Dating After Divorce: 5 Secrets Everyone Woman Wished She Knew

Every single one of us has been brainwashed by society to believe that divorce is a failure. Every single one of us. We've been told that since we were young. Oh, this person's getting divorced. Oh, my God. I can't believe that. But let's not forget this one very important principle, and that is that sometimes the very worst things that happen to us in life are the very things that put us on this path to. To the most exciting new stage in our life. And that's what today's podcast is all about, is turning a divorce and feeling like it's a failure into the most incredible success story of your life. And we're gonna give you five secrets that you'll need to be successful moving forward in your love life. Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast, where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy, and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw ins found nowhere else. Backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam Lodolce, professional dating coach and founder of Love Strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy. Gary, are you excited for this one?

I am. Because this is the funny thing about relationships and weddings. No one thinks they're getting divorced. Right. When people walk down the aisle and people the day they get married, no one thinks this isn't going to work out. We're full of hope.

I have not. Not with my. Wait, what? No, not. Not with my wife, but with other people.

Oh, yeah.

Walking down the aisle.

Yeah. You see that walking? Yeah, but it's.

I'm like over under a year. We'll see.

You know what that is, the thing with what we do is, don't you just feel every time you meet somebody in a relationship, you kind of, like, start setting the odds in your head?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's not good.

No. But the thing is, in their minds, it's 100 sure that they're gonna last forever. And that's so romantic and sweet and turns out wrong. Because, you know, that husband who was the man of your dreams doesn't always work out to be that person. And that's just life. Like, life has a funny way of surprising us like that. But the thing is, life moves on. And we don't want to be alone forever. We want to have someone to share our amazing life with. And so that's going to require you to get back out there. The thing is, in the time that you've spent since you've been married, dating's changed. The rules have changed, the technology has changed. Where is that guy that's going to be the next Mr. Right for you? It might be online, it might be, you know, in your friend group, it might be at work, who knows? But the things and the places where you have to look, it's just harder. It's confusing. Sometimes people feel paralyzed by this. But the good news is we're here to help. And you want to take this help because every once in a while I hear somebody say, I don't need any help. I'm just going to use good old trial and error, which I think is a funny way to put it, because I think trial and error ends up being trial and trauma for most people, right as you're making those errors, those errors hurt, particularly when it comes to your romantic relationships. And so let's help you skip all of that. Let's help you skip the trauma. Let's take something that seems hard, this dating after divorce. With our help, we're going to put it on easy mode and take the difficulty out of it. And we're going to talk today about five things that you need to get good at. And we can get you started with those things today.

I think that that's a really interesting point is this idea of trial and trauma. I've never heard you say that before, but most people, when they date, if they're dating without coaching or love strategies or anyone else, whatever, without outside professional help, they perceive rejection as a reflection of their own. Of their own being, of what they're. Of what they are. Not like. They're like, oh, he doesn't like me. There must be something about me, my age, how I look, what I said, and things like that. And. And I would say the. Probably the first thing we do with our clients is we reframe the idea of rejection. And by reframing it just as a starting point, like, it's not really rejection at all. You go on a first meetup with a guy and he doesn't call you the next day, he's a dud. You know, it depends on the scenario, but we just give. Just by having some tools and reframing it, suddenly now you have a framework to work off of. And so that's a lot of what we want to do today is reframe a lot of these things that are required for dating in the 21st century. That probably a lot of you didn't have when you were dating 20 years ago, 30 years ago or longer and be able to use those to your advantage. So let's just jump into the first one. This is probably the biggest one that many of you are like, what happened to society? And that is online dating. Online dating is a God, I hate to say it, but I'm going to say it a necessary evil when it comes to dating. It really is, it is just, it is like jet fuel to your love life. And that jet fuel, it is going to propel you, but you're also going to meet a lot of duds and you're going to also have to find and sort for some of the studs. And it's going to require a certain mindset and a certain strategy, not only with your profile, but also how you're going on these meetups all along the way. Now the key thing is of course with a profile, there are your pictures and then writing the profile. So when it comes to writing a profile, don't be afraid to show who you really are and be your authentic, quirky self. We want you to be different. I don't want you to just cast this super wide net and just be everything to everyone on it. No, let's, let's whittle it down into the unique, beautiful snowflake that is you. That unique characteristics that just makes you stand out out there. And also with your profile pictures, we want to do the same thing. Of course, you want a face shot, you want a full body shot, but have some pictures in there that are very, very unique to you, that convey you in a totally different light than everything else that's out there. But buyer beware. Final point, when it comes to online dating, you will experience scammers. It's nothing new to just you. Everyone experiences it. It is just par for the course. Some people will look at scam, get one scammer and be like, that's it. Never again. If you can just once again reframe that and be like, oh, this is just like a normal part of life. It's kind of like having a phone and you get your first scammer calling you on the phone, you're just like, oh, that's just a scammer. Like, goodbye. It's not like you're going to stop using your phone. You know, you still have a cell phone. Scammers get you there. It's the same thing with online dating. You just, you recognize a scammer.

