Interview with "Jude the Divorced Dadvocate"

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, folks, DSO here with another episode of the Dad Starting Over podcast. And with me today is Jude, the Divorced Dadvocate from divorceddadvocate.com, as well as the Divorced Dadvocate podcast. Jude, welcome.

Hey, DSO, thanks for having me today.

Yeah, my pleasure. So tell us, what the hell is Divorce Dadvocate all about? What do you do exactly?

All right, well, the Divorce Dadvocate grew out of me having my own absolute case study in the most crazy, screwed up, difficult, challenging divorce. And so after about— so I've been divorced now about little over 9 years. So about after about 7 and a half years and in and out of court, and I can't even tell you the amount of money, I've looked at it as, wow, this has really been an investment in my education around divorce. And so what, you know, I'm spending all this money and I continue to spend all this money, unfortunately, but, um, well, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. What can I do with this? And so I had been already working and coaching men in masculine development, and, uh, and I said, well, I think it would be really a good idea to niche this into helping men during and after divorce. So I created the Divorced Dadvocate. It's kind of a play on words, right? Dad advocate. And niched it down to specifically dads going through divorce, because I'm a father of 3 daughters. And so it's a little bit different when you're going through divorce with children, as it is, as opposed to if you're just kind of breaking up. Hey, sorry, that was, you know, good try and I'll see you later. That never happens when you have a co-parent and, and children. And so I decided to create the Divorce Dadvocate community. And it's more than just me, the Divorce Dadvocate, and coaching. We've created a community where men can come to group meetings. They can, they can get education, they can get support, they can do classes, they can do workshops as well. So we're— what we're, what we're creating is something a little bit, a little bit bigger, a little bit grander. We're trying— the goal is to get men across the world. And I've just been amazed because that the outreach and the outpouring has been global. Once we started the podcast, it's in 60-some countries now, has been listened to or downloaded in 60-some countries and over 1,600 different cities. And so weekly I have conversations with men from the Philippines or France or Great Britain or just all over the place. And it's, uh, so it's a global thing that, that men are going through, and specifically dads are going through in, uh, in going through divorce. So that's That's what led me into this. And so every day is a learning experience and I'm able to utilize all of what I have gone through and continue to go through in helping other men navigate those waters as well.

Excellent. Excellent. And we were talking before this, we said there doesn't seem to be any shortage of, oh, guys that we can help, and it just grows on a daily basis. And it's sad. It's, it's good for us because we have somebody to help. It's not like this is such a limited population that what the hell are we gonna— no, there's no shortage of stuff to do and guys to talk to when it comes to this.

Um, absolutely. And yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's somewhat saddening that it, it— divorce has become normalized. Right? But on the flip side, and I try to reframe it in the sense that it's a really great opportunity for men to look within when a marriage is failing. And I find a lot of men, and this was my case too, although I, you know, for me, I'm a little bit slower. So it took me a little bit more time to come to doing the self-reflection and trying to understand what's going on and why things didn't work out, because we all bring something to the table and it takes two for something to work well, but it also takes two for something to not work well, uh, also. So it is a, it is a good opportunity. Unfortunately, it's, it's normalized. I would, I would prefer, and we, in, in my work, it's always the best if you can try to save a marriage. And I know that you talk about things in, in your books of ways in which to do that and strategies on doing that, that is always the best thing because you do not want to go through divorce. Nobody wants to go through divorce, and especially if you have kids, you don't want to go through divorce. It is traumatic, and that's why my, my tagline is making it less traumatic. It's going to be traumatic for everybody, and if you can avoid it, if you can work through those, whatever it may be to avoid it, that's absolutely the best thing. But if not, And there's guys like me here to help you through the process and try to sort things out and get your life in a position to have an even better one after, after divorce.

Very— and you just touched on something really big there about, for a lot of men, the trauma that they go through with this divorce. It gives them a reason to have a very big timeout in life and become way more introspective. And way more, what am I doing here? What's my role in this world? What are my goals? And it's sad that when we get caught up in the, what I call the machine of a relationship, kids, job, we just completely just back burner, put it aside. And when all of a sudden life says, oh yeah, watch this, we go, oh shit. And I guess I better kind of start looking at those things. Wouldn't it be ideal if as men we could initiate that same mindset while within a relationship. Wow. There's a thought. But most of us don't. It's so simple. Just get caught up in the machine and get lost. I know I did.

