Where you're actually starting

The first date I went on after my marriage ended, I drove to the wine bar three suburbs away half an hour early, sat in the car park, and seriously considered driving home. I was 41. The last first date I'd had was at a uni party in 2003 with a girl I ended up marrying eight years later. Now I was idling in a car looking at a Hinge profile on my phone, trying to remember how this was meant to go. It went fine, in the end. The thirty minutes in the car park is the bit I remember.

Most of what's written about dating in your forties assumes you're all in the same boat. You're not. Four men can walk into the same bar on the same Friday night, all 42, all single, and be in genuinely different places.

The four starting points

Roughly, you're in one of four boats:

• Newly out of a long marriage. Legals not long behind you, kids in the picture or not. Default mode is "I should probably be over this by now." You probably aren't, six months in.
• Long-term single. You've built a life that works alone. The problem isn't that you can't manage on your own; it's that you've started to wonder whether you're choosing to or hiding behind it.
• Late bloomer. You did the work, the career, the parents, the property. You looked up at 42 and realised you'd never properly dated.
• Widowed. Different timeline, different grief. The last conversation you had with a partner was love, not a fight about the lawyer.

You don't get to pick which boat you're in. You do get to pick what you do about it.

What the boats actually need

Newly divorced needs time more than dates. The honest readiness check: can you talk about your ex-wife for thirty seconds without it leaking into the rest of the evening? If not, the next woman you meet doesn't need to be an audience for that. Wait.

Long-term single needs a forcing function more than encouragement. Pick a thing that gets you in rooms with women regardless of whether you're dating: a Saturday club, a Sunday lunch crew, a hobby that has women in it.

Late bloomer needs reps more than strategy. Aim for ten coffees in three months and stop trying to predict who's "right" before you've met any of them.

Widowed needs permission. From yourself, mainly. The first date isn't a betrayal of her, but you'll feel like it is for the first hour.

The readiness question, plainly

Ask yourself three things:

• If she asked tonight, "Tell me about your last relationship," could you answer in two minutes without bitterness, blame, or a long sigh?
• If she asked, "What are you looking for?", could you answer in one sentence that doesn't sound like a CV bullet?
• If she didn't text back, would your evening be the same shape? Or would it tip over?

Three yeses and you're probably ready. Two yeses and you're nearly there. One or none and the next three months are for reading, walking, training, talking to your mates, and not for performing on a date.

The thing nobody tells you

You're not 25 anymore, and that's the good news.

The 25-year-old version of you was, with respect, a worse partner than the 42-year-old version. The forties dating market sometimes gets framed as "the field has thinned out" or "everyone's damaged goods". It hasn't and they aren't. The field has aged into honesty.

Know your boat. Make the first move it actually needs. Skip the bit where you pretend.