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It’s a common problem I see happen again and again: divorced women of a certain age get out there in the dating world, looking for companionship, and find divorced men who want wife number two (or three, or four, or wherever they’re at). I have several relatives and friends who are divorced women, who have had to end relationships because they always reached that inevitable problem: the men they were seeing wanted to get hitched again, and these women simply did not. Unable to provide for these men the type of commitment they wanted, the women just had to end things. Women tend to be emotionally responsible like that and don’t lead people on. Men, can you take a page from our book in that regard, please? It’s interesting because, we often think of men as the ones who are commitment-averse, but in these situations, it’s the women. But, to be fair, they aren’t commitment-averse entirely. These women want some sort of commitment, but they just don’t want to do the whole marriage thing, again. While at first it may all seem surprising, if you take a closer look, you’ll actually find it makes a lot of sense that divorced men want to remarry, and divorced women often don’t.
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Men can be hermits
Men are often less social than women are. They may have a handful of men that they call friends, but they don’t make much of an effort to see them regularly. A lot of men only see their “best friend” a few times a year. What’s that about? They don’t plan ahead and make sure they’ll get to see these friends. They don’t put plans in the calendar, to ensure they’ll have friendship in their life. They can be kind of lonely when they don’t have wives.
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Women create the social calendar
Women are often the social coordinators within their marriages. They get the pleasure of pestering their partners to check their calendars to make social plans, all to make a plan that the partner ends up really enjoying. Women make sure the couple remains social, as a whole. They push their partners to go out and see friends. Without a wife, some men don’t have that self-motivation to be social and they become lonely.
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Men can be domestically helpless
Let’s be honest: a lot of men don’t know how to properly clean or cook or do their laundry. Their moms babied them. Maybe their ex-wives babied them. Maybe they just worked so much that the understanding was their partner would pick up some of the slack around the house. But now she’s gone. Truly, some men just feel like kids again when they’re divorced, in a bad way. They don’t know how to care for themselves.
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Men need an emotional confidante
Men tend to struggle to emotionally open up, and often only finally feel comfortable doing so with a romantic partner. A lot of men only completely become vulnerable with a wife, but never really with their male friends. So once that wife is gone, that can leave a man feeling totally emotionally constipated and looking for that confidante again.
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Men may lock it down, and forget it
It may sound pessimistic, but, unfortunately, it’s also true: a lot of men immediately neglect their wives the second they lock it down in marriage. They feel they can put a ring on it, and forget it (her). Once they feel for certain their wife isn’t going anywhere because of those vows, they feel free to take her for granted. And some men may not like doing all of the work that goes into dating. They want to get to that wife phase, where they can be lazy again.
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Some men may be repeating patterns
Ultimately, some men are hoping to repeat patterns. They didn’t learn from their divorce. They don’t think they lost their wives because they were bad husbands but rather because they had overly-demanding wives. So now they’re out there, once again looking for someone new who they can commit to and neglect. They want to return to their comfortable but unhealthy setup.
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They want a mommy
Sadly, a lot of men just don’t know how to function unless they have a woman in their life for whom, her husband is her whole life. Some men just need a woman who lives and breathes to be there for her husband, support her husband, and have no life outside of her husband. These are insecure men, but there are plenty of them. And they don’t feel they get that sort of devotion from just a girlfriend.
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Meanwhile, women are finally free
Now let’s look at divorced women who specifically don’t want to get remarried. While there are men out there looking for a mommy/wife, there are women doing all that they can to dodge that situation because they just got out of it. A lot of divorced women were with self-absorbed men who were too needy. Once they’re divorced, these women feel finally free! They don’t want to be anybody’s mommy again.
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Divorced women have a friend group
Divorced women have that social network. They have emotional support because they keep up their friends during marriage, and are generally better than men at cultivating close friendships. They have plenty of people in whom they can confide, even when they’re single. They really don’t need a man to do that. In fact, they may prefer to not be another man’s therapist.
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Divorced women want some selfish time
Understandably, some divorced women just want some selfish time. Women are often good at compromising and, perhaps, do more of it than their partners. A lot of women get divorced and realize that, for years, they mostly did what their partners wanted to do all of the time. They’re ready to not consider anybody else’s desires for a while. Marriage requires the type of compromise that, quite frankly, they’re tired of.
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Women want to opt in or out on company
Many of the divorced women I know who are dating someone but don’t want to get married are just enjoying the freedom to say, “I want to do my own thing this weekend.” They like that they can opt in and out of companionship as they see fit. They can be “busy” for a week and not see their boyfriend. That sort of freedom doesn’t really happen in a marriage.
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Men want guaranteed company
While women want guaranteed alone time, a lot of divorced men want guaranteed companionship. They dread being alone. They want to know for certain that there will be someone to have brunch with them or go on a hike with them or watch a movie with them. They don’t want to put in the effort to call friends and organize companionship. They want the built-in company a wife provides.
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Men can fear women will stray
Though we may think women have jealousy issues, I often find that, as people get older, the possessiveness shifts to the men. It’s often divorced men who fear being abandoned, more than divorced women. A lot of divorced men fear that, if they don’t’ make a woman their wife, she may grow tired of them and date someone else. Divorce has left them feeling insecure.
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Divorced women can feel more confident
Meanwhile, divorce has a way of empowering a lot of women. Some women who didn’t really see their value or realize how amazing they were during marriage finally recognize it all after marriage. They don’t fear a boyfriend will leave them. Or even if he does, they don’t feel they’ll be lost without a man. They feel stronger after divorce, and don’t need a crutch of a new husband.
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For many women, there was the one
I know it’s a blanket statement but, I think a lot of men like the idea of marriage as a concept, whereas women were particularly drawn to just marrying this one specific person. Women wanted to marry that one guy, whereas a lot of men just want a wife – and she can be interchangeable. A lot of women just didn’t see themselves committing forever to more than one person.