Yeah, well, so did I. Yeah, so did I. Everything in life takes effort, right, DSO? So your relationships, your work, your parenting, whatever it is, takes effort. Or your self-care. Your exercise, it seems as exercise, right? If you take a week or 2 weeks or a year off the gym, things are going to deteriorate in your body. So it's the same as in anything else in life. You got to just stay, stay with it. And where you focus your energy, things will, things will happen, things will expand. So you're absolutely correct.

And a lot of men see, you know, post, especially when you've been in a toxic relationship, a sexless marriage, etc. They see divorce as this, yay, almost like recess time. I get to be me again and party and live up the single life. And there is an element of that in it. But I think if you play your cards right, you realize this is really hard work time. And I've been neglecting a lot of hard work during these years of being married. As ironic as that sounds, because marriage is hard work. Relationships are work. Yeah, well, try being a single dude. And try and navigate the waters and everything, which is a good segue into what you and I are going to talk about today, which is the always fun topic of dating after divorce. Oh boy.

Oh boy, that's right.

Let me start and you tell me if this was your experience. I started way too soon in hindsight. Now put myself in that brain that I had then. Oh no, I'm going to have fun. I have just been wronged in this marriage. I suddenly feel more alive than ever in one way, but I'm also traumatized. And if I'm being honest, I'm a little nutty and I'm not firing on all cylinders. And what better way to make me feel better than let's go out and get some attention from some women.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, that always works, doesn't it? What better human Band-Aid than a woman? And that fills that void. And I look back and go, oh geez. In fact, I'm very open about the fact that my now wife, I met way too soon. And we both acknowledge that we met way too soon. And ironically, we both, our marriages ended pretty much the exact same time. We both started dating at the exact same time. And in hindsight, after the fact, we're like, we maybe should have waited like a year. A year and a half more, maybe a year, year and a half more before we decided to start dating again. Because there was all kinds of little drama and emotional moments in that first year, year and a half of us dating. And obviously after 8 years that's subsided and we look back and go, what were we thinking? Well, we were hurting.

Yeah.

And we just wanted to fill that void. Can you attest to the same?

Absolutely. Yeah, I can. I didn't just start dating like it Before I figured it out, I had gone through multiple relationships until I had to say, huh, there seems to be one common denominator here. That would be me. And so, and so, you know, you hit it on the head when you said about, about waiting. And I have an immense amount of respect for the men that, that will stop and go through this. This process and say, okay, well, what do you— I want to analyze this. I want to, I want to see. I don't want to just, just keep perpetuating those, uh, maladaptive behaviors, if you will, that continue on because they're not going to stop when you get a divorce. So when you said like, oh, you know, I'm going to get a divorce, it's going to be great and the grass is going to be greener on the other side, it's actually not if you're not going to take the time to do the self-reflection. And that is, that's also reflected in this, uh, the second marriage divorce rates are even higher than first marriage divorce rates. The first are over 50% and then the second marriages are over 70%. Uh, and so that's just, that just shows if you haven't stopped to take the time to do the work and understand why, you're just going to continue those behaviors. And And guess what? You're going to find exactly the same women or woman that you had before in your marriage, and you're going to perpetuate that same dynamic. And again, I'll go back to my experience, which was I was a little bit different. I wanted to have the family. I just missed the family. I just was trying to plug somebody else back into it. And guess what? I just kept plugging in the same person each time, going, wow, why do I keep attracting this? Like, what is wrong? This world is terrible. There's no good women out there, da da da da da, until I stopped and said, oh, what are these mal— these behaviors that I'm bringing to the relationship? Uh, what is this codependent behavior, which was my big one in, uh, in, in attracting these, these women? And, uh, then things started to, to start at the shift slowly. But again, I'm a really slow learner. So, uh, there's a lot of men that I work with that are like on it and working hard through it and figure it out and That's a much healthier way also to do it for your children because they see you going through a difficult and challenging time and they see that you're trying to understand it instead of just perpetuating the same thing and being blind to it. So the dating opportunity actually in, uh, in dating after divorce, particularly if you have children, I've found to be a fantastic opportunity to share with my daughters about what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, the relationship, why it's going well, why we're breaking up, etc., and give them really some insight into something that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do if I was married, right? So if you, if you look at it from that perspective, I— there's no better way for me to convey to my daughters the right and the wrong ways to, to be dating than than being out there dating. So, and then sharing, then being transparent and sharing with them about, about what's happening. So I've tried to look at it from, from that standpoint while it is, although very incredibly challenging to date.

