more stories in the last three years of people married or in a relationship living in different houses or having separate bedrooms at night to sleep in. And I go, sounds great to me.
Dr. Ramani: And again, I think that there’s so much judgment when people don’t follow an absolutely conventional path in relationships.
But I think giving yourself that opportunity to say, okay, there’s more than one way to approach this. Also, keep in mind too, as people get older…for example, let’s say they have adult children and those children are having children. Some people may say, my kids, my grandkids are always gonna be my priority.
So for four months of the year, I’m going to where they live. And you might be looking for a partner who can tolerate those kinds of absences. That’s not everybody. So it’s giving yourself permission to know that whatever it is that you’re looking for in a relationship is okay.
Allowing yourself to say this is what I want, and being okay with it, really shows a sort of quantum leap into healing.
But that’s a hard place for people to sometimes get to.
Kyle: I’ve said that if people are dating without understanding attachment theory and / or understanding a handful of personality disorders, they’re doing themselves a disfavor. I think going into that, educated on those two topics is really helpful.
I’d love to know your opinion on that and specifically how we can use that education to date better.
Dr. Ramani: So a couple of things.
I think it’s interesting to consider attachment theory, but we don’t wanna make it that simple either. It can be a little reductive to just say I’m securely attached and I’m not that interested in the anxious and avoidant folks.
Or, I think that it’s understanding that attachment theory may inform some of our behaviors in relationships. But not fully. And yeah. Knowing a little bit about how a person manages absences, how a person manages goodbyes and transitions and having those deep and transparent conversations about what do you really want?
A lot of people are uncomfortable having those conversations because they think if I tell someone what I really want, they may get up and walk.
And if they get up and walk, you actually just saved yourself a whole heap of time because you would’ve ended up having either to accommodate to what they want, which wasn’t what you wanted, or spending another few years in this before you have this conversation.
Now, attachment theory can underlie some of that. A person who’s more anxiously attached may feel uncomfortable speaking that truth, for fear of losing that person. The abandonment fears that are so much a part of the anxious attachment or the avoidant person who’s in and then out of the relationship, and there’s a lot of that sort of shape shifting, but I don’t think it’s quite enough to understand attachment styles.
I think the thing that becomes more important at some point is to actually understand what it is you want and be able to communicate. That becomes critical. And keep in mind too, Kyle, just because a person grew up in a way that gave them an anxious attachment, that isn’t like a horoscope, you’re not stuck with that forever.
Through the building of healthy relationships in adulthood, exploring certain themes in therapy, a person can really get themselves to feeling more safely and securely attached in their adult life. So I think that this idea that our childhood attachment style is going to forever dog us in adulthood is simply untrue.
It might mean some work and an awareness or even the ability to communicate and say, “Hey, I’m not always good in the first hour when I’m back from a trip.” If you could just know that about yourself, there can be this understanding.
You’re not forever at the mercy of being defined by this attachment style, with no sort of hope of that ever changing.
The other piece that you brought up though was this issue of personality styles. Right now that’s a whole different game, right?
I definitely think people need to understand…especially those people who’ve already been through an antagonistic, narcissistic relationship…you know how ugly that could get, but the problem is antagonism and narcissism can look lots of different ways.
So it might have been that you were married to a very grandiosely, narcissistic, arrogant, cheating, kind of larger than life person. And then you think you’ve got it figured out, but then you turn around and you’re in a relationship with more of a vulnerable narcissist, where it’s more victimized, resentful, petulant, socially anxious sullen person.
So you might say this person isn’t charming and charismatic. This is a whole different experience than my ex. But it ain’t that simple.
And because of that, because everyone can’t go out there and be personality disorder experts, it’s important to take it slow.
Pay attention to how this person responds to stress. Pay attention to how attuned this person is to you. Are they respectful? Are they compassionate? Are they empathic?
And for a protracted period of time, like six months to a year, don’t say, “Oh, we had a couple of good weeks.” This takes a long time to figure out. It can take almost 12 to 24 months to figure out if these really toxic personality patterns are on board, especially if you’re going into a new long-term relationship having gone through divorce.
I say, take your time, because if one to two years in, you’re dealing with a very well-regulated, attuned, kind, patient, psychologically safe feeling person, you’re probably on the right track. And so understanding that personality piece, understanding that personality is consistent, is really important.
And also Kyle understanding that while there’s some consistencies in what works well in a relationship, for example, agreeable people are great in relationships, there may be other things that matter to us too.
You might say, I’m a very social person and I want someone who’s socially comfortable. Then that might be something you’d say, “I want a person who goes out with me to go to my line dancing class, or goes to these vacations where we’re doing things with groups.” Then that’s something you know you wanna hold out for. So it’s understanding the pieces that matter to you that may not matter as much to someone else.
But the core: the patience, the kindness, the respect, the compassion, the psychological safety, that’s universal.
I think that’s an essential ingredient for any healthy relationship.
Kyle: Final question on this topic, Dr. Ramani. How do I determine when I tell my spouse that I am in a relationship?
Dr. Ramani: You mean ex spouse? Your ex-spouse?
Kyle: Yes, sorry.
Dr. Ramani: In terms of when you tell your ex-spouse you’re in a new relationship…a lot of this comes down to whether or not you have children together, right?
Because I will be frank with you, if you don’t have kids together, it’s really not their business, okay? But if you do have children together, that matters.
In an ideal world, you might have started working some of this out at parenting agreement time, but because nerves and tempers are so raw at that time, it’s often hard to have that conversation. So as someone comes into your life and you’ve given it a reasonable amount of time, you might then wanna say, “Okay, I’m going to tell my partner at a point where I think that there’s a chance my children might see me with this person, or I’ve mentioned this person.”
Certainly not after the first or second date. I think that’s gonna take a minute, maybe six months, but it’s gonna be different for everyone. It’s also gonna be how immersed your social worlds are with each other. In an ideal world, you’d speak to your ex-spouse before someone else got to them.
In some cases you might get a response of, “Thanks for telling me. I trust your judgment.” In some cases you might say, “Thanks for telling me. And I’d really love it if you’d wait at least a year before the kids meet this person.” And in some cases you might get some sort of hostile response like, “What do you want me to be jealous of you?”
So you already know your ex-spouse to know what’s most likely to be the response that you get. Ideally you and your ex have codified this, but if not, what you think would be best for your children, because you’d only really need to tell them if there were children involved.
But figuring out what would be best for your children and figuring that out together, you may not agree with it initially. One thing that can help is perspective taking and stopping and taking a minute and saying, “I want the kids to meet my new partner now. How long would I want my ex-partner to have waited before they introduced a partner to the kids?”
And maybe see that if you have different answers there, that maybe you could wait a little bit longer, but if it manages to keep more peace in the kids’ lives by not doing this, it may be worth it and not getting your co-parent agitated.
I would say that anyone who’s dating with children after divorce…you know how you can turn down the speed of audio like to halftime? You need to turn down the speed to halftime. You gotta move a lot slower.
Kyle: Yeah. Slow is the name of the game. Dr. Ramani, thank you for sharing all your insight on this topic.
We have a few worksheets for you in this lesson.
We have a single and dating pros and cons list for you to fill out. A Venn diagram for a then vs. now. Now this is either if you’re single or if you already have a new partner.
And we have my favorite – where we’re drafting out the ideal partner or the ideal single life manifesto.
Once you’ve completed those worksheets, share your results in the community section and we’ll see you in the next lesson.
