31/m divorced also!

first of all, good job finding something new to do. That's the first and hardest step.

Being divorced is a big deal but it can also provide your dates with a glimpse into your character. If you know what happened, learned from the experience, and are a better person then it's something that is not stigmatized but just seen as another fact about you. Maybe you weren't perfect, but you made the best of a bad situation and vowed to avoid those mistakes in the future. The best way I found to talk about it was to just be honest. Don't dodge questions that are reasonable. "My wife and I both put the relationship into a rough patch, I wanted to dig into counseling, we did, and things did not work out" was usually the first date cliff notes. Whenever discussions happened I would talk honestly about what had happened. I know what I did that contributed and I owned those mistakes. I know what she did that contributed. This is where you need to do some work. Can you sit down with a good friend who knows everything and explain what happened to them? Can you write it down and refine it? Can you meet with a therapist that you saw during your divorce and get their feedback?

third, you have to just go out and meet people. find one or two dating sites that require some work and invest in those. Use them as a tool to supplement the people you meet in public. Personally I found okcupid to be great, it was so much fun going to meet people that it said I was compatible with. The more people you meet the more likely you are to meet someone that you click with. When you are this age an dating it is a lot different from when you were in your early 20s. People are much more upfront with what they want, and much faster to commit to people who are good while getting rid of people who are bad.