Description: After a divorce, a lot of men find themselves standing in a quiet house on a Tuesday night with nobody to call and no idea how that happened. This video is about why your social life shrank after the split, why it wasn’t your fault, and why the thing most men reach for to fix it actually makes it harder. We get into the quiet mechanics of how it happens: how one person in a marriage usually becomes the social organizer, why friends drift after a separation, and why reaching out starts to feel so awkward when you’ve been out of practice for years. Then we get honest about dating: how it soothes the loneliness so well that it hides the real problem underneath, and what it costs you when you choose a partner from an empty life instead of a full one. You’ll walk away with one honest question to ask yourself before you open the apps again, and a simple, doable way to rebuild a social life that actually holds you up, so that when you do date, you’re choosing from a place of balance instead of quietly drowning. If you’ve felt more alone since the split than you expected to, this one’s for you.
Links and Free Resources:
1. Free Guide: “Why You’re Not Finding Love (And The Inner Shift that Changes Everything)” → https://datingcoach.kimberlyninahill.com/findinglove/
2. Dating After Divorce? Get The Relationship You Want with Dating Mastery for Men → https://datingcoach.kimberlyninahill.com/dating-mastery-for-men/
3. Audio Masterclass: Relax and Enjoy Conversations With Women Here → https://kimberlyhill548.lpages.co/10tipsmasterclass/
It’s a Tuesday night. The kids are at your ex’s this week. You finished your dinner. You’re throwing your takeaway containers in the garbage, or maybe you’re standing in front of the sink washing your dishes, and you notice that it’s really, really quiet And so you think, “Well, maybe I should make a plan this evening.
Maybe I should reach out to somebody.” And then you realize, “I don’t really have anybody to reach out to or text tonight.” And it’s not because you don’t have friends, you do, but somewhere along the way, you stop being the one that reaches out to them, and now the night is just yours alone, and there’s nothing really in it for you.
So you do what many single divorced men do. You reach for your phone. You open up a dating app. You start browsing and swiping around, and just like [00:01:00] that, the quiet evening becomes just a little bit easier to sit in and tolerate. There’s maybe something to do for a few moments, maybe even someone to match with and talk to.
Now, I get it, but that reach for the phone, this is the mistake I wanna talk about, and I’m gonna show you why. Now, if this intro to my video has landed for you just a little bit, even once since your divorce, the end of your long-term relationship, I want you to stick with me, because this feeling has a real cause.
This is not a character flaw, and most men try to fix it with the one thing that will actually make it worse. Now, welcome to this channel. My name is Kimberly Hill. I’m a dating and relationship coach for men. I support good-hearted men to attract deeply loving relationships and go on to maintain those relationships.
But really, the kicker here is that I’m wanting to [00:02:00] help men attract quality relationships, not just any relationship. And I’ve told many of the clients that I’ve worked with over the years that one of the things I do more often than I thought I would do as a dating coach is help men navigate away from the wrong matches so they can focus their time and energy on relationships that are going to serve them.
Now, if you’re new here to this channel and you’re thinking, “Okay, I’d like somewhere to start,” um, I’ve put together a free guide called Why You’re Not Finding Love. It’s nine chapters. It’s direct. It will be sent right to your inbox. If you’re wondering why you’re struggling in dating or the same patterns keep showing up no matter how hard you try, it’s gonna show you exactly why, and the link to sign up and grab that is in the YouTube description, and it’s free, so please check it out.
Now, if you’ve been watching this channel for a while, maybe even a few years, maybe you’ve been listening to the podcast before it was put on YouTube, and you’re just past the point of watching YouTube videos and, uh, you know, listening to it, and you actually wanna [00:03:00] do the work- Dating Mastery for Men is my self-paced program that is built specifically for men that are navigating dating after the end of a long-term relationship.
It’s gonna go places this channel will not go, and it is structured to take you from insight to real change. So it walks you through the application too. You’re gonna find clarity on some of the most frustrating aspects of dating and know exactly what to do about it, all while feeling better about yourself in the process.
