In this episode, I’ll be sharing insights into a common problem faced by divorced men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s: feeling disconnected from their inner spark and erotic identity. We’ll discuss how routine, stress, and emotional disconnection during long-term marriages can shut down one’s erotic system. More importantly, I’ll guide you through methods to reawaken your internal erotic energy, reclaim your confidence, and build a life that naturally attracts excitement and chemistry.
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:
Most men won’t talk about this, but it’s one of the most common things that I hear from divorced men in their forties, fifties, and sixties in particular. And they admit to me, they say, Kimberly, I’m not really feeling a lot of spark with women on dates, or I don’t find myself attracted to women very often.
And maybe they even say to me sometimes, like, I don’t really know if I still have it. Or they might use different language, like, I’m not really sure how to flirt with women these days. And if that’s you, if that sounds a little bit like you, you’re not alone. You know, if you’re dating again after a long marriage, long marriage is in particular.
And stress and responsibility and routine and emotional disconnection all will reshape your erotic system. And today I wanna normalize why this is happening, and more importantly, I wanna show you how you can rekindle a sexual spark in yourself, not [00:01:00] just with a partner, because sexual chemistry isn’t something that you find.
With the right woman on the right date, under the right conditions, it’s actually something that you are responsible for. It’s something that you reawaken from within. Now, if you’re brand new to this channel, welcome aboard. You know, buckle up because we talk all things life, dating and navigating relationships.
And particularly my audience is men that are dating again after a divorce or a separation or coming out of a long-term relationship, or at least a significantly charged relationship. And they’re, you know, thrust back into the dating world, but they’re a different person and dating has changed. So welcome aboard if that intrigues you.
Stick around ’cause that’s what we talk about here on this channel. Uh, and of course I’m a dating and relationship coach for men. That’s why I talk about this stuff. I support, um, men to attract and find deeply loving relationships. Now, I wanna zoom out for a minute because when it comes to long-term relationships [00:02:00] or long marriages, attraction almost always shifts.
And it doesn’t shift because you did something wrong, and it’s not because she did something wrong. It’s because eroticism and routine of life are natural. Enemies. Now, Esther Perel talks a lot about this. She talks about how desire lives in space. It lives in mystery. It lives in anticipation, in novelty and sovereignty and in your imagination.
But marriage, well, marriage often lives in predictability and routine and a heck of a lot of responsibility, and in a lot of instances, a lot of monotony or sameness. So for most men, you know, in your marriage, you’re focused on providing or supporting your family. You’re managing logistics, you’re holding the emotional weight of everything going on.
You’re [00:03:00] surviving the stress of life and a marriage, you’re probably dealing with conflict. And let me wager a guess, I’m a betting woman, right? You’re probably not getting your needs met. And what that does is it shuts down your internal erotic system. Naturally, those things aren’t sexy. And then let’s sprinkle into this recipe, a little bit of that unresolved resentment that you have.
Maybe you have a little bit of lower self-worth. You’re feeling quite unnoticed, underappreciated, right? And of course, you don’t know how to ask for what you want because. You’re told that’s either weak or vulnerable or you don’t wanna be overbearing, or you just don’t have the words of the language, and maybe you even have some sexual mismatches in your relationship that you kind of just thought, nah, these are normal things.
So what happens is you’ve lost your erotic identity, and not only does the chemistry fade then with your partner. You [00:04:00] just stop feeling sexual within yourself because it is not uncommon for me to hear from men that I work with, that the last 10 years of their marriage were sexless. And you know, you just stop feeling like an erotic being when you haven’t had that awoken in you in a long time.
And here’s the key, when you as a man feel disconnected from your own internal erotic identity. You’ll feel little to no chemistry with any woman, even new women that you’re excited to get out and date. And this is why men very often say things to me, they go like, I went on a great date with her. She’s really beautiful, but.
I didn’t feel the spark. And that’s because your erotic system needs some serious super recharging, not just a different woman or a more attractive woman or the right kind of environment, or a better date or a better match on Hinge or match.com, right? So when you think about how, what you really go through in divorce, you know, the neatest way of [00:05:00] kind of saying this is, it’s, it’s.