Correct.

Goodbye, block, delete, remove, moving On. So those are the big things you're gonna really have to put some time in, put some energy into. And I promise you, if you do it with the right strategy, in the right frame of mind, you will be successful. That is one definitely part of the entire strategy of dating right now.

My gosh, I love that analogy of the, you know, scam phone calls that you get that you're not gonna stop using the phone.

Right.

Cause if it's so right, like, every once in a while, we'll get a client who says, I don't really like online dating. And then they encounter one person who's a little shady, and they're like, see, I told you online dating is the worst. And it's like, well, I mean, some bad things happen on there, but they happen in real life, too. And so, like, let's not get too bent out of shape about this thing. Right? Like, it's.

Yeah. You still use email, don't you? You know how many scams like, come through email? Remember when email first came out, how many scammers there were? It's like, you're not gonna be like, well, I can't use it now to email my mom. No, it's like you use the tool for what it's good for, and there's always going to be downsides of the tool, and that's why I call it a tool. Online dating is simply a tool to meet people offline. That's it. It's not for falling in love with the profile picture. You're not falling in love from online dating. You're falling in love. When you meet a guy from online dating offline and go out with him a number of times, that's falling in love. Yeah.

And, you know, with this scammer thing, I think this is one of the biggest benefits of seeing all of the women in our community talking to each other and networking with each other and helping each other out. Because sometimes these scammers are kind of hard to figure out if they're a scammer. And what they'll do is they post in the community and say, hey, I got this message from a guy who said, blankety, blank, blank, blank. Does this sound legit or does this sound like a scam? And you'll get, like, dozens and dozens of women, like, writing back, oh, I had the same message. Now, you know for sure it's a scammer or no, that it could be. And it's just there are certain aspects of dating that you really, really benefit from having a connected community of Wise people who've been there, who've been doing it a little bit, they've actually been dating doing the exact same thing you are. And it just our clients helping each other, particularly on this, it's just such a great thing to see.

Amen to that. I agree.

So the second thing that you're going to have to get good at in all of this is navigating lots of choices. With online dating, you're going to have more than one option. And this is something that's going to be different perhaps than how you might have dated in the past. Before online dating, it was you dated the people that went to your high school, the people that you saw in your day to day life. The pool was much smaller. Now, bigger pool, you're going to get a feeling of a lot of attention and that attention feels good. Now one of the things you want to do with the online dating is narrow your pool. Like Adam was saying, like, you know, unique Snowflake, what are, what's unique about you? Old dating was I want as many interested people in. As many people as possible interested in me. That's not actually what you want to. The people interested in you are the people that you actually want to date that actually want to date you because you don't want to waste your time. There's two downsides to having way too many people interested and the first one is just wasting time. You don't want to spend your time getting to know going on dates, texting guys who really aren't a great match. So you want to be nice to them, but you also need to figure out how to move on. The other thing that happens is if you, when you have a lot of options, you get what we call in psychology the paradox of choice. There's a very famous study about jelly and mustard tasting stations at a supermarket where they had two different versions of those tables. Or one had like, I want to say 10 different kinds of jelly. The other one had 30. The one with 30 got a lot more attention. Just fewer people actually bought the jelly.

Right.

