My friends and I have a firm, strict rule. After one too many disastrous dates with divorced dads, we no longer even entertain the idea of going on a date with them – unless they’ve been well and truly divorced for at least a year.
Two years is preferable.
Somewhere between leaving the family home and discovering air fryers, divorced men seem to evolve into two entirely different species.
The first is what I call the ‘PlayStation Peter Pan’.
This is the man who, newly single at 45, behaves as if he’s just been sprung from prison onto the dance floors of Ibiza. He’s wearing tight linen shirts, following wellness influencers half his age on Instagram, hitting the gym with zeal, and dabbling once more in the party drugs of his ’90s youth.
These same substances – mark my words – will have him hobbling around Bondi within a month, groaning about his lower back after going far too hard, far too soon.
He says things like ‘I’m finally finding myself!’ while actively traumatising every woman he dates.
The second type, however, I find weirdly… hot.
Api Robin’s admission that he’s done ‘plenty of therapy’ since his split from Celeste Barber is music to Jana Hocking’s ears. (Pictured: Robin and Barber in Sydney on March 21, 2025)
Hocking says that going to therapy is the calling card of the ‘evolved divorced dad’. (Api Robin is seen cycling near his Gold Coast home last week)
This is the evolved divorced dad.
He’s the man who goes to therapy and learns how to communicate before he dips his toes back into the dating pool. He actually wants to process his marriage split properly and understand the role he played in it.
Somehow, these men emerge from divorce more self-aware and significantly more attractive than they ever were during their marriage.
And judging by Api Robin’s remark to the Daily Mail last week about his split from wife Celeste Barber, it looks like he falls firmly into the latter category.
‘I’ve done plenty of therapy. I’ve talked to plenty of friends. I’m okay,’ he said, before adding: ‘And I think she is, too.’
There’s that glorious word: therapy.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved them as a couple, so a part of me is sad that therapy during the marriage couldn’t save them. But hearing him say that was music to my ears.
Because, frankly, my experience with divorced men has been bleak.
Barber hasn’t said much about her marriage breakdown. However, Robin was more forthcoming when approached by a Daily Mail reporter
Most of them could be found alone in a sparsely furnished apartment, listening to Nickelback, with no bed frame and a fridge stocked only with beer and a suspiciously ageing lemon.
The first time I learned this lesson the hard way was with a man in the middle of a rather public divorce.
At first, I thought it sounded romantic – albeit in a delightfully messy, grown-up sort of way. A handsome, successful man whisked me off to nice restaurants and texted incessantly. But with four kids and a separation still going through the court, our dates swiftly shifted from romance and butterflies to unpaid therapy sessions.
Every dinner somehow circled back to his divorce: the mediation, lawyers, custody schedules…
I knew intimate details about his legal battles before I knew his favourite movie.
And look, I sympathised. Divorce sounds horrific. But after the fourth or fifth date of emotional unpacking, I realised I was dating a walking stress headache.
I left every date emotionally exhausted – and not in a fun, post-coital way.
Then, because I seem to relish learning the same lesson twice, I made the mistake of repeating it with another freshly divorced man soon after.
I turned up at his new bachelor pad one Friday night – recently vacated from the family home – and instantly knew I was in trouble.
The place had that strange energy that only newly divorced men’s apartments seem to have. The place was half-empty, with one sad plant clinging to life in the corner. A giant television was mounted proudly on the wall with the AFL blaring from it.
Jana Hocking has experience dating divorced men – and has come to understand why some of them are divorced
When he offered me a wine, he poured it into a thick-stemmed Kmart goblet that looked like it belonged in a local RSL.
Then came the fitted sheet.
The second I climbed into bed, I caught that unmistakable smell of damp washing left sitting in the machine too long. You know the one – slightly sour.
I soon realised it was the unmistakable scent of a man learning basic domestic skills from scratch – let’s call it ‘eau de divorcé.’
I lay there thinking: ‘Ah, so this is why she left.’
It became abundantly clear this man had never once in his adult life been forced to properly look after himself. His wife had taken care of the washing, the groceries, the purchasing of decent wine glasses and hand soap that didn’t resemble a four-in-one car cleaning product.
Dating a newly divorced man is a crash course in why so many women wind up feeling like exhausted project managers.
Because after dating enough of them, the bar becomes alarmingly low.
Suddenly, you’re turned on by things like emotional regulation. A man saying ‘we both made mistakes’ instead of launching into a 40-minute TED Talk about the Family Court.
Which perhaps explains why women are suddenly finding the evolved divorced dad weirdly irresistible.
The man survived the divorce, went to therapy… and some of them finally learned how to use fabric softener.
It’s… sexy.
So word to the wise: if you’re a bloke going through a divorce, take a leaf out of Api’s book. Your next wife will thank you for it.