And how old are your daughters?

My daughters are 15, 13, and 11. Oh, wow.

So they're in those prime years of discovering boys and what all that means.

Exactly.

And so they get a front row seat of watching a single man in action. Boys, boys, boys.

Boys, boys, boys.

You know, you touched on a phenomenon that a lot of guys that I talk to realize, which is, holy crap, I just started dating my wife all over again. Not literally, but my wife is Karen, this is Sally. Karen and Sally are exactly the same in a lot of ways. You know, a lot of men, the knee-jerk reaction after 2 or 3 bad experiences is, well, all women are just terrible. Or more specifically, all women these days are fill in the blank with some bad word there. Um, when the reality is, from when you sit and talk to these men and, well, tell me your experience, you say, well, dude, um, you have a track record for ignoring a whole lot of red flags. And you, in addition to that, you're putting out an energy that says, hey world, I'm broken. And who are you going to attract? The not so, or the not so, the women that don't have their head screwed on straight. And because the women that are well grounded will meet a quote broken man. And after about 5 minutes, we'll get wide-eyed and say, hey, it was pleasure meeting you and back up slowly and go the other way. The ones that aren't so grounded say, oh, look, Here's a compadre in brokenness. Hallelujah. We really click. This is awesome. And a lot of men tell me, no, you understand, I didn't see any red flags. I put this one through the wringer. Well, tell me more. Well, I wasn't even divorced yet. My wife left me, and about a month later I met her, and right away we moved in together, and I met her kids, she met my kids. I'm like, well, hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right away there's red flag number one, because that woman should have said, oh, you're not divorced yet? Get back in touch with me later when you are. So there's a red flag. She was just like, let's do this. Another red flag. She's ready to intertwine your lives so quickly. And you are?

Yeah.

This is not good. Yeah. Well, and most of the men eventually come to the realization that maybe I should let the women rest for a little bit. And my standard line is, yeah, they're not going anywhere. Just calm down. It's not like you have a biological clock and you must, you know, procreate before you die type of thing. Most men have already done that and got the vasectomy. So what's your hurry? And they'll say, I just don't want to be alone. A lot of men are scared to death of being alone. That is not good and it's not healthy. Um, where do you think—

filling a void, like you said.

Yeah, but I don't know, I guess, um, in the environment that I grew up in, my dad very much valued his alone time. And I growing up very much value mine as well. It is just known that dad, husband needs his guy time, go away time. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. And sometimes, you know, my wife and we're not together and she'll say, what are your plans today? And I say, whatever the hell I feel like. I don't know exactly. That's just, it's like, cool, have at it. I, I don't know what the mechanism there is and why we have such a strongly— I guess codependent is the term— a population of men out there today and what's going on. And obviously it hurts them a great deal down the road when it comes to their interpersonal relationships. Um, one thing I've pointed at in my talks is, uh, lack of father figures in their life. That's very common, surprisingly common from what I've seen. Because a lot of my talks are— the men will 20 minutes of listen how horrible my situation is, and I'll sometimes have to say, let me stop you there, please. Let's just rewind the hands of time. Can you tell me about mom and dad? And then I hear horror stories, and a lot of those horror stories involve what dad— dad took off when I was 4, stepdad came to the picture shortly thereafter and beat me, whatever it may be. So Maybe that's a, um, as a dude, maybe that's a knee-jerk way of saying, hey, men, step up, it's all our problem. I don't think that's all of it, but I think it's a big component of it. Have you seen much the same?