And so online dating is the same kind of thing. Like you have all these options. It can kind of encourage you. Like, I'm going to find just a guy who's a little bit better on this one thing and then maybe he's going to be a little bit better on this thing and say, oh, now that I have him, maybe there's a guy who's even a little bit better, better than what I have already found and you can just spin your wheels and date Forever and not really get anywhere. So this is where some coaching, some strategy going to be really helpful. You need to be intentional, you need to be strategic and you need to be focused about how you're dealing with all these options.

Are you ready to dive deep into the male mind and understand why it is we do what we actually do? Well, if so, I have a free training that's going to really help you understand mental. Get out there and attract a high value guy that meets your needs. If you're ready for that, head on over to the lovesteps.com we have a virtual training there. It's going to walk you through this exact process that's worked for over 10,000 women worldwide. Again, head on over to TheLovesSteps.com and yeah, check it out. We'll get back to the podcast now. Yeah, I mean if you're starting a business and you're going to start marketing that business, what a lot of amateur business people do is they try to market to everybody. They're like, I'll take any lead that comes through the door, trust me. And what happens is as you grow the business, you're like, no, I want this specific prospect. Exactly who I cater to and who I can help. That's all I want. And so you change all of your marketing to be very specific towards that one particular person. And, and if we can think of online dating the same way, find your niche. Find like if you are a super intellectual type into politics and you know, obviously very well educated, let's say you have your PhD in neuroscience. Okay? If you're that kind of archetype, you're probably not going to go out with a guy who loves to go to one wild weekend parties in Croatia. Okay. Like it's probably not going to be your thing. And so all of your marketing should cater to the type of guy that you probably want, which is someone who is on a similar intellectual playing field as you and like lean into that, lean into that. Pretty strong. Now you might say, well, some people get turned off by that Persona. And I say good, right? Good. That's the point. We want to turn off some types of people. Like there, there's for example with me when I was dating, my profile, like when I was online dating, it was all like extreme sports. I'm like really high energy the weekends. I like to go out a lot. I love to go to concert, I like to do a lot of stuff. You know who I'm trying to say no to? Homebodies. Not happening. Like we're not going to work. Like, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that type of person. It's just like, I want to have a flashing red sign away from those people and a flashing green sign to the people who align with my own values. And so think of a lot of this as marketing when you're trying to get this. And be very specific about who you're looking for. I'd rather two or three really good. Let's just call them prospects in your dating life than a hundred that are just, like, all over the map.

And this is so opposite to how people have dated for decades. Right. It's like, who doesn't want to have 10 guys who are interested in them? Like, that just somehow feels better, but it's so inefficient, and it's really not what you're looking for. So, you know, figuring out who's the person that's for you. There can be plenty of great people, those homebody people, if they're not for you, they're. They don't attract them in the first place. Right. Be more efficient, Be more strategic.

Definitely. Which I would say leads us to the third point, which is the one that I know so many of you are not going to like, because this is very different than how you probably dated in the 80s, 90s, or even early 2000s. Okay. And that is highly recommending dating multiple people. Now, I want to be very clear about what I mean when I say dating. I would not recommend sleeping with multiple people at the same time because that can create a lot of chaos and confusion. I don't judge on that front, but it's more. I don't recommend it because it's not really. That's maybe a topic for a whole other podcast, but I wouldn't recommend sleeping with multiple people at the same time. And I definitely wouldn't recommend being exclusive with more than one person at the same time, because now you're just a liar. What I mean by dating multiple people at the same time is talking to multiple guys at the same time as things progress. So you might have one guy in your life who you've gone out with five times, but it's not yet exclusive. That still means you, my beautiful lady, are still single. You're not exclusive with this guy. Exclusive is just an agreement between two people that you're not going to date other people until you've had that conversation, you're single. And that's okay. That's great. He probably is as well. That's the key to all of this. Is like modern dating, 21st century. If he's on the apps, he's probably going out to multi with multiple women. And until it's exclusive, never assume that it's exclusive until you've had the conversation. And the thing is, for you, what I care about most is you, the women listening to this podcast. I want you to have the right types of options and have enough information on these various options to make the right decision about who to be exclusive with. You know, who you really want to invest all of your energy into. That's what it really is. And so that's the key here. For starters, this is going to help you see what's out there. How many guys are out there? It's going to be like, if you are divorced, the first guy you meet, you might be like, oh, my God, there's a breath of fresh air. Like, I want that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before we do that, let's see what else is out there. It's going to also help you learn how to talk to different types of guys, kind of work on our social skills, and it's also going to help you find some of those traits that you've never really even considered considered before. And I would say the most important of all of this is that you're going to learn all, but learn all the guys that aren't your ex. Like, you're going to learn all about these types of guys that are not your ex and all their character qualities and what you really want moving forward in your love life.

