Dating After Divorce Wasn't What They Said It'd Be — Gloria

Eventually, my devotion to my work proved incompatible with my marriage. Like Gretchen, I had the financial security to strike out on my own and start a new life. But that did little to dull the heartbreak of the split. I came to feel that ambition and motherhood were no more compatible in the second decade of the 21st century than they’d been in t

... See more

Even ignoring the “natural” outcome misalignment that might happen when dating: some people are looking for marriage and kids, others for casual dating, others for a quick hook-up — misalignment on dating apps tends to be a lot more egregious.

After twenty years of mostly taking care of my daughter’s and husband’s needs first, I had no idea what I wanted. If you put yourself last, you can’t even see yourself anymore! So I took my time, getting to know myself again, trying things out, and asking myself, do I like this? Do I want more of this? Or less?

To exist on a dating app is to be constantly inundated by the pressure to meet up, regardless of your readiness. And for women, that pressure is reinforced by existing in a world that hates them for being single.

“We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, i... See more

I used to take the success of arranged marriages as evidence that (initial) attraction wasn’t required for a good marriage until a friend of mine pointed out that parents typically have a decent read on who their kids are attracted to, which now I feel silly about not having seen

BW: We’ll say “in his private life he is taken. In business, he’s on the dating apps.”

PD: Open marriage.