In this episode, I’ll be sharing an important discussion about the intense feelings of loneliness that men often experience after a divorce. You’ll learn that these feelings are natural reactions to the disruption of your attachment system. I’ll explain why this loneliness feels so powerful for men and how you can respond to it constructively. I’ll guide you on how to avoid falling into the traps of desperation or unhealthy relationships. Understand the importance of reconnecting with yourself and your social infrastructure first before diving back into romantic relationships. Join me as we navigate the complexities of post-divorce recovery and emotional growth.
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:
Now, most men won’t admit this out loud, but after a divorce, there’s a moment and maybe that moment is a few weeks into your divorce. Maybe that moment is a few months into your divorce where the feeling of loneliness hits you harder than you ever expected. And it’s not this, I just miss having someone around loneliness.
But it’s a deep loneliness that you viscerally feel, you feel it in the marrow of your bones. It’s a a nervous system emptiness. Maybe another way of describing it is like an internal collapse, and if you’ve been feeling that, if you’re a man that is walking this journey after divorce, then I want you to hear something very clearly.
Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not weak, you’re not failing. You are having a reaction, a human [00:01:00] reaction, a nervous system reaction to your attachment system being completely disrupted. It’s not a moral flaw. And today I wanna show you why this loneliness feels so intense for men and how you can respond to it in a way that’s gonna build strength, build connection, and lead you to healthy attraction instead of falling into desperation, overinvestment in the wrong women, or the first woman that comes around.
Or just ultimately making a choice about being with the wrong person. So let’s get into this now before I dive in, if you’re brand new to this channel, welcome aboard. My name is Kimberly Hill. I’m a men’s dating and relationship coach. I’ve been doing this for many years now, and my number one goal, my vision, my purpose, my mission is to support good-hearted men, to attract deeply loving relationships, and then go on to enjoy those relationships.
It’s not just [00:02:00] about attracting a beautiful woman, it’s about attracting a beautiful dynamic mutual, um, energy and appreciation to have the right kind of relationship. So if you’ve been following my content for a while and you’re watching all my videos, really appreciate the support. If you’re new to this channel, stay tuned.
You talk about all things life and dating, and. Just navigating relationships, just navigating the psychology of modern dating, as well as just some of the strategies and things you can think about, or perspectives perhaps is a better word to think about it. Um, and I also share, I share stories that the men that I’ve worked with have gone through and the experiences that they’ve lived through as well.
So what I really wanna highlight today is why is it that men feel this loneliness gap? Really intensely, sometimes even more intensely than women. And the psychological truth here is that, um, many men [00:03:00] rely more on their romantic partners for emotional connection than women do. And. I mean, if we really just break it down into a simplest form, I mean, many women will, um, maintain friendships throughout their relationships.
They, they can cultivate community, they have social infrastructure. And maybe, maybe if we really look at it even more simply, it’s because men oftentimes are working longer hours. They might just have less time to do all of. Whereas in maybe a traditional household, the woman might be raising the children, but then she also has time to socialize with other moms and things like that.
Of course, nowadays you see, you know, men and women both even working equal hours and maybe both of you’re struggling to cultivate community or maintain friendships. But when you look at a typical structure. Men rely more on their romantic partners for emotional connection than women do. And that means you also are relying on one person, one woman, for companionship, for intimacy, for emotional support, and maybe even your identity.
And so [00:04:00] when divorce happens, when the rupture takes place, uh, you don’t just lose a wife, you’re losing your primary emotional connection, your daily companionship. The anchor of your routine, your identity as a husband, a partner, a protector, a provider. You lose your physical intimacy and sexual intimacy, and often you lose a big portion of family and community ties.
So it’s not that you’re just feeling like, oh, it’d be nice to have someone around. It’s that you’ve ultimately lost your entire structure that kept your nervous system regulated, and your body is feeling that loss like a major threat. Because in biological terms, it really is a threat to you. If this happened to you back in the, the cave age, the, you know, the ice age, um, you know, you wouldn’t [00:05:00] survive.
