My First Date After Divorce

“I blacked out and resuscitated myself a dozen times on the cab ride to dinner.”

Hello! How is your week going? Want to have some girl talk? So…

After my marriage ended, I took a year off dating/sex/thinking about guys in any way. Life — with parenting, work, mediation, settling into my new normal — already felt like enough to tackle.

By this February, however, I felt like I’d caught my breath and was curious about dating apps and where they might lead.

So, one evening, I signed up for an app, chose a few photos, and wrote short answers to various prompts (like, “fun fact about me…” or “my simple pleasures…”). While scrolling, I saw a lot of different characters — it’s wild out there! Some nice guys reached out (I was pleasantly surprised by how warm everyone seemed), and I chatted with a few of them. It all felt like a fun diversion.

Then I got a message from a very handsome guy who, get this, you guys, has read Cup of Jo for years. (Our readership is 20% male, so it’s not that surprising, but I’m always a little surprised!) He told me that he’d enjoyed movies and books we’d written about and shared a bit about himself, and we ended up chatting over text for a couple weeks, and it was really fun, and yada yada yada we finally made dinner plans.

Like any sensible person, in the days leading up to our date, I tried on a bunch of outfits and texted snapshots to my friends. We landed on this look: