By Rachel Barker
It’s easy to feel guilty throwing yourself back into the dating scene after a long-term relationship.
We’ve covered that before for both men and women, break-ups can be a source of trauma. Our ability to recover from a break-up depends on how we engage with the negative feelings associated with losing our other half.
Diving into hobbies, finding rebounds, focusing on a career, etc. These can be helpful in the short term to immediately forget about the feeling of loss. Maybe to protect ourselves we make it a mission to find someone else to replace them first. That way we get to win the break-up (spoilers, there is no “winning” the break up). Whatever gets us there, actively dating will eventually end up back on the cards for most people.
How does it feel to get back into the dating game?
I can only speak from my own experience, and for me, I felt guilty. I didn’t understand at the time why I ended my first relationship, all I knew was that at that time, I needed space.
This is true for a lot of people, as psychologist Guy Winch noted in his viral TED Talk, break-ups can shape our perception of events. We can be given the perfect, most truthful answer for why we fall out of love with someone, or why they stopped loving us, but our brains will continue to try and rationalise it.
I did a lot of the classic stuff you would do after a break-up. Dove into work and study, had plenty of bad sex, had a Radiohead phase, you name it.
A huge challenge I had getting back into dating was truthfully, respecting myself. I found out my ex at the time had started dating a few short months after we broke-up. I felt angry, jealous, ashamed. All those feelings of the break-up just resurfaced irrationally.
Re-opening Tinder, I felt an immense amount of pressure to cater to other people’s needs, be available for them 24/7, and be very unproblematic. I was the Jimmy Fallon of a Tinder date.
In retrospect, thanks to having such little self-worth, I obviously wasn’t at the right stage to get back into dating.
This sentiment is echoed by Pricilla Martinez, a life coach, who told Refinery29: “If you’re choosing to start dating again after a long break, make sure you’re doing it because you feel ready. If you’re trying to fill the void left by a previous relationship, chances are you’re going to bring the accompanying baggage along with you”.
Does dating someone new help you get over your ex?
It’s a common rom-com trope to suggest a recently broken-hearted person to just “get back out there”, although it’s heavily contended if this actually helps soothe heartbreak.
While a fling can re-spark our lives if we’re down in the dumps, the truth is, our past relationships will also shape how we date in the future. If we haven’t spent time working on ourselves, considering our needs, how we can communicate them, working on setting boundaries and respecting our partners, then odds are we might get caught in a cycle.
Moraya Seeger DeGeare, licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice, author of Refinery29’s Can We Talk column, and in-house expert at Paired, says it’s important to have other routines and hobbies just for yourself to keep you grounded. “Understand your self-worth and know you’re a whole human being,” DeGeare explains. “This person isn’t making you whole, this person is enhancing things in your life.”
What is the minimum time you need to wait before dating someone?
No matter when you decide to get back into dating after a break-up, odds are, everyone is going to have an opinion on it. It’s unavoidable, and the only thing you can do is make sure that it’s the right time that you need.
Of course, dating someone within a few weeks of ending a long-term relationship is going to have a lot of people giving you the side-eye, and if your ex hears about it, it will likely hurt them.
You also don’t want to be the person on a date who won’t stop comparing their ex to the new person.
In their book, Chamin Ajjan, a sex and relationship therapist and author of “Seeking Soulmate: Ditch the Dating Game and Find Real Connection” said that dating with the goal of finding a new partner when you have unresolved feelings is selfish. She explains that, “if you are not over your ex and you are dating someone new, comparison is inevitable. The person you are now dating is in a losing battle, because it’s common to idealise your ex instead of looking at him or her realistically.”
Julie Spira, dating expert and digital matchmaker, told the Washington Post that dating others to “rebuild self-esteem” is only a short-term solution for one party. “The new relationship can end up as a temporary high, or ‘love drug’ to help you heal, but unless you’re 100 per cent available, you will get stuck in that comparison game.”
In short, there is no minimum amount of time. Your responsibility to your ex ends once your relationship does. However, you do have a responsibility to future partners to be open and honest about your intentions with them.
Will dating again be hard?
Absolutely.
Being single can be a blessing in disguise, and offers you plenty of opportunity to get to know yourself.
There will be a lot of trial and error. You’ll fall in love with the idea of someone, you’ll have your heart broken, and you’ll make an idiot of yourself, telling your friends about this new perfect person, only for them to turn out to be a dud in a few weeks. But each experience will be important, and no life experience will be empty.
You’ll learn more about your needs, your wants and what works for you only through learning what doesn’t. You’ll grow bolder, more confident and in time, slowly come to rationalise and accept that break-up that might still be haunting you.
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