Yeah, so what you're describing is exactly it. And I, I teach a divorce class for, for dads called Dad's Divorce Blueprint, and one of the first things that we talk about are what I mentioned earlier, these adaptive behaviors that we learn in our childhood, and that is maybe, maybe mom was narcissistic and overbearing and you learned to please mom all the time. So then you take that, and which actually be, you know, adaptive behaviors are remarkable because as humans we have just an amazing capacity to adapt to any situation. We've done it over the millennia to be able to survive, and we do the same thing in our childhoods. Or maybe you had an alcoholic parent that's, uh, that would come home raging or whatever it is, you, or a parent that was absent or would just take off and you had to care for yourself. We as children learn to adapt to whatever it is, and it helps us survive our childhoods. And even in the most loving and good environment where parents are conscientious, there's things that, needs that don't get met. So you adapt to be able to get those needs met. And then you bring it into your adult relationships, into your adult life.. And then those don't necessarily serve you anymore. Making a woman happy all of the time, like I did, you know, like I did with my mom, and I'm speaking from experience there. So that was my thing, which was what made me codependent, does not serve your marriage well. And so, you know, and, and so, and it, and it just depends. It depends on the man, it depends on the situation. But you hit the nail on the head with start looking back maybe to your childhood. And if you have the, the means to sit down with a coach or a therapist, which is something that I wish that I had done a lot earlier because it just would have cut the time frame. But again, I'm a slow learner. Cut the time frame of, oh yeah, this makes sense, because they can point out to you, well, have you thought about this? Or why don't you journal on this? Or, or here's an exercise for you, uh, to do that. So absolutely. And, and then the other point that you touched on, which is our society, is I call it the Disneyfication of of the world, right? So it's all Disney, and we're gonna find the one, and the one's gonna be the, the best friend and the lover and their colleague and like everything to everyone. It's just impossible. You just can't get that from one person. And it's insane, you like this whole soulmate mentality. And it's, it's not— marriage is, is a lot different. And, and I would— I guess if there's any advice, I don't— I'm not really into giving advice, but if there's any advice that I would put out there is like re-evaluate and reassess what it is that you feel is a relationship between a man and a woman and what you want that to be. That can be different for different people, but really take that time to really understand what that— what you want that to be in marriage. If you want to get— if you want to get married, if you're looking to get married or get remarried, really do that self-reflection around what your values are, who you are, number one, And then what it is that you want in a marriage and going forward, because that might be different than somebody else's idea of what that is. And be clear and transparent then about that.

And you hit on several really good points there. One to touch on more is the Disneyfication. Not only does that, I think, pertain to, I'm going to find the one that checks all the boxes for every emotional need that I have as a human being, but also that this marriage and relationship should also be relatively drama-free from now until the end of time. And there should be no difficulties. And it really surprises me how many men have relatively minor hiccups within their marriage, really any relationship, work, friendship, marriage, and, oh my God, I must stomp out this awfulness immediately. What do I do? I can't— how in a common term or common question often get is 'How am I supposed to deal with this?' It's like— and, uh, you ask these men, 'Have you ever encountered any kind of major life drama in the past?' Well, death of a family member or something like that, but nothing— I don't know, this has the drama within a relationship, um, it's like a special flavor of awfulness to a lot of men that they are just not equipped to handle and they don't know how. And I think that probably also goes back to lack of a strong paternal stoic figure in their life. Um, and you touched on another thing with the toxic, uh, narcissistic mother, overbearing mother. Narcissistic may be too strong of a term. Um, and I don't know if you've noticed, that's a term that's being thrown around a lot lately online and so forth. I married a narc, I married a narcissist. And right, it's, um, narcissistic personality disorder is a thing, but I don't think it's nearly as common as people think. We all have narcissistic tendencies, but Full-blown narcissist is something else entirely. But anyway, um, I've spoken to a lot of men who, after listening to their story, I'm like, yeah, mom may have in fact been a— had narcissistic personality disorder, borderline, or whatever. Um, but that special flavor of awfulness seems to be absent father figure. Um, he left and mom looked to me to fill the void. And I was my mom's emotional caretaker, or as I like to call it, a surrogate spouse to her. And I was her little man. And I got to hear about all the boyfriends, and I got to hear about everything, and I got to hear about work, and I had to soothe her, and I had to make sure I didn't walk on eggshells because mom was a real tyrant if she was pissed off. And I also— and this is always the icing on the cake— and I got to hear about how awful my dad was. Don't you dare be like your father.

Right.

Well, jeez, can you imagine just ingesting all that as a child? Obviously that's going to have detrimental effects on your relationships going forward. If you don't go into another one of your points, go talk to somebody about it. And what we're talking about, and we're nodding our heads because we hear it every single day, this is not unusual. This is not something you're going to go to a therapist with and they're going to say, whoa, you blew me away, I've never heard this before. No, they're going to look at you and go, yeah, you're number 6 of the day.

Yeah, right.

