Dating after divorce feels completely different than it did 10, 20, or even 30 years ago — in this video I share why it feels impossible to please women today, the 3 big shifts you need to understand, and how divorced men can stop performing, start connecting, and finally build real chemistry and connection again.
P.S. If you’re a man navigating dating after divorce, don’t go it alone. My free masterclass was made for you—learn how to rebuild confidence, attract the right women, and avoid common post-divorce mistakes. Watch it here.
Ready for tailored support? Book your 1:1 dating strategy call with me here and let’s map out your next steps.
See you next week,
Kimberly
Here’s the transcript:
If you’ve been through a divorce and you are dating again after, let’s say it’s maybe 5, 10, 20, or even 30 years where you have been out of the kind of dating game, let’s call it. It can feel almost impossible to know how to make a darn woman happy, how to please a woman. And you might be thinking that, well, I’m doing the same things that I remember doing when I first met my wife or my long-term partner.
But these just aren’t landing anymore. They’re not adding up. I don’t feel like. I’ve got the skills that I need to have to be successful in dating. And so maybe you’ve noticed that the women that you are meeting are nothing like the women you dated when you were younger or when you met your wife or former partner.
And so today, this is not about blaming either of the genders, let’s just be [00:01:00] clear on that. But today, I wanna unpack. Why? Why it feels like you just can’t please women. And I wanna share three big shifts that explain why dating feels so different today and how you can stop trying to impress women. Stop wasting your energy on trying to impress women.
Feel some peace within yourself. And what I want you to do is start connecting with women in the ways. That actually matter, actually matter for your happiness, health, and the success of that relationship. Now, welcome to the channel. My name is Kimberly Hill. I’m a men’s dating and relationship coach. I support good-hearted men to attract deeply loving relationships, and then I support them to go on and maintain those loving relationships.
And what I do know is that the dating landscape has changed. Debate me on that, but it certainly has changed and many divorced men who are reentering dating after potentially decades out of the dating [00:02:00] scene. Maybe you haven’t even really flirted with a woman in 10, 20, or 30 years, but what you are gonna be noticing, or a majority of you men are noticing, and you certainly have reported to me as a coach that has worked with many men, is that the women you’re meeting are all at very different stages of life.
They can be very independent women. Some of them are very experienced women, and some women are very clear. I had a client that said like, woman basically brought a checklist to a date that she’s very clear on what she wants from a relationship and a man. And so old expectations aren’t really fitting into the puzzle of today’s modern dating landscape.
And women today, at least, a large portion of women, don’t need. Provision from men. They don’t necessarily feel as if they need protection, although I, I really believe it is fundamental duty of men to protect women, women to serve men. But nonetheless, a lot of women feel they don’t [00:03:00] need a man for protection, at least in the same way, what they are looking for, the majority of women is emotional connection, compassion, and shared joy.
They want a man. To have fun with a man that they can spend time around that makes them feel good. And you wanna be around a woman who makes you feel needed and happy in your body and all of these things. And so I had a client who said I, well, he would continuously kind of talk about his career and achievements to women.
Um, but women would look quite bored at that. Why? Because this woman wasn’t. Needing to read his resume. She was certainly not interviewing him for a job at her firm that she runs. She was wanting this man to be present, to be. I used the word presence. I used the word attuned. Maybe those words are too laughy, affy, gaffey, whatever.
She wanted to [00:04:00] feel connected to that man. In ways that had nothing to do with accomplishments or work. She wanted to feel good in her body when she was with that man. And a man wants to feel good in his body when he’s around a woman. So that’s what I mean by attunement and presence in these woo woo words that sometimes I can throw around or other people talk about.
And so why the heck does it feel so hard to please women these days? Right? And one of the reasons is you are not the same man that you were. You are not the same man that you were when you got married. Completely fundamental. In fact, all yourselves have even turned over. So you are biologically not even the same.
Right? And you may have shut down emotionally in your marriage. Let’s just take a broad assumption that if you had a marriage that didn’t work out or ended in divorce, that at some point in that marriage you shot down. So [00:05:00] you have changed since pre-marriage. You might even be carrying around like a big ass burden, shame, guilt, or you might even be carrying around a sense of failure about your relationship, maybe even about your manhood and about your divorce for certain.
Or your long-term relationship that didn’t work out right. And so if you are entering dating with that weight, it’s going to make you feel like you have to climb a mountain just to be worthy. And what women are very good at doing is picking up that heaviness. And so if a woman is busy with work and picks up that heaviness from you, she will choose not to pursue a relationship with you regardless of how amazing you appear on the surface, because it’s too heavy for this woman, and [00:06:00] that heaviness is going to feel like a barrier to having that connection she is seeking with you.
Reason number two. Women are not the same anymore. The women that you meet are more often than not gonna be more financially independent. They’re going to be a little more self-reliant and they’re gonna be seeking that emotional connection. They’re not just seeking stability. It’s very likely if you’re dating again after divorce, that a woman you meet already has a semblance of stability in her life.
So what feels really hard to place, um, is really these women wanting depth and joy and compatibility. Reason number three. Old dating scripts, let’s call it, don’t work anymore. [00:07:00] Telling your life story in a very heavy, depressing way does not draw women in. And I see men make this mistake and you’re not conscious of it.
The men that do it are not conscious of it. This has happened in particular for men. I’ve worked with men that are dating, uh, again, not after a divorce. But after their partner passes away. And so that’s very, very hurtful. It’s very deep. That’s going to, that’s going to impact you for the rest of your life, let’s be honest.
But then these men get into the dating space and. They’re kind of honoring their former wife or former partner in a way by telling the story of their life. But there’s a heaviness and a depression that comes through that. And that’s not going to connect with women, of course. ’cause firstly, she’s gonna go, I can’t compete with that.