And I think that last one is really the most important one. Because you got divorced from a guy, it's easy to fall into this trap of, like, he's the guy you know best. So starting to think, oh, gosh, all guys are like my ex. Every single man out there is lazy, unambitious, drinks too much, whatever, whatever, whatever. Any of those traits your ex had. But by going out and meeting multiple guys, you start to realize, like, oh, my gosh, all guys aren't the same. There are some guys who like to carry on a conversation. There are guys who like to do things other than watch sports Center. Like, there's a whole world of all kinds of different guys. You just haven't met many yet because even before you got married, you probably didn't date around that much. And so this is your chance to really learn what's best for you. I make this comparison all the time, and I think it's helpful, which is, you know, when you get divorced, it's like losing a job that you thought Was your career, right? You're in a job, a long term job, you thought it was your career and it just, it didn't work out. You got let go. You left for whatever reason. Now when you're looking for your next career, your next job, are you going to apply to one place and go on one interview, see if that works out and then go on to the next place and next. Absolutely not. You're going to submit. You shouldn't. Okay, like, we're not giving career advice, but that would be dumb, right? Like, so you're going to submit your resume to multiple places and they're going to be slightly different. Some of them are going to be a little bit like your last one. So I'm going to be purposely, intentionally different from your last one. You're going to submit all these things. Hopefully you go on interviews for all these things. Maybe you go on a second interview for a couple of them. You're not going to accept multiple positions, right? That would be like being exclusive. But you're just going to kind of see what's out there. And you can use an offer from one to help you make more sense of an offer from the other. Compare and contrast. You're going to learn a ton from the interviewing process. This is the exact same thing. Because in important things in our life, we're not just going to wing it. We're going to be intentional, we're going to be strategic. And the same thing happens with dating after divorce.

This reminds me of like one of my first clients that I worked with who is a female. When I was, I switched from coaching men, being a love coach for men to working with women. This is probably 13 years ago, but I remember when I first met with her, oh my gosh, she was a tough cookie. And I remember she said she looked. Looks me in the eye and says, adam, I don't know if I'm ready to date because all men are narcissistic pigs. And I'm like, oh God, what did I get myself into? And I look her in the eye and I'm like, so am I a narcissistic pig? As a starting point, I'm like, wait a second. That's a pretty broad statement, I gotta say. But I didn't say that. I said, well, interesting. So it sounds like we've had a pattern of really rough guys. Tell me about the. Your dating history over the past six months. How many guys have you gone out with? And let's walk me through that. And she's like, well, I really haven't gone out with more than just one guy, and he was a narcissistic pig. And I'm like, oh, okay, got it. So it's just, we have a data point of one, and that's what I'm working with. That's okay. And hey, I get it. And some, some of it. The thing is, it was very surprising because a lot of times I get it. You go through a string of really rough guys and it can lead you to that, that decision. But the reality is that for women that we work with who follow the little love steps and are getting out there, meeting multiple guys, 100% of them, once they start going on multiple dates, and this is a hundred percent, they actually break that belief system that all men are the worst because not all men are fit, that's for sure. But they will encounter some good guys through that process.

And.

And usually it's the majority of guys. And so you kind of have to experience that, you know, because when you're coming out of divorce and your ex husband was a narcissistic pig, guess what? All men are narcissistic pigs. But once we start getting out there and we start experiencing all these different types of guys, suddenly it's this awakening. You're like, huh? All men aren't the worst. Good. That's a good starting point. Now we can build on that. But you can't. I've learned. You can't just tell people that. You can't just be like, no, no, no, no. All men aren't the worst. Like, trust me, we have so many relationships. We've helped women get married. So I've learned to not even do that. The key thing is like, nah, just get out there and start dating again and come back to me in a month and we'll talk, you know, you will see.