And the entire goal of Dating Mastery for Men is to help you attract a healthy, loving relationship. Now, if you wanna read more about that, the link to do so is in the description of this YouTube video. But let’s get into today’s content. So why does this happen? Why do you have quiet evenings and go reach for your phone to scroll through a dating app?
Because I think if you understand the why a little more clearly, you might stop beating yourself up about it. Now, in most long [00:04:00] marriages, one person quietly becomes the one who runs the social life, makes the plans, remembers whose birthday it is, keeps up with the other couples, sends the texts, books the dinners, and a lot of the time, women tend to be the social coordinators in a relationship.
Now, not all the time, but they tend to be, which is why many men end up in situations post-divorce or relationship where they go, “I feel like I’ve lost my social life.” So it’s not that you weren’t good friends to those people too, you were, and you weren’t doing anything wrong. You just weren’t the one initiating a lot of the social activity.
So when the relationship ends, the plans go with it. The whole calendar almost gets up, grows legs, and walks out the door. So a lot of men find themselves feeling very lonely and isolated post a long-term relationship or a divorce. You’re not alone in [00:05:00] that. You feel alone, but you’re not alone in that phenomena.
Now, here’s the second thing, and this one stings a little bit. People do pick sides, and usually it’s not out of cruelty, it’s just easier for- friends to pick a side. They knew you as a couple. Choosing is uncomfortable, so a lot of friends that, or couple friends that you might have had while you were in your relationship just drift a little bit, and it’s not that you lost those friends because of anything you did, you just lost them to the path of least resistance.
And then the part nobody warns you about. You might still have friends, good ones, but because you may have gotten into the habit of not really reaching out anymore, you didn’t need one, right? You didn’t really need a good reason, because for 20 years, your social life kinda happened around you. So now when you actually do [00:06:00] it, you pick up your phone to text a friend or to suggest something, there’s a lot of stiffness and awkwardness that happens.
I hear a lot of men say, like, “Oh, I… It’s been a long time since I’ve reached out to them directly. I don’t know what to say. Like, I know they’re busy with their lives and their kids,” and it just feels really awkward, like you’re imposing on these people. And you’re not broken. It’s just that that muscle, that social initiation muscle, goes to sleep in a lot of long-term relationships, and you probably haven’t flexed those muscles in a very long time.
Now- I wanna kind of give you just a version of how this happened in my own life. Now, it wasn’t a divorce, but when I first got into a serious relationship, I did the same thing that many people do, okay? We get so wrapped up in the new relationship, we kind of let our social life fall to the wayside, and I stopped inviting my friends out, and I also started saying no to some of their [00:07:00] invitations because, you know, I wanted to spend time with my partner, my boyfriend, and do whatever, whatever.
And it wasn’t all on purpose, and it wasn’t all at once. I just quietly let it slide because I had someone at home, and it felt a lot easier, and that’s what I felt I needed to prioritize spending my time on. I needed to l- allow the relationship to grow. But then a little while later, I noticed I was feeling a little left out.
Some of the invites from my friends weren’t coming. I would see photos of them out having a good time, and I actually said to one of my really good friends that I’ve been feeling a little excluded. And this was the best call I’ve ever had from a friend in my life. She was kind about it, but she was very direct and honest with me.
She said, “Look, Kimberly, ever since you’ve got in this relationship, you’ve said no to multiple invites. You’ve stopped actually coordinating anything yourself, and so we just stopped inviting you because we made the assumption, um, because there was a pattern of behavior there that you just weren’t gonna come anyways.”
And that stopped me [00:08:00] in my tracks. L- firstly, I loved the honesty, although it was very jarring in the moment, because she was right, and it was a really good reality check. And I’d let the whole thing become something that happened to me instead of something I took part in, and the fix wasn’t to wait for a better invitation.