So you have that reaction happening. So I wanna go deeper with this, because human beings, we are wired to bond. And when we attach to somebody, our nervous system can. Well, when we attach to a healthy person, our nervous system gets a steady drip of oxytocin, co-regulation, predictability, identity, emotional safety, and when that bond is severed, like even if you recognize you had.
Some major differences in your relationship or in your marriage, you still would’ve had some level of predictability, um, some level of emotional safety. You certainly would’ve had routine and patterns that you would’ve operated with your former wife with. Um, and when that bond is severed, your nervous system doesn’t understand that.
Your marriage has legally ended, it just registers in your body like, whoa, my attachment is gone. I’m feeling really unsafe. I’m feeling really unan anchored. And that [00:06:00] physiological shock, not just the breakup itself, is what creates this massive loneliness gap. This, this feeling of like, wow, I’m completely disrupted from the inside out.
And it’s not that you’re lonely because you’re now somehow undateable, it’s, it’s that you’re lonely because your brain is recalibrating after losing its primary source of emotional regulation. And you might be like, well, I didn’t really even talk or emote to my wife a lot. And it’s not necessarily that verbal words have to be exchanged for emotional regulation to take place.
It’s just emotional regulation in your body from the predictability and routine and the identity association. So what I wanna share here is there’s nothing shameful in that divorce is a massive disruptor, but what I wanna talk about is how. This feeling that you’re going through that maybe you think you can shove under the rug, or you might convince yourself that, well, I knew the relationship was [00:07:00] over for many years, so as soon as the divorce takes place, like I’m ready to go.
Probably not. Probably not. If I’m a betting woman and I am, and I’ve said this in a few videos, you’re probably not ready and it’s because you probably need more time to reset your nervous system than you think. The first day you move into your new apartment isn’t necessarily the day you’re fully emotionally healed, and so.
Here’s where things often go wrong for men, and it’s because I’ve worked with so many men now that I’ve seen the patterns that occur for men after divorce. Now, instead of recognizing that you have a pretty big internal wound, you try to fix it with external validation, and a pretty convenient way of trying to do that is to just pop up on a dating app.
Uh, and try doing that through h or match or eHarmony or Zoosk or wherever you, you go Facebook dating. And that’s what most people do. And that is when this loneliness, this internal wound [00:08:00] turns into behaviors that sabotage you and sabotage a good relationship. And what that practically looks like is you start to overinvest in women really quickly.
It starts to look like you get attached to the first woman who shows you interest. Um, you start to text too much or chase that. You’ll ignore red flags because the other feelings are really amplified for you, like you don’t feel lonely for a moment. So you’ll ignore the red flags. Might even be glaring at you, you’ll fall into what are defined as situationship.
So definition list relationships, or you just don’t know where things are going with this woman, but you stay in it because you’re holding onto the little bits of connection that you do get. You might rush commitment. So that could feel like, I really wanna lock this down. I mean, I had a client who definitely was, uh, had some big internal abandonment wounds.
And whenever he would meet a woman, it was like, it didn’t matter what problems she [00:09:00] had, um, he would ignore those. And he just really wanted to lock things down by proposing to her and getting married because for some reason that created some level of safety that he felt he needed to stay in control of everything.
And he rushed commitment and it, it’s not a good situation to be in. And so what’s happening is you’re trying to recreate the comfort of your marriage in the first few weeks of this relationship with a new woman. And that’s not a personality flaw, that’s that’s a survival strategy, and that’s why it feels so strong.
That’s why when I talk to men, they go like, there is something that woke up in me that has never been awakened before. And it’s like your body is trying so hard to survive and you’re not aware of this because you’re, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, so your body is trying to. Co-regulation as quickly as possible.
But what happens, guys? And you know what happens because many of you have lived it. You might be nodding your head, or you have seen [00:10:00] buddies go through this where they choose women. You go like, what is going on? You end up making choices from a place of fear instead of a place of clarity. And that fear often attracts exactly the kind of relationship that will hurt you again.