Whether you’re talking about your. Former wife that passed away, or you’re talking about an ex that [00:08:00] you no longer feel connected to. Either way, a new woman in front of you, it’s not gonna draw her in. That energy is actually quite repelling. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to emotionally process all that stuff you do, but you just don’t process it with a new woman you wanna date, right?
And so old dating scripts no longer work. You can’t just impress women with money. Or achievements that fall flat. And the women that are impressed by these things are not the kind of women, the men who are watching my channel or wanting to be in relationships with. If you just want a transactional relationship, I pay for your attention or whatever, or whatever to be my, my side piece, this channel is not for you because that’s not the psychology of individuals I’m speaking to.
So trying to impress with money or achievements is not the ticket to having the relationship that the men that are here in this community are seeking and wanting. And what women want now is men who [00:09:00] are comfortable in themselves, men that are curious about life, men that are compassionate to themselves, mind you, and to others, and men that can share joy in their lives even.
So what is joy for you? Right? Because there are men that share joy about things. That you see even other men sharing joy about, and you go, oh, women won’t like it if I share that with them. Don’t think about what women like or don’t like. Think about what you like and that’s the joy that radiates out. So how can you rec recognizing that things have changed, that you are not the same person?
How can you shift into this? Connection so that you can have success, right? It’s all, what it’s about is, is self-growth that leads us to achieving joy and happiness and fulfillment. And how you can shift into this connection is firstly, stop performing. Drop the performance and start connecting. And what I mean by that is, again, a woman doesn’t need you to prove your worth with a [00:10:00] resume.
She wants to see who you are now. So ask yourself, who am I now? And if you don’t know the answer to that question. Start here. Start on your identity and figuring out who you are and what brings you joy and the things that you like to do in your life so that you understand what you’re gonna be contributing and sharing with a woman, um, who’s seeking being a part of that joy.
Secondly, and I’ll highlight this again. Is really, so stop performing, start connecting by secondly, bringing joy back into your life, which I just badgered you all on. And then the third is practicing emotional presence. And, uh, what I mean by practicing emotional presence is. If you have been quite distant from yourself for years or distant from your ex-partner in your marriage, it takes some practice.
It takes some time to open back up. So if you don’t hit it off perfectly with the first woman, or you [00:11:00] fumble your way through a few things. That’s okay. This is you opening back up again. And if you’ve been really hurt, then you will have maybe enjoyed my video last week where I talked about really addressing that underlying fear.
It takes a little bit of time to move through that, so be compassionate to yourself, and that’s why I want you to start small. You know, share a little lesson you’ve learned about your previous marriage or a value that’s really important that you live by, or something that you’re really grateful for, and that’s the slow process of opening yourself back up again.
And then of course, what’s really important is reframing your story. So instead of carrying around shame and guilt, I have a whole, uh, video I did on shame and guilt. It didn’t get as many clicks because it doesn’t give you the, the hack to getting women. But really it’s one of the biggest hacks to getting women because.
When you rid yourself of this shame and guilt, you free yourself up to the energy of good women. And so it was one of [00:12:00] my videos. I got like the least amount of views, but um, it has a great impact on those that, that watched it. And so if your divorce was painful, I understand that, um, over time you’ll be able to reframe that and learn from it and say something to the effect of, my divorce was very painful.
But it taught me how important communication is, and I’m talking real communication, and I just don’t take that for granted anymore. And boom, you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re opening up. Right? So one of my clients kept telling me that, um, well he, he told me, but he was telling me that he was telling women about his failed marriage.
And, uh, he was hoping that this honesty would make them kind of. Connected to him, but it pushed them away. They had sympathy and empathy for him, but they go like, he’s just not ready to be in a new relationship. So definitely not. And so it pushed these women away and when he learned to reframe it well, and, and it wasn’t just.
Changing how [00:13:00] he spoke, but really moving through that emotion, right? When you reframe something, it’s because you’ve learned what you need to learn. Um, so it’s not just say these words a different way and you’ll have success with women. You have to embody that first. By the way, if any of you think, okay, I’ll just write some shit down and then just cheat my way through it.
You never get the result you want from cheating, right? So when he learned to reframe it, is how I want to phrase it here, and he said things to the effect of my marriage taught me the value of friendship and a relationship. Um, then women started to lean in and listen. Same man. Had gone through his healing, very different energy.
So the deeper truth here is that it feels really hard to please women today because you’re not the same man, and women are no no longer looking for the same things. And that’s not bad news. It’s just an invitation into who you are and who women are today [00:14:00] and good women. They don’t want perfection. Good women don’t want perfection.
They want men who have lived, who have learned, who have grown. They want men who can create joy in their lives without needing to rely on the partner for that joy. They want that presence, that compassion for yourself and for for them. Um, and they want you to invite them into that. And so if you’re.
Willing to let go of that old, outdated playbook and you’re gonna step into the man that you are today. You’re gonna find that women aren’t hard to please at all. Um, you’re gonna actually have a lot more selection of whom you want to share that life with. And those women, um, really want the real you. So I hope that this was helpful.
I hope it really. You know, gave you a different idea of how to view the landscape, um, because you’re, you’re a different person now. And so there’s other videos on this channel that speak to deeper parts of what I’ve talked [00:15:00] about today. Chester’s, the video on shame and guilt is one of the. Earlier ones that I put on YouTube, um, last week’s video.
Talked about overcoming some of that internalized fear. Um, and there’s lots of other resources to kinda help you through this journey. Of course, if you want to work with myself or you think you might like to work with me, please book a complimentary call. I’d be more than happy to get to know you. See if.
This type of, uh, working relationship can be really valuable and helpful for you as it is with many of the men that I worked with, and I hope you guys have an amazing day. Thanks for tuning in. Ciao.
