Dating a Separated Man: What I Say to “He’s Still Married”

I’ve been introducing people since 1990, and I’ve never seen so many good men in the dating pool who are still married on paper. Before you rule one of them out, let me tell you what that paperwork actually means.

Dating a Separated Man: The Short Answer

Separated but not divorced is not one situation, and on its own it tells you almost nothing. It can mean a man who moved out last Tuesday, a divorce grinding through a court for three years, or two people who arranged their lives apart a decade ago and never filed the last piece of paper. The status is not the answer. The STORY behind it is, and you get that by asking.

Here’s my position, and it hasn’t changed since 1990: I don’t encourage anybody to instantly dismiss a man whose profile says separated, not divorced. You don’t know the story. Find out the story. Then decide.

I said it more bluntly to Heidi Friedman on the show. I have never seen so many good men and women in the dating pool who are technically separated and not divorced, married on paper and running their lives apart because a divorce would be financially devastating for one or both.

So the red flag for me is a woman who has that red flag.

“Separated” Is Four Different Situations, Not One

People treat separated as one condition with one answer. It isn’t. Since 1990 I’ve watched it be at least four things, and the right answer differs for each.

• He moved out and nothing has been filed. The newest and least settled. Nothing decided, nothing divided, nothing grieved.
• A divorce is filed and pending. There are lawyers, there are dates, and there’s an end to it, even if the end keeps moving.
• There is a legal separation, decided and documented. A negotiated arrangement, on purpose, with terms.
• They decided years ago not to finish it. They divided their lives, kept the paperwork intact, and agreed they’d divorce only if one of them wanted to remarry. I have several of these on my books.

One correction, because it would be dishonest to write this as though it only happens to men. Men say the same words to me about women, and Dr. Elena Michaels, who I’ll come back to, was the separated one, dating with her husband’s blessing. Some couples arrange separate lives on purpose, keep two homes and never split up at all, which is living apart together.

The Date of Separation: What a California Divorce Attorney Told Me

Holly Moore is a family law attorney in California who owns her own firm and hosts the Made for More podcast. On my show she explained the mechanic underneath all of it.

In California, she says, there’s the date of separation. Her words:

Once the date of separation hits, the marriage is over. That’s when the law recognizes the marriage to be over. There’s no more community property, there’s no more sharing of finances or splitting after that.

Holly Moore, California family law attorney

The length of the marriage stops running on that date too, which matters for spousal support. And then, as she puts it, “the divorce could last for 10 years until they return to the status of a legally single person.”

Read that twice. The money can already be separate property, and the clock everybody argues about can already have stopped.

One distinction to hold on to, because it’s the one people garble. What the date of separation ends is the financial marriage. He is still legally married until a judge signs the judgment, which is exactly why Holly says the divorce can run another ten years before he’s a legally single person again. This is general information from one attorney about one state, not legal advice.

Her conclusion is the sentence this article hangs on. “I think if people truly understood the process and the legality behind it, they would feel less resistant to date someone that’s going through a divorce but has separated.”

Is Dating While Separated Adultery, and Can It Hurt His Divorce?

I’ll tell you what Holly said, and just as importantly what she did not say.

A client asked her straight out whether it was okay for him to date. She told him that was a personal issue, then armed him with the mechanic: once the date of separation hits you’re not acquiring community property, the law is not recognizing the marriage, and the length of the marriage stops.

That’s the whole of it. She never called dating while separated adultery, never said it would damage his case, and treated it as a matter of opinion rather than law. I won’t put words in her mouth.

Whether it matters depends on where he lives. Ask a family lawyer in his state. If he’s genuinely in the middle of a divorce and can’t tell you what his own attorney said about him dating, that’s worth noticing, and it isn’t a legal problem.

Why He Hasn’t Filed: The Reasons That Are Not Warning Signs

Gretta Perlmutter, the ghosting and betrayal coach, asked me about this, and I gave her the answer that ends it. Women want a man with a lot of resources. Guess what? If there’s a lot of resources, it takes a while to unwind a marriage. And if they’re amicable and nobody’s killing anybody, it’s perfectly fine.