In one on one hand, it’s a rupture of your life, complete rupture of your life, and on the other hand, it’s a total reset of everything, reset of your identity. You’re not a married man, you’re now a single man. You might not be living in the family home. You might be out on in an apartment and rebuilding your life, so it’s a total rupture of your life.
It’s also a total reset of your. And of course most men, and you’ll probably nod along with this, is that you’ll leave those marriages feeling pretty darn shut down, pretty disconnected from your own body, maybe even afraid to initiate with new women. You don’t wanna approach ’em, you don’t wanna seem creepy or weird or needy or vulgar.
Um, you’re really uncertain maybe about your attractiveness. And that’s probably been confounded by the fact that you haven’t really had intimacy in the last 10 years of your marriage. You haven’t really had much of that. Validation from your partner, and you probably were very loyal, so you didn’t go seek it outside of that, so you’re not really sure, hey, do I still have it?
Am I still attractive? And maybe that means you’re also lacking in confidence [00:06:00] and I’m gonna guess you’re pretty terrified of rejection because you know it. You’re walking a fine line there with your own self-esteem. And that’s probably also because nobody really teaches. Men or women to maintain their ERO erotic identity, independent of a relationship, right?
So in marriage, your sexuality is ultimately fused with the routine you have, the obligations you have, the the stress, you have the familiarity that’s going on, the emotional responsibility you’re carrying in that relationship. And so after divorce, you’re just suddenly in this new world where chemistry is just supposed to feel really exciting again.
But your system is still operating in complete survival mode and your nervous system, which is literally trying to keep you safe and small and predictable and controlled. Um, while your erotic energy is the complete opposite of all of those things, which is why I hear. Men say, I don’t really [00:07:00] feel very confident after a divorce, or I don’t know how to flirt with women.
It’s been a really long time. Um, I also really don’t know how to read the signs of whether or not a woman is into me. I just haven’t felt wanted in years. Well, yes, of course you haven’t. Your erotic system is probably very, very dormant, but it’s not broken. It’s like a bear gone into hibernation for a little bit too long, took way too many sleeping pills.
Okay, so the silver lining, or the beautiful part here is that. What’s dormant can be reawakened, and that’s what I wanna talk about here because most of us think that chemistry is purely a physical thing. It’s not. Chemistry is a psycho physiological response, and it’s created by a couple of different things that I want you to pay close attention to.
The first is your own erotic identity. How in touch are you with your own desire? With your own [00:08:00] playfulness, with your own confidence, with your own imagination, with that polarity, how in touch are you with all those elements? Secondly, what’s going on with your nervous system? Have you felt safe or regulated or present enough in your life recently or in the last five to 10 years to even experience the kind of arousal you want?
And thirdly, what’s happening with the embodied masculinity. I’m not talking alpha shit or macho behavior. I’m talking grounded, steady, intentional, masculine energy that you are aware of that women feel. So when these elements are offline, when you, when you are not in touch with your own desire or playfulness, when you’re not feeling safe or regulated or present in your own body and you don’t know how to be gr grounded man.
Well, then you’re tense. You’re self-conscious, you’re overly analytical, [00:09:00] you’re timid, you’re apologetic to women, you’re hesitant, and you’re emotionally shut down because that’s what you think you need to do to stay safe. And that’s where chemistry dies. So women won’t feel magnetized by that. You don’t feel magnetized by that, and you probably just don’t feel anything in yourself either.
Like maybe. Some of you might describe it as like a pretty shut down in my body. I’m pretty numb, pretty disassociated. This is the part that nobody really explains to people is that you just can’t feel great chemistry with women, especially when you’re out there dating. You can’t feel great spark and great chemistry with women.
Until you can feel that erotic aliveness within yourself. And no, when I say you need to figure out how to discover this independent of a relationship, I’m not just saying, go watch some porn or go hook up with women, or, you know, measure your sexual performance against other people. That’s not what I’m saying here.
What I am saying is, how [00:10:00] alive do you feel in your own body, your energy, your confidence, your presence? Okay. This is where you rebuild your internal erotic identity so that chemistry becomes natural. You’ll have chemistry with everybody, right? So the first step to reawaken this guys, especially if you’re newly out of divorce.
