'Every mistake I made after my divorce, including dating too many sad dads.'

When my husband left me a couple of months before my 40th birthday, I was blindsided because I didn't know how to function as a single person. We had been together for 15 years, we had worked hard for our house and other assets. We had three children and shared a network of extended family and special couple friends we socialised and holidayed with.

Since I had been in my mid-teens, I had had a boyfriend or someone I had a crush on, or fantasised about. I was 13 when I left poems in a milk bottle for the milk boy — you get the point.

So when my husband uprooted my world with two words, "it's over'', I felt like I had lost a limb — and as soon as I had healed enough to pull myself out of bed without crying, I thought the best thing to do was to try to replace him.

Watch: There are common mindsets women have towards dating when coming out of a toxic relationship or divorce. Post continues after video.

One of the mistakes I made was thinking that I needed to be attractive to a man or to find a new man to complete me. I thought I was ready to date but I wasn't. I had to learn to love myself as a single person, to find myself again as a completely loveable single human being, before I was emotionally ready for my Mr Chapter Two.

Mark Manson — author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k' — has some fabulous dating advice that wasn't around when my marriage ended 15 years ago: discover the old you, he suggests, and he also tells you not to enter a new relationship until you're truly ready or you risk a rebound.

My rebound was a surfie who spent most of his time living in a van and his hipbones jutted out like sharp cliff edges. He turned up at my house empty-handed and I made him toast. My friends and I nicknamed him "Van Man'' and the novelty of dating someone who was more obsessed with finding a new surf break than trying to woo me quickly wore off.

I met him in a bar, and after that fleeting encounter ended, I signed up for online dating apps, where I dealt with the emotional highs and lows of being liked and then rejected, liked and rejected, bouncing all over the place like a ping pong ball. My husband had rejected me and I took it far too personally when a weird vegan who wanted to match with a childless Aries woman with double D breasts decided he didn't want to go on a date with Cancer single mum AA-cup me.

When I wrote my own book about divorce, I spoke to Ally Gibson, an online dating researcher at Victoria University in Wellington, who said ghosting is perfectly normal on dating apps.

"It's easy to reject someone you've never met face-to-face, so it's helpful to remind yourself that even though it feels deeply personal, it's not actually you they're rejecting," she told me.

I wish I had Ally's advice all those years ago, because I took the ghosting SO personally.

Post-break-up, I also dated far too many deadbeats (a la Van Man) and sad dads. Sad dads are the men on dating sites who shouldn't be there. They haven't got over their ex-partners or ex-wives and family break-ups and drag that baggage into their dates, situationships and new relationships.

Take it from me — you do not want to turn into someone's quasi-therapist, listening to him or her blathering on about what a b*tch the ex is.

Research shows that men aren't as good at seeking counselling or support from professionals or even friends after a break-up. Men are more likely to struggle with their mental health after a break-up, and if you're a kind empath like I was, you might find yourself out on a date with a sad dad who wants advice on how to get his kids a few more nights a month while you just want him to notice your Dyson Airwrap curls.

Dating needs to be fun, sexy, uplifting and nourishing. Not a drag, when you feel like crying into your glass of Pinot Gris feeling sorry for him and/or his ex.

I met my Mr Chapter Two — or as I call him in my book, my "Mr F**k yes'' — seven years after my separation, when I was on a total man ban. Which is really the point: he came along when I was completely happy as a single person and single mother. I radiated happiness and I was not going to settle for anyone less than Mr Amazing.

Most of the men I dated or had short relationships up till then were really a waste of time, and if I could have those seven years back, I would have filled them with more hot yoga classes, walks and hang-outs with girlfriends, courses, classes, anything to develop myself as an individual rather than to feel like I was shedding another bit of my self-confidence and self-worth like peeling skin.

Sarah Catherall is a journalist and the author of How to Break Up Well: Surviving and Thriving After Separation, available now at How to Break Up Well.

Feature image: Supplied.