It was to get back to being the coordinator of my own social life, taking control of that. And so when I tell you that this muscle goes to sleep, I do know it firsthand, and this is a common thing that happens with a lot of people when they get into new relationships. Their social life right from the get-go starts to suffer a little bit.
Now, if your w- ex-wife really was the social coordinator, you may not have initiated something social in 10, 20, maybe even longer years. And here’s the thing, it wakes back up the moment you decide to be the one who sends that text. While it can feel vulnerable, it’s really important to do that, and here’s why this matters, guys.
This is why I’m spending a whole video on this, [00:09:00] because being alone that much- After a divorce, those quiet nights that you know all too well, they don’t actually leave your head very clear. It can warp, distort, or bend how you are seeing your life, how you are seeing your social life, how you are seeing things.
It makes small things feel a lot bigger, and it can actually make you hungrier for a romantic connection than you even might be otherwise. And that right there is exactly when dating starts to look like the answer to you. And this is a trap for a lot of guys, and I’ve had a lot of men in this position where I ask them, “What are you doing with your life?”
And outside of work and the gym and dating, not much is going on. Their hobbies have fallen to the wayside. You know, they don’t have a regular activity in their calendar. They’re not meeting anybody new, and then they tell me they’re struggling with dating. Well, let’s talk about this trap because here’s the tricky part.
Dating [00:10:00] will make, okay, some of those lonely feelings go away. You match with a woman, maybe you start texting throughout the day. Maybe you do have a Friday plan on your calendar for the first time in a few months, and it works. You start to feel better. I’m not gonna pretend that it doesn’t help or at least give you the illusion that, okay, my calendar’s a little more full, I have things going on, but this is why it is a Band-Aid.
What is really happening is you’re covering the feeling of loneliness so well that you stop noticing your life is actually pretty empty underneath the dating activity, that the wound is still there. You just can’t feel it for a little while, and here is what this costs you. When you date from an empty life, a life that is empty because you are needing to rebuild after a divorce, not because you’re broken, because that’s the position [00:11:00] that men find themselves in.
What happens is when you start dating too early or from a place of loneliness, you hand this new date, this woman in your life, your whole world, all of it. You hand her almost every bit of your social life, your Friday nights, your sense of having somewhere to belong. You put it all on this new woman that maybe you met three weeks ago, and now this is an enormous amount of weight to put on a brand new connection, guys.
It Naturally makes you over-invest and cling. Now not, I know a lot of you guys will know this feeling because you’ve probably done this and been there, and it makes you put up with BS, okay, that you know you shouldn’t put up with because you think, “Well, the alternative is another Tuesday night with me standing in front of my dishes,” and that feels depressing to you.
But if you’re really honest with yourself, that pattern, pouring your whole self into [00:12:00] one person and letting everything else in your life go quiet, if you really reflect on it, that might be part of what hollowed out your last relationship as well. So as a dating coach who’s ultimately telling you to slow down dating in this video, I want you to really consider before you open the apps, ask yourself an honest question, and this is a question just for you.
Nobody else needs to hear your answer. Are you looking for a partner, or are you trying to fill up an empty week? Because those two are completely different problems, and only one of them is actually solved by dating. Now, if what you really want is a life that feels a little more full and exciting and you’re missing connection, and you don’t have anywhere to be on a Tuesday night or a Friday or a Saturday, dating isn’t the right tool yet.
You’ll pick the wrong person with it, I guarantee it, because I’ve been doing this now for many, many years, [00:13:00] and one of the no-fail patterns I see for men that are dating again after divorce is one of two things. They go from the divorce into a new relationship very quickly, almost not even skipping a beat, and what happens is it’s so intense, the new feelings for this woman, because you’re coming out of a relationship that was emotionally painful, that that relationship feels like it’s saving you until it explodes in your face and causes you more emotional pain.
So I see that happen time and time again. And then less often, I see men hire a dating coach and say, “Okay, I’m coming out of a divorce, and I wanna do some healing and kinda figure out the right pathway to get back to healthy dating again.” And that often starts with working on a social life. But many men, probably 80% of the men I’ve worked with, have had that one intense relationship very quickly after a divorce because you’re not, your nervous system is not used to a quiet Tuesday night.