I guarantee you your erotic identity is not in full swing. You probably feel very shut down. And it happened through death by a thousand cuts, right through the, the, the times you didn’t feel appreciated, the time you didn’t ask for what you needed, the distance you had, the, the choice you made to just.
Not advocate for whatever it was you wanted, the, the empathy you had for your partner. So you just didn’t initiate anymore. You just shut yourself down over time. So what you need to do is reawaken your body. You need to reconnect with your body, and that starts this chemistry that you’re after, the spark that you wanna have with women, this natural playfulness and flirtation that chemistry.
It starts [00:11:00] somatically, not mentally. So what can you do? You might be asking, well, how do I start reconnecting with my body? Well work out and do it slow. Do it intentional. Feel what you’re feeling throughout your body. Start having awareness of the physical sensation of your own body. Maybe you achieve that through breath work.
Through slowing down through deep breathing exercises. Maybe it’s through cold exposure. Maybe that’s what works for you. Maybe it’s just getting on the floor and stretching and just being like, wow, I didn’t realize how fricking stiff I am here as part of my body. It’s like that part of your body’s probably pretty shut down, right?
So maybe it’s just stretching you need to do. Maybe it’s just kind of like feeling your own body, massaging your own forearms. Rubbing your own thighs and your legs and just like awakening parts of you just seeing what are the sensations? This is somatic awareness. Like what is your body feeling? Where are you tense?
Where are you tight? Where does, where do you touch [00:12:00] your own body? And this isn’t sexually. Where do you touch your own body and just feel nothing, feel numbness because you need to feel in your body again. You need to feel in your body again. So start with. Physical sensation and somatic awareness, and then you can start to rebuild your erotic imagination because long marriages, they, they kill your erotic creativity, and so you can reawaken it by exploring what makes you fricking feel alive in this world.
What do you actually find sexy or erotic? Where are moments in your life where as a man you felt really powerful, really desired, really masculine, and also what was going on in your life at the time, and what are the dynamics of. Sexuality and eroticism that actually excites you because it begins with your imagination.
It does not begin with sex. It begins with your body and your imagination, and this is gonna [00:13:00] lead you to be able to start restoring your own self-worth. You guys need a new belief. You need to think a new way about yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re 50, 60, 70, it doesn’t matter. You need to be telling yourself.
That I am a man, women desire. I am a man that women desire, and it’s not because you are so great at performing, it’s because you are a man that has presence and depth and intentionality and energy. So I’m gonna ask you to maybe pause this video for a second, grab a pen and paper, or grab your notes on your phone.
And I want you to write down 10 soundproof reasons why a woman would desire you specifically. You need to restore your own sexual self-worth by believing you’re a man that women desire. Then you can start practicing flirtation as play [00:14:00] versus performance. And I have quite a few other YouTube videos where I talk about techniques on flirtation.
But the problem is if you go watch that video without getting in touch with your imagination and your body, it’s all performative. Flirtation and usually performative flirtation falls flat because chemistry, of course, is rooted in feeling what you feel, believing that you’re desirable. Then you can make great eye contact, you can tease, you can do the light touching, you can do the pacing.
You can do the tension and the curiosity and hold the space. All the things I talk about in those other videos, because now your nervous system is actually attuned. These aren’t just memorized pickup lines and you’re trying to perform confidence. You literally are in touch with your body and your masculinity, and you have a pep for life and you feel desirable.
And when you believe that you’re desirable, you know you [00:15:00] become desirable. And that’s what actually is probably the most fundamental precursor for being able to flirt with. Some depth and some actual success. And of course it goes without saying. I talk about this a lot. You better be creating a life that you feel desirable in.
No woman is attracted to men who don’t feel desirable, right? They’re drawn to men who feel sexy within themselves. Maybe it’s just confident in yourself or desirable in yourself. Maybe you don’t like the word sexy, but they’re drawn to men who feel like, yeah, I am worth being desired. And maybe that means for you that you need to dress better.
Maybe you just need to put on some clothes that you feel better in. Maybe you need to just groom yourself or get haircuts more often, or, you know, just like, you know, trim up your body so you feel. Tight and clean. Maybe you [00:16:00] need to take up more space socially. You need to get out more. You need to, um, you know, just ask for the nice table at the restaurant.