Welcome to the club, dude. And Good news is that we know somewhat how to address this and how to address your anxieties and your inadequacies in relationships. And we can really point to why you keep going down the same path again and again. Because guys, listen, if you don't take that step, that hard work, that introspection, you're going to do it again and again and again. You're going to meet your wife all over again. And yes, you're going to meet one that's going to be like, no dude, I'm telling you, it's been 2 years and everything's wonderful. And then year 3 hits and you're like, oh shit, here we go again. I've heard that so many times. Sometimes it doesn't come till after the kids show up in the picture, after some major life event, somebody loses a job, gets sick or something like that. It's usually some big giant holy shit thing that kind of uncovers the inner workings of a person and how they cope with things. Which going— let's take the conversation to a next, next direction, which is I've met somebody wonderful. Do you have—

Can I make a quick, can I make a quick comment on what you said?

Yes, please.

About going to a therapist and you thinking that this is, you know, you're the only one. That was an aha moment for me, was when I finally got into a 12-step codependence, codependence group and sitting there and listening to everybody else say out loud what was going on in my head. And I'm going, oh my gosh, I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one. So for me, that was a relief. I was going, oh, this is great. I know, I know, I now know what it is, and there's actually a way in which I can go forward and heal from this and, and figure this out so that I can have a healthier life. Because The, the other thing I wanted to comment on also that we, that you said is we can just numb. Our, our society is set up to numb from the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed. So we can numb, we could ignore, and if it's feeling uncomfortable to you, it probably is something you need to address. So whether, whether that's a life-altering, so hopefully it doesn't get to a life-altering, uh, or a life-changing situation like a divorce or something bigger or an accident, but Even pay attention to these small discomforts, these uncomfortable feelings that you might be having, because they're pointing something out to you that you need to be paying attention to. And if you don't pay attention to, to them, then they're going to manifest somewhere in your life somehow. It's going to, it's going to come up in sickness, it's going to come up in accidents, and if you still are not paying attention, it's going to come up with something bigger. So pay attention to that stuff and go and get the help, and it's going to be a relief because you can start that that process of healing. So that was a, that was, that was a great, that was a great, great point because we're isolated as men so often and we're siloed and we're not, you know, we don't have that father figure like you said, uh, that you can go to and you can talk to and say, hey, you know what, I'm feeling this, or this is what's going on, you know, and talk about it. That's one of the reasons our men's groups, and I know your men's groups, uh, are packed with men that just want to connect and talk about what's going on. And I think we need more and more and more of that because the unfortunate, you know, the unfortunate side effect of normalizing divorce is now that we've also normalized single parenthood. And I'll just say it out loud, DSO, we're not meant to parent by ourselves. It's just not the way that it's supposed to be done, and it's never— it has never been. And I've always, I've always been cognizant of this in, in my life, but it's never been more obvious to me than with teenage daughters. Because no matter how hard I try and how— and, and like, I'm honest, right? I'm paying attention to it. I'm trying to pay attention to the fields. I read books. I try to talk about this. We create it. Just, I cannot provide the female feminine energy that they need in their lives. Because I'm a man, I'm a dude, I'm the dad. And that's fine. But you know, you talk about the flip side with the single motherhood. We've not only just normalized this, we've like glorified it. Like, oh, this is great. And you're doing, that's great. And it's not a slam on any single dads or single moms because we're all doing our best and working really hard in a situation That is probably the most challenging. But what happens then is things are going to fall by the wayside. Like, you're not going to get the boys that have a well-developed masculine nature and understand their masculine energy and are comfortable with anger and then how to manage their anger or comfortable with achievements or being a leader. Because they've never seen that or they've been, like you described, told, told that don't be like your dad or like I was told, you know, you're just like all men, whatever that meant. Right. But it was a derogatory thing. And so you're just not going to get that, that flip side. And again, that's why it's so important with the work that you're doing, the work that I'm doing, the Divorced Dad Advocate community, DSO, you know, Dad Starting Over community, to get more men involved in this because then there's some of us that, you know, even if I'm a slow learner, just slowly learn some of this stuff and we can share with more and more men because it's not, it's not happening. And the divorce trend is not going to change. Single parenting trend is not going to change. So we've got to figure out an alternative to, to help men to get through this.

You got it. And we're human beings and human beings by nature are social creatures. And we know that one of the forms of cruel punishment is solitary confinement. You have no contact with other humans. And so many men kind of self-impose that on themselves. I'm too busy with work. I'm too busy with kids. I have no time to go make friends and so forth. And they— but they still have that very real need for social interaction and to be able to bond with somebody. So what do they do? They go out and try to find a woman. They'll make time for that.