Sit with the shape of that. The woman who wants an established man, and in the next breath won’t consider a man still married on paper, is asking for two things that fight each other. Established people have property, businesses, retirement accounts and grown children with opinions, and unwinding it takes years and real money.

Holly sees it from her side: a man who was happy in his marriage, whose wife asked for the divorce, and who has to sell his company to pay her spousal support. That’s not foot-dragging. That’s arithmetic.

Cat Cantrill, a matchmaker in Cedar Rapids and Scottsdale, put it better than I have:

I know that usually the industry advises people not to date other people through a divorce. And I always think it’s just a case by case basis. Is the person worth it? We don’t know what their story is leading up to the divorce. They might’ve been a loveless marriage for 10 years for all we know.

Cat Cantrill, matchmaker

Case by case is my position too, and case by case means you can’t know whether his reason is a good one until you’ve heard it.

It’s the same instinct behind my defense of men I refuse to write off for a label, the ones who never married.

The Two-Year Rule, and Why I Argue With It

Holly raised this one and I pushed straight back on air. Two years divorced, or he isn’t ready. Some men will NOT sit single for two years waiting for a clock to tick. I take the rest of that argument apart in dating over 60.

Heidi Friedman had the rule. She’s an environmental lawyer, a partner at a large firm and the author of Love Lessons, 104 Dates, and her rules were nobody more than five years older and divorced at least two years. Ann Zahler, from the front row of her hot yoga class, set her up anyway with a man ten years older whose drawn-out divorce was two years old and not done. He hadn’t dated in over twenty years. She was his first date after the marriage.

She married him, and calls that introduction the greatest gift of her life. Her verdict on her rules: “it kind of broke my rules, which is why I’m a big don’t have too many rules.”

Then the qualification that matters most. By the time she met him he was four years past moving out. The divorce was unfinished, but his life had settled. The paperwork and the man are two separate clocks, and the one you care about isn’t the courthouse’s.

The Red Flags That Actually Matter Here

The red flag habit makes me nuts and I say so at every chance. Look for green flags instead of red flags. But there are real ones here, so here’s the honest half.

Dr. Elena Michaels, a naturopath and functional medicine doctor, has been on both sides of this. She and her husband separated amicably, stayed best friends, and she dated while he was still alive, with his encouragement. He’d ask how her evening had been and admire the roses. She was widowed later.

Right out of the gate she met a man who was fabulous. Her knight in shining armor, she thought. Four months in she found out he wasn’t separated at all. He was married and living in it, and she found the proof on social media: a photograph of him and his wife celebrating their anniversary in a town he’d told her he wasn’t in.

That is not a marital status problem. That’s a LYING problem, and it would have been one if he’d been single.

Her rule since is the best one I know. “I’m from Missouri. That’s the show me state. Show me who you are.” She stays in it and watches at the same time.

So watch him, and ask. Warmly, over a few weeks.

• “When did you two separate?” A man who’s been through the process with an attorney knows the date almost to the day, because it decided his money. Vagueness on its own proves nothing. A story whose details keep moving is different.
• “What has to happen before it’s final?” You want a list. A house, a business valuation, a pension, a slow attorney, a stubborn spouse. A man who can’t name one obstacle either hasn’t started or isn’t telling you.
• “Who wants it finished, and who doesn’t?” This one produces the real story more often than any other.
• “Does she know about me?” Transparency is the whole test. If nobody in his life knows your name, that’s the answer.
• “Is either of you still hoping to reconcile?” Ask it plainly. More on why below.
• “What are you looking for right now?” If one person is filling a hole and the other is ready for their last first date, that’s a transition relationship, and pretending otherwise costs people years.

Karen McMahon, who founded Journey Beyond Divorce, calls a man still triggered and reactive with his ex somebody with healing left to do, and a man dating because he can’t stand being alone a hard stop. More in dating after your own divorce.

Then LISTEN to the answer he actually gave. Karen asked a man early on whether he wanted children, because she did. He said he loved kids, and she ticked the box in her head.

He hadn’t said he wanted children with her. He loved children, particularly the two he already had. We all hear the answer we came for. Write his down if you have to.