And I'm so glad that you clarified. Most of the guys you date are going to be good guys. Most of them. If you've had the unfortunate luck to date one narcissistic pig, right? I just love that word. Like you said narcissistic pig like 10 times. Like, it's just bad luck. And it seems like they're all that way and they're not. Promise, promise, promise. But like you said, experience is the best teacher. You actually just have to go out and see for yourself. But then just remember that you heard us say it, right? And that we are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're not. Some people, I feel like, are thinking me and you are both narcissistic pigs right now. By saying this.

But no, that's just, you know, takes one to know one. No, no, that's. That's right.

Good one, Gary. Good one.

All right, so the next thing that you have to get good at dating after divorce is you just have to rediscover and recalibrate your flirting. Chances are, while you were married, you didn't do a whole lot of flirting. Right? And so now you have to get good at flirting. We say something a lot at love strategies, which is be easy to approach, hard to attain. And so it's not gonna feel natural at first. Cause you're a little out of practice. You may not be great at it at first, but like all good things, like I just said a second ago, experience is the best teacher. Get out there and do it. And one thing that's different in modern dating is it's okay to show that you're interested. That doesn't mean anything about who yours is. There's no like baggage associated with that. It's okay to show that you're interested. And so what I say to clients all the time, particularly when they're dealing with guys who themselves aren't narcissistic, pigs are not way out there and all this, you have to have a big welcome mat. You have to make it clear to guys that you are interested in being approached. You have to smile, make eye contact, smock. Right. And flirting doesn't happen.

Just, just. So for those who don't know, smocking is smiling while talking. Smocking.

Yeah. You smile and you talk. Right. And so this is all good flirting. Flirting does not mean being highly sexual. And I think that's the thing to really, really emphasize here is that we're not saying to flirt by being overly guys. Minds are going to go there anyway. You don't have to be sexual at all. Be playful, have an intellectual style of flirting. Challenge him a little bit, Tease him a little bit. Right. Make it a little competitive almost. And so this all takes a little bit of practice. We have many other podcasts on flirting, so I'd encourage you to check those out. But flirting is definitely something that you're going to get good at in this post divorce dating era of your life. Yeah.

Well, we just finished our second event of a very, very almost going to call it a secret society because it's a very select few of clients, number of clients. I guess it's not so secret since I'm talking about it in front of probably 100,000 people right now. I'm so. I can't Lie. And I'm so bad at secrets. Gary knows I have a huge mouth. I got such a big mouth. But yeah. So anyways, here's our secret society. I'm not gonna tell you anything about it, but we do have a select few number of clients that we get together with three times a year here in Boston. That's all I'll say. And we have a very fun thing we do on Saturday night, which is. And it's something. I wasn't sure if this was going to go well because many of our clients are in their 50s and 60s, all most of whom have been divorced. And we started this on the first event and that was, we're going to go out Saturday night and have a trophy for she who talks to the most guys. And I want to see what happens. Right, Gary? Remember the first time I was like, I don't know if this is going to work. Like, I've done this with men and it works well. When I was coaching men 15 years ago, are these women gonna jump on this? Like, I don't know, because there's a lot of young men that are at this event and like, are they gonna wanna talk to those guys? Oh, my dear God. At the second event, did it work so well, these women? And now we had a couple dozen, plus, I don't know, 25 people there. They were running into this party in this event that was going on at this secret place that we host this event. And they talked to every guy there, flirting, having a good time. You know, some of our local clients connected with some guys and got. Gave out their phone numbers and have dates now from that it was wild. And that energy is only just now propelled them because they're in one of our special secret programs I can't talk about. You have to be a client to be in it. But I just spoke to them last night and so many of them are coming out of this experience and talking to guys everywhere they go, big welcome mat. It's like numbers galore. Like, they're just giving out phone numbers, talking to guys and have more opportunities than they've ever had in their life just because they're going with this whole idea of be easy to approach, hard to attain. Go talk to lots of people, go flirt, be sensual, not sexual. There's a big difference there. And have a little bit of fun. And I guarantee if you do that, it separates you from 99.9% of women out there who are all just trying to play hard to get.