Yeah.

And they put the entire weight of basically their mental health on the shoulders of these women. And voilà, it does not work. It doesn't work at all. Um, when you are a much better, more well-rounded human being and you're going out and making friends and acquaintances and, you know, sharing people that you share passions with, if you're into this hobby and you go find a group that you'll find that you have a much lesser need for that. Well, your neediness gets dialed down quite a bit. And in fact, some men that I work with have found, my neediness for my spouse has died down a lot, and that actually kind of concerns me. And I say, welcome to being a mentally healthy individual. Yeah, it was, you know, some days I don't feel like having sex. Yeah, not everyone does every single day. Usually that's perfectly fine. Um, the other day I told my wife that she was not being nice and she needs to cut it out. I feel bad about it. Those type of things, those type of things happen when you're a mentally healthy, well-rounded person. And for men, um, one great avenue to get there is just interacting with other men.

Yep. And that's something Dr. Yeah, Dr. Robert Glover describes it. I love his description and I think you're familiar with him is, uh, is, is make, uh, women, or the woman in your life, the icing on the cake. So he's like, build this, this cake, this, this life that is robust and, and, and fulfilling for you. And that's not to deride women or anything, it's just to say, and then have somebody come alongside and be that icing on the cake to where then it's something that is like really great and delicious, but it's it's fulfilling. It's like deep. It's something that you've built, and then you can do that together. And so that— and what you just described, I hear all the time with men that have been divorced. They're like, yeah, I used to like to do this, and I used to do that, and this and that. And I was the same way. I was guilty of all that. Stopped doing the athletics and the fun stuff that I had. And that's part of what attracted your ex-spouse or your spouse to you in the beginning. And then you kind of let all that stuff go and you get focused and it's easy and it's not, it's not, you know, it just happens, right? But yet, if you could stay focused on keeping that robust life, that good life, and then have somebody come alongside you with it, and then even your family when you're in your family life and dynamic. And this is the one that makes me crazy these days is like the world and the household does not revolve around the children. That revolves around the couple. If you're married, if you're the single dad or single mom, it revolves around you because if that is, if you're not healthy, if the relationship is not healthy, then the rest of it is going to be a mess. And so, you know, it's keeping the right perspective in the whole thing.

Yeah. And yeah, that, uh, my wife is, uh, from Germany and she says that she thinks America is very child obsessed. And that every other mother that she talks to, it's just 24/7 kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. And they, they as women are notorious for dropping everything, even their spouse, and focusing right on those kids. And that's it. And I hear a lot of guys saying that my life are my kids. Without them, I'm nothing. Um, I don't know what to do when they go to their mom's 3 days a week. I'm lost without them. Their whole identity was wrapped around parenthood and That's it. That's all they got.

And red flags.

And, uh, that's not good. And the— this— if we could encapsulate what you need to do, guys, into one word, I think it's mission. You need some kind of mission in life. And when you have a passion, mission, purpose, whatever you want to call it, and you focus on it, it's funny how everything just kind of takes care of itself. You don't have to worry about pretending to be scarce You don't have to worry because you are scarce. You're busy. Go, go, go. You have to worry about needy and always hanging all over your spouse because it's— you got other things to do. You're busy and you're getting your social needs met because invariably you're going to meet other people. So for men especially, this is so important. Just find a mission, find something that gets you going. And if you don't know what that is, well, congratulations. There's this thing called the internet, and you could also walk out your door. What a novel concept. And go see the world, do whatever. And try out new stuff that makes you uncomfortable. But before we wrap it up, I wanted to— if you have some advice or experience with yourself or talking to others, I know what I say to folks, um, how soon to start dating. And once you find one that you're like, um, you know, we click, everything's going, it's been months, how soon before you take the next step? How, how long do you feel a courting process should be before you say you and me and nobody else, whether that's the form of marriage or just living together or whatever it may be. What do you think about all that?

