Coming out of any relationship is hard to manage and if it was a long relationship, it is more than likely going to hurt for a long time afterwards. If you were hurt within the relationship and you parted ways on bad terms, then the thought of getting into a new relationship is pretty much the furthest thought from your mind. Life just after a break up is a particularly difficult time and you need to take time to heal and take stock of yourself and the relationship before you move on into another one.
But the good news is you can learn how to love again after being hurt, that the hurt does heal, and you will feel better, less tearful and more like your old self again before you know it. But relationship experts strongly advise taking some time off out of the dating scene for a while, especially if you have come out of a long relationship or marriage. You might feel ready, but without first having the chance to offload all of your emotional baggage, you may just load it onto another person, which could have a detrimental effect on everyone involved. Take at least a year to find yourself and be kind to yourself before embarking on another love path
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1. Don’t Give up
Living, loving and being hurt are all parts of normal life – people who love each other hurt each other, but that doesn’t mean that you must now shut off everyone else from your life in order to prevent yourself from being hurt again. In order to feel love and life love you need to open yourself up and be a bit vulnerable – it’s how love that is to last a lifetime is built.
If your previous partner cheated on you – that is all about them, it was a symptom of the relationship between you and them at that time. Don’t make the mistake of making your new partner pay the price for it. Yes, you couldn’t trust your previous partner because of what they did – make peace with it before you enter any other relationships and move on, otherwise, you are going to sabotage what could have been a lifetime of love and friendship.
2. Embrace Your New Life
You are single, free, happy and carefree – embrace it, live that single life your married friends could only dream of. Don’t let your relationship status define you – let you define who you are. When you are desperate to have the title of partner or Mrs, or boyfriend or girlfriend you are going to get into a relationship for all the wrong reasons and your chances of being 100% unhappy are about 150%.
There is nothing more attractive than somebody who is confident and happy – make the choice to be these things and the rest will fall in place. If you get into a new relationship only because your need to have someone outweighs the love you have for them, you are on very dangerous ground – nobody likes to have a needy partner, it makes them feel claustrophobic and guilty – two ingredients for a solid relationship meltdown.
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3. Be Brave
Get out there and date. You don’t have to choose ‘’the one’’ or enter into a committed relationship, just go out there and meet people. Join social groups like hiking groups, hobbies, and sporting activities. Play bowls – night bowls is a great social event for all ages, join an art class, go white water rafting, tick some things off of your bucket list, take a few cooking classes – you never know who might stumble into your life when you are not looking, but having the time of your life.
You may not meet the person you are going to marry, and you may not date anyone you met in your hiking group, but you are going to make new friends who will be there to uplift and support you and add vitality to what is your new life and a new beginning.
4. Be Kind to Yourself
When relationships end, our inner critic becomes an inner emotional abuser – we assign blame to ourselves for everything and make our poor souls take full responsibility for the entire relationship that failed and tell ourselves constantly from morning until night how much we are not good at anything. This is possibly the very worst thing you could do. Be kind to yourself, take responsibility for your part that you played in the breakdown of your previous relationship, make peace with it and let it go.
Remind yourself of the strengths that you have, your talents, your abilities and your own unique achievements. Add them all up, congratulate yourself, tell yourself that it everything is okay and that leaving a relationship doesn’t’ make you a failure, it makes you a survivor and that survivors are strong.
The old saying of what we say to our children becomes their inner voice applies to us as well – what we say to ourselves becomes our inner voices too. Be very careful of negativity and putting yourself down, you will single-handedly push yourself down into a hole of depression that you may take years to come out of. Put the past behind you and don’t let your previous relationship define you.
5. Say Yes
Accept all of the invitations that you get, don’t stay at home on the couch in front of the TV, wailing into a bowl of ice cream. Go out with your friends, enjoy movies, go for a walk, take the dogs down to the lake, go fishing or go away for the weekend. Just get out there and have fun – if you start turning down every invitation that you get, eventually, your friends will get tired of asking you, pleading with you and begging you to join them and will start taking it personally.
Surround yourself with those that love you and you will find yourself again and when you do and when you are out there living the life you love, you never know who might wander into your life then.
