Full disclosure: I am not now nor have I ever been a divorced man. This is largely because — despite emotionally identifying as a 44-year-old divorcée — I am an unmarried woman in my 20s. But while I may not know much about being a divorced man, I happen to know a thing or two about dating one. As someone who has dated my share of divorcés, I’m familiar with the anxieties and reservations you may have upon reentering the dating space — the online dating space in particular.

As a newly divorced man in the year 2021, dating apps might naturally be one of the first places you turn when it comes time to start dating again. Depending on your age and how long you’ve been out of the game, however, a post-divorce foray into online dating may well mark your first ever experience with dating apps. Even if you’re not a dating app virgin — yes, Tinder and its ilk have been around long enough that millennial marriages that began with a swipe in the early 2010s are now crumbling — you may find the ever-evolving dating-app landscape has changed significantly since your last right swipe. Quick update: Tinder is (practically) for teens now, and new dating apps catering to Gen Z are attempting to model themselves after TikTok. Naturally, a virtual TikTok-inspired Gen Z playground is probably not exactly the kind of environment in which you want to start the next chapter of your adult dating life as a grown-ass man, especially one who has recently gone through a divorce. 

“After a divorce, it can be difficult to find someone who shares life goals, core values and who is also in the same ‘life season’ as you,” says Jade Bianca, dating coach, matchmaker and founder of Dating After Divorce. Fortunately, the right dating apps — used the right way — can help mitigate those difficulties and assuage any anxieties you may have about reentering the dating market after a marriage-length hiatus. Below, Bianca shares her top picks for the best post-divorce dating apps, as well as expert tips for getting back into the online dating game (or entering it for the first time) as a divorced guy.

Bumble

For the uninitiated, Bumble is one of the earliest and most successful Tinder successors, and differentiates itself from the myriad other swipe-based dating apps that quickly flooded the market with its signature ladies-first model. On Bumble, women have to make the first move, and must message their matches within 24 hours, or the match expires. 

While the female-founded app was presumably designed with women’s best interests in mind — namely, sparing them an endless deluge of messages from the many creepy dudes that walk the internet — this model presents some significant benefits for male users as well. While sitting around waiting for a woman to message you may not seem ideal, especially for an old-school guy who likes to make the first move, it could actually save you a lot of time and wasted energy. Frankly, the odds are stacked against men on dating apps, and it’s not uncommon on other apps for frustrated men to resort to rapid-fire right swiping and throwing countless unreturned messages into the void. On Bumble, men can sit back (and/or go about their regularly scheduled lives) while the ladies come to them, thus saving them the time that might have been wasted messaging women who simply aren’t interested. So if you’re an adult man with a busy life who doesn’t relish the idea of spending countless hours of that life swiping and messaging into oblivion, Bumble might be worth a shot.