So I would say most definitely don't start dating until your divorce is final. It's just, just cleaner. Not, not legally, even legally, but just mentally, right? You're closing a chapter. That's the end. And then you can start thinking about it. So, Even though it's challenging to go through that time period where you might be lonely or you're trying to replace somebody or if they go, just, just stop and be with those feelings and those emotions. So I would definitely say wait until after. And I say that not having followed my advice. And so looking back going, wow, that was just really, really stupid. And I tell my daughters that too. So I tell everybody that like, This was not a smart thing because they saw me go through it, right? And I said, this was not, that was not a good idea. That was not a smart, that was not a smart move, but I made a mistake. The next thing is take the time and either do therapy, coaching, classes like the Dad's Divorce Blueprint class to go through and really, because this, in this class there's a great book also called Rebuilding After Your Relationship Ends., also, but take that time to really assess those adaptive behaviors that have become maladaptive behaviors. And if you need to get into a 12-step group, 12-step groups are great, or in a, in a group coaching or just group meetings. Take that time to really cultivate, talk to other men and, and get just a, a lay and an understanding of what's going on. Because if you were married, I was married for 11 years. Dating has changed a lot. And no matter— so, oh yeah, you said you were— so whatever time frame, even if it's 5, 6, 7, 8 years, it has just changed. So to really take that time to start talking to other men and get connected with other men, start some of your hobbies first, start building that life first before you start dating. And that doesn't mean that maybe you want to go out on dates. And you can go out on dates, just be cognizant and open about what you are doing. Like, I'm just getting back into the dating. I just want to go out and I just want to, you know, have a female presence, you know, with me. And, and you're going to, you're going to find, and what I found is there's a lot of women on the other side that are going through much of the same stuff in, albeit a different way, but they're still having some of the same stuff. They're still like, oh, I might be testing the waters. Or I might be, or I might not have done the work myself yet, or I don't know. So if you're transparent, transparency is a really big thing. If you're transparent about what you're doing, that's okay. But I would say until you've really done that work, and, and there's no time frame because it depends on who you are. Like when I got into the 12 steps, I did the, the whole thing in 3 months. Like, I, like, it was 2 hours a day and I just put it in my schedule, blocked it out, and I was like on a mission to fix myself, right? Which, you know, now I've come to realize that that's a never-ending thing, right? It's gonna just come to the day I die. But, you know, it depends on how much effort you're putting in, you know, how much therapy you might be doing or groups or what you're doing to heal. So I don't know that there's a time frame, but I feel that there is a time frame once you do start dating in the process for dating. And I'll And I'll give another book. I love to read. So I read all of these books. And that's like, again, none of this stuff I'm brilliant enough to come up with myself, but I read a lot and I try to convey as much of this information to as many people as possible. But Shawn Smith has a book and it's called The Tactical Guide to Women. And he talks in there, the first half of the book about what we basically have talked about this whole time, doing the work on yourself and understanding yourself and knowing your values and please. But then he talks about the second half, which is, which is taking the time to date, go through that, that process of dating for a period of time, like, and he says at least a year to date until you really get to know. Because somebody can fake it for a little while, or they can cover up kind of those red flags or hide those red flags for, for a period of time. But once you've been around them and you've gone through the seasons with them— that's another phrase you can go through the seasons or go through the holidays with them. And, and you're going to kind of see really what they're about. And then you can also see what your dynamic is and if you're comfortable with that. And if you know what it is that, that you want, like we talked about in the beginning, uh, what you want from a relationship, then you're gonna— you're gonna know if you want to take that to the next level, to the next step of saying, well, I would like this to be a committed relationship, and, and then let's start moving in, in that direction after, I don't know, 7 months or a year, once you know that it's somebody that you can envision yourself doing that with. And I think that's what happens. And I'm guilty of this too, is like getting into that committed relationship right away because oftentimes women are like, well, I want to lock it down and I want to, you know, do this as soon as possible because if he's, you know, starts to see all this craziness come out, then he's going to be gone, right? And that's not all. I'm just being facetious. But, you know, take that time and then commit to something that could potentially be long-term after maybe a year. And then take that year to year 2 to really see if you can blend those lives together, right? Have that person come in as the icing in your cake and and be part of your life. If you have children, that becomes even more of a delicate dance that you have to—

Sure does.

Yeah. Figure out as well. So especially, especially if you have children, really be just slow in the process and take your time in the process. And it might be painfully difficult and you're most almost guaranteed to get a buttload of pressure from the woman. I'm wanting to move it faster and just be, be just, just strong about not moving it faster than you feel comfortable.

