7 Tips for Dating After Divorce When it’s Been Five Years or Longer

Dating after divorce is similar to riding a bike. Although you never forget how to do it, you do lose skills when you’ve stepped out of the dating game and into a marriage for many years.

Whether you’re dating after 5, 10, or even 15 years of marriage, the following tips ease you back into the dating game with less stress and worry.

1. Change Your Style

It’s a new chapter in life. Turn the page in the book and embrace what’s to come. When you change that chapter, do so with a new style. Head out to your favorite loathing store to find a few new outfits. Visit the salon for a new hairstyle or color. Consider liposuction or other procedures that enhance your confidence and beauty.

Change your style, develop confidence and charisma, and step outside in the dating world as the fierce, determined person that you’ve always been. If you are ready for a new kind of love, prepare yourself for what’s ahead!

2. Have Fun

Dating should always be fun. Get to know the other person. Venture out and do things that make you happy. Learn more about this person. Don’t rush a relationship, whether you’re looking for a serious commitment or only casual dating.

You could potentially ruin things with your partner if you are too serious too quickly and do not show your fun side. Life is too short to be serious all the time. Be sure to enjoy life with this SOS every time you’re together.

3. Set Reasonable Expectations

You want this relationship to work out better than the last, obviously. But, good chemistry doesn’t always signal compatibility or long-term potential. Set realistic, reasonable expectations. Don’t play yourself or your partner {for a fool.}

If you expect too much from your partner and vice versa, you’ll never be good enough for one another. We’re all human beings who make mistakes and who simply aren’t perfect. Set reasonable expectations for both the other person and the overall relationship.

4. Love Yourself

Before you can love another person correctly, you must first love yourself. If you’re waiting for the right time to practice self-love, you’ve found it. Ensure that you are dating for the right reasons, that you’re completely over the last relationship.

Understand the person that you are, how to be strong and fierce. Evaluate yourself, mentally, and emotionally, to learn what you offer another person. When you’re dating for the right reasons, everyone enjoys the relationship and no one gets hurt.

5. Watch Out for Red Flags

Trust yourself and your ability to spot red flags -and respond to them accordingly. Lust can have us overlook red flags that later prove why that’s so dangerous.

Be aware of anyone who seems too perfect and always says the right things or someone who seems stand-offish. Other red flags should also send you running the other direction, so keep an eye out for those danger signs.

6. Communication is the Heart of Any Relationship

After a long-term marriage ends, communication may no longer be a top priority, especially if things ended badly. But, open, honest communication is a quintessential quality of any relationship, albeit romantic, friendship, or with family.

Communicate your feelings, hopes, and dreams with your romantic other! Listen to them and how they feel. When a couple can communicate, the relationship can last.

7. Forget ‘Your Type’

Everyone likes to think they have a ‘type’ when in reality, we’re attracted to who we are attracted to when we are attracted to them. That can change at any given time. Don’t be afraid to date someone who doesn’t match the standard criteria for ‘your type.’ Maybe getting out of your comfort zone is what your relationships need to thrive.

It takes a bit of time to feel comfortable dating when you’ve been married to the same person for many years, but it gets easier as time goes by. Keep the seven tips above in mind to further ease the transition back into the dating world.

You’ll find that SOS sooner than you think when these tips are included in your dating game.