You gotta get used to not being afraid to take up some damn space because you’re a desirable man and you deserve to be on this planet, and you better take up some room and let people know that. Not boastfully, but in your, in your body, right? Because when we’re feeling really insecure, we, we really make ourselves small.
So this is your chance to just broaden that chest guys and just take up some damn space. Maybe you need to figure out what you wanna do to fill your time. Maybe you’re retired and you’re not really doing a whole lot, but sitting around in your house and waiting for the NE Next Netflix show to come out.
Maybe you need to pursue some hobbies. Get into something where I would, I would imagine you wanna get into something where you’re using your darn hands, right? Where you’re, you’re making something, you’re moving around, you’re pursuing a hobby that makes you feel alive, where you get lost in what’s called the flow of the moment, where you lose track of time.
Maybe you need some purpose in your life. Maybe you need [00:17:00] some more self care in your life, or some better friendships or creative pursuits, or you just need to tidy the house around you. Because there’s a lot of men that I work with that are. Wanting to date that have gone through a divorce. Their entire environment has changed, but they got clothes all over.
They got dishes in the sink. Like women don’t, don’t feel sexy in those spaces. You don’t feel sexy in those spaces. You gotta make. Your home conducive for the things you want to attract into your life. Maybe you need to get on a plane and travel and awaken your mind to the possibilities of the world. Go somewhere where you can smell the different smells and see the different sight, and feel the warm sun on your skin.
Get out and have some experiences because your life. Needs to excite you. Your life needs to turn you on if you have any chance of turning anybody else on, and then you can begin to rebuild polarity. And that polarity is [00:18:00] that you now have direction and presence and intention in your life, that you’re building confidence through passionate pursuits.
You have this emotional steadiness because you’ve, you’ve told yourself you’re desirable and you’re embodying the characteristics and traits that make it so. And then you can practice being a man who leads where you choose the date and you lead decisions, and you take initiative and you speak your damn preferences because you’re not afraid that a woman’s gonna be like, oh wow, you have a need.
Wow, you’re so needy. She’s not gonna say that. She’s either gonna learn to respect you, or she’s gonna be outta your life pretty quickly. Then you’re gonna have the confidence to hold eye contact to slow down your movements. And when women ask you questions on dates, you won’t anxiously hurry your response.
You’ll take a moment, you’ll think about your answer. And then you will deliberately respond and women feel that confident energy coming from within. [00:19:00] And it’s not fake confidence. It’s true confidence because you have built a life that you feel desirable in because sexual chemistry, feeling that spark, it’s not just luck.
It’s not, oh, I gotta find the next woman that reawakens this in me. And look, sometimes women do, some women will set a fire under your butt where you go, holy, I have been asleep for a long time. Because sexual chemistry isn’t that luck. Right? It’s, it’s not something other men have that you don’t. It is your internal system that was probably shut down by years of routine and stress and resentment and unmet needs and emotional disconnection.
And the moment you begin to reconnect with your own body, your erotic imagination, your confidence, your masculine presence, your desire, and your playfulness, you’ll begin to feel sexual chemistry. With everybody, with yourself, and particularly with the women you [00:20:00] date, and you’re gonna have a lot more choice and a lot more moments where you go, wow, I’m feeling a lot of spark with a lot of people right now.
And that’s when dating after divorce becomes fundamentally exciting again. So. If this resonated, if you’re going, you know what? Maybe I’ve been rushing the feelings that I crave and I’m looking for them to be created externally by a woman, you’re going about it the wrong way. You gotta create a life that you’re excited about yourself, a life that you feel desirable in, and then that attracts women to you.
You actually have to do less of the dating and finding of the women. When you’re living a life that naturally attracts ’em to you, and this is the work I do. So if you feel called to explore this, to have a conversation about this, you are welcome to book a complimentary call. With me to see if I am the right person to help you on this journey.
If not, that is okay. It’s always about finding the right fit for the support you [00:21:00] need in your life. Um, but that is exactly what I do and I’d love to help you get there. Now, if this just awoke something in you and that was enough, this, this video to just kind of like make you go shit, yeah, I’m gonna go do that thing or start this project, then great.
I hope this can serve as an inspiration in and of itself and, uh, I hope you guys are having an amazing day. And look forward to another video for you all next week. Cia.