And it’s also because you’re not prepared for that. You’re, you haven’t changed. You’re the same man. You are in the relat. You’re the same man you were in your pre prior relationship, and so nothing is ultimately gonna change other than the face and the body of the woman in front of you. So what I wanna do is reframe loneliness in the right way, and I want you to think about the feeling of loneliness.
Is not an emergency, and it’s not a sign that you need a relationship immediately. It’s your biological message, and that biological message is saying to you, man, you need to [00:11:00] reconnect. But it’s not saying you need to only reconnect romantically. It’s saying you need to reconnect to your body and to the world, socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically.
Loneliness guys is invitation to rebuild your foundation. It’s actually screaming at you to reconnect with yourself first. Not to run to the nearest woman who can relieve the discomfort for a moment. And that’s where men get into behaviors that they themselves look at and go, I don’t know why I am behaving that way.
So it’s about reconnecting with yourself first, and this is the part that a lot of men never hear. Connection is what you need, but not just with the woman. And in fact, the healthiest thing that you can do after a divorce is rebuild connections everywhere except for [00:12:00] romance. For a little while, romance should in fact be the final step and not your rescue mission.
And that’s because when you really break it down, men fall in love with women for who they are. And women often fall in love with men for the life they can have with them. And it’s a little bit, maybe that rubs people the wrong way. Good women love men for who they are, of course, to their core good women, but we.
We look at the life that we could have coming alongside you. And again, if we go back to this example, it’s like relationships for a very, very long time. Well, women would rely on the man for the safety and the provision and and the lifestyle. So we assessed men based on that too, as well as. Who they were and their characteristics and how kind and loving and free spirited they were.
But we also had to look at, um, the other elements that came along with the partnership. And a man would say, well, is this the kind of woman that I love and wanna work really [00:13:00] hard and provide for? And so now you can see that modern relationship. Are changing because women aren’t necessarily needing a man to provide for her.
So now they’re looking more at the man himself. And men are, in fact, in many ways, being scrutinized or put under a microscope. They’re now more deeply looking at your core, who you are, how you show up in the world, how happy you are, how unhappy you are, not just the life you can bring. And I think that that.
Light that’s being shined on men is really revealing and a little bit scary. And so what I’m really highlighting here is. Um, figure out you first before you look for the comfort, uh, or try to be rescued by a beautiful woman, and that’s gonna take some active avoiding of temptation. It’s gonna take some active avoiding of temptation, and it’s gonna take you having a bigger, better mindset.
And this is the only woman that is gonna show me affection. You cannot have a scarcity [00:14:00] mindset when you’re trying to rebuild your life. Um, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t mesh. So I wanted to share a couple just general ideas for you to think about in terms of, um. You know, reconnecting with your identity and reconnecting with yourself or your own, you know, physical blueprint.
And that’s of course the first thing is building your own identity. Who the hell are you as a man outside of a marriage? What are the things you value now in your life that’s gonna have changed from 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or five years ago? You know, what parts of yourself did you lose or give up during that relationship that need to be rediscovered?
What do you actually want in a future relationship and partner? What habits have you developed that are slowing you down or causing you pain? Or what habits have you developed that are lifting you up when you wanna build confidence? You have to look at how you are behaving in the world. And when a man is, when you are connected to yourself, you don’t chase, you start to [00:15:00] become the chooser because you know who you are and what you want and why that’s important to you.
And you know your good side and bad side, and you’re reconciling that and you’re dealing with it. You’re not trying to sweep these behaviors under the rug and hope that the next relationship saves you from your pain. It never will. It gets worse, I guarantee it. And then you need to reconnect with others.
And this is non romantically and this skip most men. This step, most men skip. Um, but it’s really, ultimately guys’ the most protective one. And so you need to rebuild your social, social infrastructure, uh, after divorce. ’cause there’s so many men that I’ve worked with that are so deeply lonely, they don’t have anyone to help pack up their homes.