So it really, that whole event, we could probably do a whole podcast just about that experience. The woman who won this last event spoke to 29 guys in a span of three hours maybe. And she was so good at it. And the great thing about it is we're there live. They go talk to guys and then they'll come back and tell us, like, how it went, what, what they said, what could they could say? And then go, I want to go try again. And then I want to go try. And this, what I love about that event and so beautifully speaks to this point about recalibrating your flirting is. Flirting is a skill, and it takes. You got to go try something. You see how it goes. You kind of do a little post game analysis, see what you could have done differently, and then you go try something else. And then you go try something else, and you go try and you get better and more comfortable. And by the end of that night, they're all. I'm not surprised that, that this, this thing serves as a launchpad for so many of our clients to really go out there and find love.

Yeah, it almost works too well. Because many of our relationships who are in. Many of our clients who are in relationships are like, ooh, flirting, so fun. I want to go back to that. We're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Less flirting for you. Less flirting for you. Oh, man. But really, flirting is how we make it fun again. So that's, that's the key to all of this. All right, so let's, let's wrap it up with the final point of all of this is that when we're dating again after divorce, going through another breakup feels like hell. It's like once you go through divorce, you're like, I never want to repeat that experience ever again. I never want to go through a breakup. Oh, my God, was that just the worst period of my life? But here's the reality of dating. Now that you're back on the dating scene, you're going to have to break some hearts. And you might get your heart broken as well. And that's okay. And that is okay. Because the thing is, when you're getting out there and dating and you have a lot of options, you're gonna be saying a lot more no's to men than you're gonna be saying yeses. And that's great. Like, when you have lots of options and you're talking to guys and you're working the process, a lot of what we teach guys are going to. You're gonna have to reject some guys. And the problem is you Might be you might have some pain associated with breakups at this point, but I urge you to look at this as a natural part of the dating process. When we're first dating, you might go on a couple dates with a guy, you find out, you know, he's not really for me, end it, move on, he's going to be okay. Guys are used to being rejected. And honestly, I hate to say it, but you turning him down or breaking up with him isn't going to ruin his life. He's going to be okay. What matters most is protecting your energy and setting you up for long term success. So we are going to have to reasso, create some new associations with this idea of breakups and ending things so that you don't get sucked into another really bad marriage or relationship.

Yeah, like we portray this as, you're going to have to get comfortable with breaking hearts. But here's the reality. You're not going to break his heart at work. You know, he'll be mildly disappointed. But here's the thing that's true. He doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with him. He might be a great guy, he probably is a great guy. He's just not your guy. And he wants to be with a woman who feels like he's their guy. And so this is why I always encourage our clients. You have to think about this. Give him the gift of goodbye. You tell him. Next. You move on. Right. You're saying next in your head, saying next to him. But it's like you're, you're saying like, I feel like this isn't, you know, a connection. I'm not feeling the kind of connection I'm looking for. Give him that gift of goodbye because it's going to help you get closer to the person that is for you. It's also going to help him get closer to the person who's actually for him. And it expedites everything for everybody.

Amen. So for all of you beautiful ladies right now who went through divorce and are ready to get out there, have a little bit of fun, get after it, go do it. There's never going to be a moment where you're 100%, oh, I'm totally ready for it. Just take those steps forward, get into online dating, flirt a little bit. You might break a couple hearts, but just have a little bit of fun. As we always say, if it's not fun, you're doing it wrong. So go out there, have a little bit of fun, enjoy yourself, and we can't wait to support you every single step of the way. Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it, man.

Thanks, Adam.

All right, thank you so much for being a part of the Love Strategies community. By getting to the end of the podcast, you have proven that you are a high value woman who deserves a long lasting relationship and we would love to help you get there. So what I recommend you do is go to loveapply.com and you can claim a free Love Strategy session where someone on my team is going to get on a call with you on a zoom session, be able to understand your challenges, and see whether or not we can help you make that a reality this year. So head on over to loveapply.com apply for that free Love Strategy session, and we cannot wait to help you attract that man you truly deserve. All right, thanks for being here.