I take things a step further and I tell men, your divorce is done. Give women a rest period for about a year. And I think that's when it's the whole introspection and working through all your emotions and everything else, simply because what you just mentioned, you're going to get pressured. You're getting— sometimes that pressure is escalated even to the point of, I'm ready to have babies. I'm a 30-something-year-old woman who just got divorced, and my clock is ticking, and you seem to be good enough. Let's go. And if you're a man who still has those codependent, you know, um, inclines, uh, tendencies, and, um, you don't want to let this one go because she makes you feel better than you felt in you don't know how long. How many men are like, okay, yeah, you can move in. Yeah, okay, we can start trying to have a baby. Yeah, okay. And then a year or so later, they come to me and say, what in the hell was I thinking? I say, you just started way too soon, dude. You weren't ready. And she smelled that a mile away. She said, here's one I can put my hooks in. And congratulations, you met your wife all over again. So ideally, give it a good year. Nobody listens to that. Everybody, you know, we need that social connection. Men are sexual creatures, most part, for the most part, and they have needs. And if you have a little bit of looks and charm about you, oh boy, it's easier than ever just to get on your app and say, I need to meet somebody next Wednesday, and boom, it's done. You're like, well, that was easy. Well, you talk, you talk about how things have changed in the dating world. I was married for 15 years, was with her for over 20. Talk about totally different world, my goodness. Yeah, it's just alien. Like, what? It's this casual and it's this, yeah. And that was actually kind of disturbing to me at first. And that was, you take my very pliable and traumatized brain and then throw it into that deep end of the pool. And I was just like, holy shit, what is this? I don't like it. It's all nutty. In other words, I wasn't ready for it at all. And yeah, I was roadkill on the dating highway there for a while. It was just crazy after crazy after crazy, which, and this sounds nihilistic on my part, when guys are like, most of, or all women are like this, I say no, but I'm kind of gonna play Mr. Asshole here and say probably most of them are. Not everyone is cut out for this long-term monogamous one-on-one relationship if that's in fact, as a man, what you're after. Not everybody's wired for that. And they may say they are, they may want it more than anything, but they don't have the skills, the know-how, the tools to make it work. They just don't. And that may be in the form of craziness, whatever that means, the baggage that they bring to the table, whatever. And you discover that one after the other after the other. And eventually you find one that, oh, she's got the tools. Let's see if we can make this work. And cross your fingers that happens. But if it doesn't, that's okay. And until you have that mindset, if it doesn't, that's okay. Oof. Be careful. Be really, really careful because they can get—

exactly. Because you've got to find the one that has done the work, and that's rare. And you have had to have done the work too. So you really need to be the person that you want on the other end yourself before you can go look for somebody that is what you ideally want. And then it's going to take through— it's an effort, right? It's an effort sorting through all of them, you know, and this sounds crass, but you're just sort— you're sorting through, right? You're sorting through just like, like anything, making a selection any other way to see if that's somebody that's going to fit. And we don't do that. I think we probably spend more time planning our vacations or buying a car than we do in our dating life sometimes.

Isn't that funny how that works?

Yeah, it's crazy. It's really crazy. And, and we ignore— like, if the car was like wobbling and like shaking, we'd be like, oh yeah, there's something wrong, I'm going to take it to the mechanic. But we ignore that stuff in our, in our dating life. And when, when we do that, we do it at our own, at our own peril because we're fearful, right? So yeah, you're— I agree with you 100%.

Absolutely. I think that's a perfect cap to this because I have to run. I have a coaching call. So one more time, Jude, the Divorced Dadvocate, divorceddadvocate.com, and look for the Divorced Dadvocate on anywhere the podcasts are, right? Absolutely. Check them out. Jude, yeah, thank you so much, buddy.

DSO, I appreciate it. And if I could just offer one thing out to your audience that's if they are contemplating divorce or going through divorce, I have a divorce quiz on the website at thedivorcedadvocate.com, and it's a great tool to help them kind of assess where they're at compared to other people that have gone through divorce. So it just, it will kick out just a report that will help them assess where they're at. So everything that we just talked about in, in divorce or contemplating divorce, it will help them through that.

Excellent.

So it's, uh, they can go to thedivorcequiz.com or go to divorcedadvocates.com and click on divorce quiz tab. And hopefully that will help some folks out.

Perfect. Excellent. Because guys listening, you are not alone. There's a lot of help out there for you. You just got to raise your hand and say, a little help over here. And guys like Jude will, uh, they have a lot of resources to, uh, help you get over the hump. Because it ain't easy. All right, Jude, thanks a lot, buddy. I appreciate it. Have a good one.