I know this is a common question but I'm pretty confused how to approach dating at this point so wanted some advice for specific situation if anyone is generous enough to give me any.

I'm 38, we were married for 8 years and together for 17 years. Ex said she 100% wants divorce 4 months ago and moved out 2 months ago. We have 1 young daughter.

As you can imagine, our marriage was bad towards the end, and our intimacy was terrible. It dwindled towards nothing and when it happened I was constantly made to feel inadequate despite my best efforts to do anything she wanted.

I know the standard advice on this subreddit is "don't date for N months" but I just don't get it because I'm lonely and craving touch, sex, and connection. I understand the whole "be a monk and deal with those feelings" but I just feel like its advice thats going to make me sad and take longer to get over the ex, especially since I have many reasons to suspect there was another man that caused the divorce.

Also I'm almost 39 and I was in a relationship my entire adult life, all my 20s and 30s living in NYC and SF and watching my freinds rotate through the ladies and me getting a bit of FOMO. Now this is going to be my LAST year in my 30s, I want to take advantage of it.

I was also unemployed and the tech job market has been terrible but I signed a job offer a week ago, thank god. I don't start for 2 weeks and then I need to focus so if anything this is the perfect 2 weeks to try to relax and maybe get some before focusing hard on new job.

Because I didn't feel ready for dating apps especially unemployed, I did try to test the waters and "put myself out there". I went to a few bars and tried cold approach but honestly I got too drunk and it went terrible (now learning to do this sober). I did speed dating twice, the first time the women were ugly and rude (eg they asked about my career, I said I'm an engineer in tech, they said "that's generic"). I still tried to match with one and got 0. Second one went much better, much prettier and nicer women, liked 4 and was disappointed got 0 matches.

I tried a bunch of stuff including salsa/bachata dancing, improv comedy class, yoga, just walking my dog around the park. I found all this standard advice to meet people much better in theory than in practice, so many activities like improv and yoga peopel just instantly bounce when its over, I love dancing so that's been fun but still tough to move that to an outside connection, and when I walk my dog people tend to want to give him a pet then hurry on their way. I can't even seem to make friends at these things, much less get a date.

So I was feeling very very unemployable and very unlovable and undateable for the last 2 months and also having a divorce sprung on me, I was in a very very dark place. I also had a 3 year career "gap" cause I tried to start a business + be more flexible parent since my wife had corporate job, but corporate america views non-corporate work as gap, so it was brutal job search esp tech interviews are always brutal and I had to do them in the context of this divorce of 17 year partner who's personality completely changed.

With the job offer in hand, I finally downloaded Hinge which is what the women at speed dating mentioned they used the most.

I was and still am in SHOCK how many Hinge matches I'm getting, it's been crazy. I never even kissed a girl in high school, I struggled to get any action in college, married the girl I did date in college, so I never felt good looking or attractive. Getting shot down at bars recently and going 0 for 5 in speed dating likes didn't help either. I'm not sure exactly what is different about Hinge but I have about 30 matches in my first week, I get about 4-5 incoming likes a day, some of the women very beautiful. Obviously this has done wonders for my self esteem .

At first I was frustrated that all these matches were creating convos to nowhere in particular. I almost posted here saying, how tf do I even date, I have a city of women who want to be penpals. But then 8 days into my Hinge experience, one of the most beautiful women I matched with who I will call V asked if I was free that evening, and we went on date.

We had a great hinge convo cause I'm an electronic music nut and she sent me several obsucre songs that I laughed at cause they were already on my Spotify liked songs. My ex doesnt listen to music which was always a point of friction between us.

The date was so incredibly amazing. She was shy so I did most of the talking at the bar but she seemed engaged and interested in me. I asked if she wanted to go back to my place and she did. I put on a favorite DJ set as ambience thinking we were going to hookup but instead she started talking about the DJ set. We ended up just trading our picks on Youtube for the night. I tried to hook up with her but she said she didn't want to do on the first date but she did cuddle up with me and it felt so good. I had such an amazing time with her, it was the best night in SOOO long. I drove her home and then she asked me to text when I'm home, I did and she immediately asked for second date.

But when we were cuddling she was like, "ok so if I'm your first date on your first week on Hinge, next week there's going to be a better girl and you're going to replace me with her". I didn't know what to say to that. I do think I have to date a few people but I don't know.

Worth noting Hinge is positioned as more of a "relationship" app . Though it's weird, my first profile I was super honest and I said I was "seeking short term", every single woman liking me has "LTR monogamy only", yet , as experiment I briefly switched to "seeking long term", and my matches went DOWN, then I switched back to "seeking short term" and they went up again. So I'm suspicious if any of these women are open to casual but don't like explicitly stating it on their profile.

Even if the advice is to, don't date but it's ok to hookup, I don't even know how to hookup because basically everything but Hinge has been an absolute failure. Maybe a little more confidence and practice will help but I'm just skeptical I'm going to become a player at the bars especially in an introverted city where people are cliqueish. Every app but Hinge has been crickets.

But now on Hinge I have too many matches with the same basic setup, their profile says they want long term, I said I want short term, we matched, but which of them actually are down to do casual vs just thought I was cute and that's it, who knows.

I also really, really like V but how fast is too fast? We wanted another date this same week. Is 2x a week with the same girl too much? What about 3x? What if i really like her? But how can I tell the difference between really liking this girl vs. just being super lonely and ANY girl would make me feel the way she did? Again there were a lot of small things she did that made me like her, for example I love blasting my loud music while driving, on the way home she politely asked if I could turn my music UP whereas everyone else always asks to turn it down.

How much should I force myself to go on dates with others ? I'm realizing that just manging Hinge convos, planning dates, doing the dates is also a huge timesink. It's also tricky now because I have some very pretty girls in my Hinge convos I don't even know how to talk to because my week is kinda already filled up with stuff.

tl;dr

1. 38 years old, 4 months into divorce of 17 year relationship, 2 months since she moved out, was feeling incredibly low and depressed and touch and sex starved for years

2. Finally got employed, now craving touch intimacy and sex badly

3. Everything but Hinge has been a complete disaster in terms of meeting women

4. Hinge is off to an unbelievably good start in terms of huge volume of matches with many beautiful women, but they all state they want LTR only despite my profile saying seeking short-term

5. First date I went on was amazing and I already feel like I'm falling for her and don't know how to handle that, how often to see her, and she's expressed her own concerns that I'm not ready despite clearly liking me a lot

Trying to figure out, how often to see V, how to manage relationship with V, how to frame my dates with other women, if I shouldn't date seriously and should only do casual, how to even accomplish that, etc.

Thanks for any advice