They don’t have anyone to help them move. They don’t have anyone to invite them out fishing. They don’t have. Anybody to just go grab a beer with at the pub. They don’t have anyone to go work on their golf swing with. They have their, the scaffolding, their social infrastructure has completely been obliterated.
And so you need to think about this, not your next relationship. You need to think about your scaffolding, your social infrastructure, your male [00:16:00] friendships, the community groups you need to get involved in the sports, fitness, hobbies you need to. Start up again. Volunteering, mentors, coaches, traveling, learning something new.
You, you have this, um, opportunity, which is a new lease on life to rebuild who you wanna be at this point in your life. And if you miss this step, you miss some of the most fundamentally. Beautiful things that you can do for yourself as a human being. Maybe you need to be in a support group or circles of men that are walking the same path.
There is no one size fits all, um, strategy for building social infrastructure, but darn is it ever important because joy shared is joy doubled and sorrow shared as sorrow halved A beautiful quote to emphasize the importance of having people to share your life. And not just a romantic partner that you end up needing for all of your outlets in life.
And so when you rebuild your relational ecosystem, you stop treating women as your emotional lifeline. And when you [00:17:00] don’t need a woman to co-regulate with all the time, you don’t need her to respond to that text. You don’t need her to be available. You don’t need her to say the right thing or have the right tone or use the right emoji.
You don’t, you’re not relying on those little idiosyncrasies anymore. You are much more grounded, attractive, and discerning as a man, and then. And then you can reconnect with women from a healthy place, and you only wanna date when you’re not trying to fill a void. You feel steady without constant reassurance.
You’re clear on what the heck your standards are. You’re not chasing the highs and the dopamine of attention. You can really slow down and get to know somebody without feeling this pressure to rush it. To know what their relationship is, to think about marriage or think about locking them down or wanting them to move in right away, or doing things that are somewhat manipulative in an effort to get that because you feel so much pain and you’ll get into a position where you’re actually choosing connection [00:18:00] versus.
Escaping loneliness. And that’s where healthy attraction comes from. And it grows when you’re emotionally present, not emotionally deprived. And that’s hard because it takes effort and energy and time to become emotionally present. And many men have been taught to just suppress their feelings, sweep it under the wrong, just wrong, get on with it.
And that strategy is not working. It’s certainly not working today. So I wanna leave you with this. Because this is a heavy hearted episode, but I think it’s one that speaks a lot of truth for a lot of men that are gonna listen to this. And I wanna just reemphasize that feeling, this loneliness after divorce, it doesn’t make you unlovable.
It makes you a a human. It makes you a human. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be alone forever. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be alone forever. It means you have been deeply connected before and your nervous system remembers that feeling. So keep this as a takeaway from this video that the next connection, it starts with you.[00:19:00]
Not with chasing somebody new, not with rushing into a relationship. It starts with rebuilding yourself as the kind of man who chooses love from a position of strength, not from a position of emptiness. And trust me, that version of you is incredibly attractive. Even if you don’t know that version of you yet, or you’re not quite sure how that’s gonna land to other women, the more you.
Pour into yourself, um, the more it will attract people to you. So thank you very much for taking time to watch this episode. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. If you’re newly coming out of a divorce, let me know what your body is trying to tell you to do if you’ve been, if you’ve been through this.
Right. I have many clients that come to me before they start dating after, after a divorce, and I have many men come to me. After a divorce and after the first relationship that they entered into far too quickly and they self admit that they were in that relationship. [00:20:00] Sometimes days or weeks after the divorce, um, happened sometimes even before their ex-wives have moved out before they found new living arrangements, um, or coordinated schedules with kids.
And that is, you know, just a. Pretty clear example of moving on to something far too quickly so that you don’t have to feel the nervous system reset. That is really important to have happen. So love to hear your thoughts and comments below, and look forward to another episode next week. Ciao. I.
