Yes with that additional information I agree with you! Those are all bad signs, and that's really the benefit you have from life experience is to stay away from that.
Originally Posted By: 25yrsmlc
I read somewhere that men remarry faster than women, regardless of who ended their previous m. Is it possible men have more trouble being alone in general? I'm asking.
That's a great question! I have pondered that myself. I read that the people who life the longest lives are married men and single women, so that statistic suggests that men have health benefits from being in a relationship whereas women benefit from being single later in life, or maybe that's an improper assumption of causality.
I have three male friends who are lifelong bachelors and really aren't looking for a relationship so my small data set suggests that some men are fine alone.
I also read that one of the typical differences between men and women is that men feel soothed just by having their spouse in the same space/house even if they don't interact at all, whereas women need interaction to take value from the relationship, and cohabitating without interaction is a source of anxiety.
My "world view" has been changed by my divorce in several ways. One of them is that I attach less validity to stereotypical gender differences than I used to -- I've just found that we're all just "people" at the root of it and whereas some challenges seem to be more associated with one gender or the other there seem to be an equal number of exceptions.
For instance, my exW had very low sex drive, and some of my married friends have complained that their wives don't want to have sex frequently enough, so I formed this belief that married men want more sex than married women and are typically frustrated. Therefore, I didn't consider my situation to be outside of the norm.
Since being divorced and doing a bit of dating, I've met an equal number of women who had higher sex drives than their former partners and it was an equal source of angst. One woman I went to college with said her H would only have sex with her once a year and she had to beg for that to happen. So much for my prior belief! The reality seems to be that there are plenty of high drive women and low drive men running around, and sexual issues in a marriage are of course much more complex than just a mismatch in drive.
The other observation I've had is that people coming out of long term marriages, particularly LBS's, begin dating with some fairly common challenges.
For one, they were generally resigned to spending the rest of their life with a single person, and when they suddenly get immersed into the dating scene with so many options and so little friction (with all the apps, meetups, and dating sites) they can go a little off the deep end.
When I was last dating in my 20's, it was difficult -- you didn't know who was single, you didn't know who might be interested in you without a "high risk" proposition of some point, and the pool of people you were exposed to was pretty limited. The challenge was "settling" for someone who wasn't ideal because you'd get fatigue from the search.
Now, there's virtually no friction in finding someone to date and identifying who's available, and you can reach out to people with very little risk via e-dating. This creates a much bigger pool to draw from with little rejection risk, so the challenge I read about today is the "unicorn problem" where people get addicted to the hunt, and the velocity, and convince themselves there is always someone better for them around the next corner, so they never settle.
This can look like a veritable buffet of choices to someone recently divorced who may be tempted to overdue dating many people at once or being indiscriminate about who they reach out to.
Secondly I see LBS's leaving long term relationships pretty beaten down and feeling undesireable. Therefore, the first interest they get from someone new can be like crack cocaine and to your point, they can come across as extremely needy and overeager to rush into something because they no longer have to feel alone and undesireable.
Both of those influences -- the overdoing it and the being overeager to move too fast seem to pass within a couple months, but it does tell me I wouldn't want to be the first person to date someone just out of a divorce!
It seems that like DB, in many ways its a process you just have to live through and accept that you will make mistakes along the way.
Finally, feel free to blow me off or disregard me at any time! I'm no expert and I'm not offended if what I have to say isn't helpful.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015