You’re used to [00:14:00] the chaos and, and the routine and all the things that go on when you have a marriage and kids in the one home. And I just wanna be clear about why this matters, uh, because rebuilding your own life first, guys, is actually you saying, “I respect myself.” And I’m gonna respect the next woman that I date because I don’t wanna walk into a new woman’s life and quietly inadvertently make her responsible for filling a hole in mine.
I already… I wanna walk into a new relationship feeling a lot more whole. I wanna already have things going on. And that’s a very different man to start dating than a man who is still dealing with the emotional turmoil of the divorce, even though he’s convinced himself that he was over it many years ago.
A lot of us say that. Well, I knew the divorce was over seven [00:15:00] to 10 years before it ended, but it didn’t physically end till three months ago, which means your body hasn’t had time, your nervous system hasn’t had time to adjust to a new life yet. So I say this because I think this is actually incredibly important video to listen to.
This is not about changing your outfit so you can attract more woman, women faster. It’s about saying, “Where am I honestly at in my life? What do I really need to prioritize?” Why? So that, so that you can have the healthy relationship that you desire when you are ready for it. So here’s what to actually do about this Start with the friends that were already yours, not just the couple friends that you met in your marriage, but the ones who were yours before the marriage, the old ones.
They’re usually still there, and believe it or not, those people are usually really glad to hear from you. Because one of the things that we all are experiencing in today’s world is a, a, a big [00:16:00] loneliness epidemic. You know, we connect a lot through social media and a lot less in person. Believe it or not, those people you haven’t even spoken to in 15 years, it might be incredibly refreshing for them to hear from you.
Lost connections can be rekindled. It just takes a little courage and vulnerability to do that. But then I want you to go easy on the reaching out muscle, right? We’re not gonna text every single person that we’ve met or start Facebook messaging every single person. You don’t need to become a social butterfly overnight.
Just focus on maybe one connection a week. That’s it. That’s your whole assignment. I just want you to start using that muscle again so it stops feeling so foreign and strange to you, because that’s going to help create some social repetition in your life, and that is actually gonna change everything. Um, having a event every Thursday night where you can meet new people, whether that’s a league, a regular class, a regular pub you go to, a regular [00:17:00] anything, that rhythm is gonna carry you forward, and it’s also gonna help expedite the healing that you probably still have to go through.
And you don’t have to work up the nerve every single time you go somewhere. It’s just on your calendar repeating, and you just go and you show up. That’s how you’re gonna rebuild a life that holds you up without, you know, white-knuckling it through these, you know, lonely Tuesday evenings and then scrolling through Bumble or Hinge or Match.com.
And then you guys start dating, and it’s not so that you can be rescued from that empty Tuesday night. It’s just one more good thing you’re adding to a life that already is starting to gather some momentum and some satisfaction. That’s the shift, guys, right? You settle your life a little bit first. You get your feet back under you, and then you’re gonna choose women from a place of balance, not from a place of quietly drowning.
And that is how you end up with [00:18:00] the right woman instead of The most available or the nearest one. Okay? Now, before I go, I really hope that this video has landed for some of you today. It is more of a sensitive topic to talk about. You know, a lot of people don’t want to admit that their life feels like it’s being reset, or you’re in a completely, you know, new chapter of your life, and the story hasn’t been written.
It can feel very, very vulnerable, and you can feel really out of place, but you’re not alone in this. That’s what a lot of people are experiencing after the end of a long-term relationship and routine, and it’s really important that you put yourself first before you start dating. Now, if something has landed for you today, or you know a guy that needs to see this video, please send it to him.
And of course, start with my free guide, Why You’re Not Finding Love, and of course, if you’re ready to dive in deeper, please check out Dating Mastery For Men, but I’ll see you guys all next week. Ciao.
