Should You Date While You’re Still Married?
No! It’s not enough that a man is single, sexy and solvent (the three S’s!) and looking for a relationship – wanting a relationship is very different from being truly ready and available for one. If he’s not legally ‘free’ then your relationship is likely to be a more complex and difficult journey. Of course, it’s easy to talk about standards and boundaries in dating but it’s harder to put them into practice.
Before I found my forever man, I dipped in and out of various dating apps, and I felt very smug as I set my ‘filters’. Merely ‘separated’ – pah! Not for me, swipe left! I wanted a man with oodles of energy and time for me… and yet I ended up dating a friend-of-a-friend who would not have made it through my strict filters.
I recall someone admonishing me when this relationship ended in snotty tears, “the trouble is Naomi, you dated this guy based on faulty data”. Looking back, I could have gathered the most important data of all with the simple magical question: Are you divorced yet? Bowled over by his chiselled jaw and charming overtures I forgot to check this crucial detail.
It’s easy to imagine we know how available a man is based on their attitude to their last significant relationship, but we tend to avoid drilling down deeper. Why? Perhaps a British reticence to ask personal questions to someone we barely know. Or maybe it’s an instinctive yet often incorrect assumption that the friendly smiling coffee quaffer or cocktail buddy opposite is at the same point in their journey as ourselves.
“Set yourself up for success” say the life coaches, and I unapologetically and clearly knew I wanted to enjoy creating a juicy lasting soulmate love secured by marriage.
Asking a potential partner if they were still married should really have been my first question, possibly even before I told them I wanted the rhubarb rum.
