This is an awesome attitude, and if you truly feel this way, you are way ahead of most new-to-dating post-divorce folks (me included at the time). No better motto than "I'd rather be alone than wishing I were alone".


Maybe it's a terminology issue, but I would tend to postpone engagement and marriage until after dating, not the other way around. "Dating" (the way I define it) is a process of getting to know the other person really REALLY well, over a long period of time, to assess compatibility under many circumstances. Starting relationships after a first or second meeting (i.e. going steady) tends to put the cart ahead of the horse - exclusivity implies a "commitment" of sorts, and why would you want to have that with someone you hardly know? So my advice would be to go on dates (I don't know if that is different from "dating") and see how you interact with a number of those dates - I'd shoot for meeting several men that way (not all at once, mind you). And take your time before deciding to "go steady" with any of them.

I have seen many people come through here (myself included, again), thinking that they don't need such experience of meeting 10-15 people, that they can "tell" if someone is "the one" - in most cases, that does not work. As we mature through life, our lifestyles become more entrenched, we have kids, houses, careers, so the fit becomes much more difficult than meeting someone in college. It's really hard to tell if someone is "the one" until you spend a lot of time with them, and until then, I would not commit to exclusivity.

Anyway, all I am saying is that you are a long way from even thinking about engagement and marriage - do some dating first (I don't mean "sleeping around" by "dating", I mean meet different people), and see where that takes you.

AGG