For the warning signs that have nothing to do with his paperwork, I keep a separate list: the red flags that apply to any man.

The Man in Thousand Oaks Who Courted Her for a Year and a Half

This is the introduction that on paper should never have been made, and it’s the one I think about most.

Bernie was my client, in Thousand Oaks, California, separated about eight years when I met him. It was a complicated marriage to unwind: properties, a business that would have had to be liquidated, more than thirty years of shared life. His wife needed his health insurance, and this was before the Affordable Care Act. She was emotionally fragile and he feared a divorce would tip her over. So they had an arrangement: live separately, raise the grown kids, and divorce only if one of them wanted to remarry.

There were two reasons I almost didn’t make the introduction. He’s from a Jewish background and loves Friday night Shabbat dinners with his kids. Ronnie is a practicing Catholic who’s at mass every Sunday. And he was still technically married. He said it himself: check with her, see if she’d meet me, given that I’m not her religion and I’m not divorced yet.

Ronnie hesitated, and then said the sentence you may be saying right now. “It’s not so much the religion thing. I am not interested in dating a man who’s still on paper with another woman.” I told her I heard her, and told her the whole situation. Then I said, just meet him and see how it feels. If it’s a one-day wonder, no harm, no foul. She said all right, because I like what he’s all about and I trust you.

They dated a year and a half before they got anywhere near a bedroom. That was her call. She wasn’t sleeping with a man still married to somebody else, and she told him she was a patient woman and hoped he was a patient man. If that’s your question, I’ve written about whether to sleep with him yet separately. He’s a big tall guy, she’s a tiny little woman, and every evening she’d crawl into his lap and they’d talk about their day. She’d never been loved that way before, she told me.

They knew inside six months. It took another year for the divorce to come through, which put him past ten years separated. The day it was final he said: Ronnie, get yourself a pretty dress, we’re going down to the courthouse and getting married, we’ll have the party later, I’m not going to have another night without you next to me.

Sometimes he goes to mass with her now. Sometimes she goes to temple with him.

She’d have missed the love of her life over a piece of paper.

What Can Go Wrong: The Number Nobody Quotes

Here’s the part that argues against me.

Holly told me, unprompted, that at any given time roughly 10 to 15 percent of her firm’s cases are sitting on hold while the parties try to reconcile. She calls it a win: if two people had to see what a divorce would look like to decide the marriage was worth fighting for, good.

Her caveat travels with the number. She owns an expensive firm, she says herself she probably gets the more venomous cases, and plenty of people divorce amicably without hiring her. One firm in one state, not a national rate.

But reconciliation does happen to people sure it was over.

So take it as a question. Has he actually finished with his marriage, or has he only left it?

What I Do When the Man I’m Representing Is Still Married

Several men ask me a version of this before they hire me. Julie, I’d really like to work with you, but are women going to want to meet me if I’m still technically on paper with another woman?

My answer is always the same. It can be okay, as long as I know the whole story. When I pitch an introduction I explain the situation, so she’s deciding about a man rather than a word on a profile. Not many people have had to do that and then watch a woman decide in front of them. I have, hundreds of times.

I also don’t rush anybody. Jeffrey walked into one of my curated flirting parties in Santa Fe and announced that he was just getting divorced, wasn’t interested in flirting, and was only there for a beer.

Good, I said, you’re in the right place, here’s your drink ticket. You don’t have to be ready to date, just make sure everybody’s having a good time.

I built his profile anyway and told him he’d call me when he was ready. Months later I called. Was the divorce final? Just about, he said, and he still didn’t know.

A few days later he came back: he’d be happy to meet this lady Hannah, as long as she knew he wasn’t ready for dating, so maybe a friendship. They became friends, and six months later they were dating. They got engaged.

Since 1990 I’ve registered about 40,000 people privately and united more than 1,400 couples. Almost none of those stories began with clean paperwork. They began with somebody agreeing to have dinner with a human being instead of a category. Get privately registered and tell me yours.

FAQs About Dating a Separated Man

julieferman.com · Julie@JulieFerman.com · 805-371-9557