How long should you stay single when your relationship has ended? And how long should you wait before you start dating again?
When a relationship comes to an end, no matter how long it lasts, both parties are bound to experience strong emotions. Normally, you expect a broken heart but sometimes, the thought of walking back to single life can also lead to relief and profound happiness.
The breakup of long-term relationships can be messy, leading to anger, bitterness, and resentment among other hurtful feelings. This is usually the case with a serious relationship that led or was leading to marriage.
On the question of when you should get back into the dating scene after a long relationship, there isn’t a direct answer.
It all depends on your post-breakup emotional health.
Some people take just a few months to start a new relationship while others may take years, a decade even, to heal.
The ultimate goal should, however, be healing from the breakup and rediscovering your single life vigor. It’s only then that you can start trusting again and rekindle your love life in a meaningful way.
So, how do you move from a long-term relationship to another serious relationship? This is a process and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Nevertheless, the steps are basically the same, starting with navigating the breakup.
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What are the Stages of a Breakup?
Breakups can be complicated and recovery more so to the point of mimicking clinical depression. Depending on how much you invested in the relationship, letting go can be as difficult as dealing with death or the loss of a long-term job.
You’ll be saddled with grief, self-doubt, and emptiness that requires sheer willpower to overcome. With this in mind, there are several models that offer guidance on how to recover from grief, the leading one being the Kübler-Ross model.
First introduced in 1969, the framework identifies denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial
Most people immediately resort to denial after breaking up from a long-term partner. The mere fact that the relationship lasted years makes it hard for a person to accept reality.
As a defense mechanism, the brain refuses to recognize that the companionship is over. You hope that the relationship is still salvageable and look for signs to keep it alive.
When they call asking the whereabouts of their favorite sweater after you have moved out, you interpret the call as an invite to get back together- that’s denial!
Anger
After denial comes anger towards your former partner for wrecking your life. You resent them for stringing you on for the past years leading to the breakup. At this stage, your mind is clouded with hate, making it difficult to be honest about who or what is really to blame for ending the relationship.
This can be a very destructive stage especially if you give in to violence against those you hold responsible for the break-up. Apart from yourself and your partner, you may be blaming family members including kids.
As such, anger can hamper your quest to become a new person by misplacing your rage. This is why psychologists advise that you learn ways of controlling your anger as a prerequisite to moving on.
Bargaining
Bargaining is the phase where you earnestly try to rebuild a bad relationship. It happens after denial and anger lower your self-worth to the point of not trusting yourself to remain single or start dating anew.
Going back to your ex soon after breaking up only compounds your problems. Basically, bargaining is just an anchor holding you down in the long run.
Depression
Depression presents when it becomes clear that the breakup is final. The normal reaction is to retreat inward and engage in destructive behavior like excessive drinking or eating.
Instead, it helps to allow the kindness of family and friends to guide your actions. Share your feelings with those who truly care about you, after all, a problem shared is a problem halved.
Acceptance
This is the final stage of grief after a break-up and it is all about coming to terms with reality. Not that the pain is all gone, but acceptance of break up is your ticket to healing the wounds from a toxic relationship.
Acceptance might be gradual but all you need is to keep reminding yourself that a more successful relationship is just around the corner.
How To Be Single After a Long-term Relationship
Starting a new single life after a breakup is easier said than done.
By virtue of the passage of time, longer relationships tend to include more investments. As time passes, more memories are made, intimate knowledge is exchanged, activities and friends are shared; lives become more intertwined (Galena, 2011).
To avoid facing the consequences of a break-up, a rebound relationship starts looking attractive.
That’s a big lie! You should turn your full focus on yourself first.
As a matter of fact, there are benefits to being single after a long relationship. You get to rediscover your freedom as an individual, mend your broken heart, and move on from the post-breakup mode.
Here are some tips on how to be single after a breakup.
1- Sleep alone
When your significant other moves out, spending nights alone can take a toll on your mind. The mere thought of going to bed without another person by your side feels repulsive.
To turn this “bad thing” into a fun activity, make nighttime enjoyable. Change the beddings or even buy a new bed, run a bubble bath, watch new movies, and listen to uplifting music before bedtime.
2- Eat alone
How many meals have you shared together? It is time to learn how to make mealtimes fun on your own. This is a single-person challenge that you can overcome by trying out new menus.
Find peace in eating alone, including treating yourself to dinner once in a while. And don’t let them take your favorite restaurant from you; decide to love yourself more than you did your partner.
3- Redecorate
Everywhere you look, there are reminders of the memories you had together. While you can’t change much of what goes on outside your apartment or home, you can change the scene inside.
Change the drapes or carpets that remind you of them. Do more than redecorating, move the couch or the bed to the position you always wanted. Own your space!
4- Have a solo night out
A night out is a huge undertaking without your partner. Going out means entertaining the thought of being hit on or even meeting former dates.
Do not be afraid to frequent your previous spots but rather make every night a night to remember.
5- Practice self-compassion
As you start regaining your individuality, practice self-acceptance. This calls for making decisions on your own and sticking to them.
With your destiny now back in your hands, you’ll have to deal with mistakes on a personal level. Ensure to practice self-compassion and avoid looking for approval from others.
6- Spend time with a friend or family member
To know if you are ready to put yourself out there, start spending time with people who care about you. Family and close friends are a good start to help you deal with the break-up and any fall out from your last relationship.
Spending time with other people also means opening up to criticism. Use the time to gauge how well you can cope with negativity from others before you can open your heart to new love interests.
7- Challenge yourself
Being single following a bad relationship is a big challenge. So, why not start by facing your other fears? Ever wanted to climb a mountain, hike through the Appalachian, or bungee jump?
Conquering your fears will empower you to take on the dating world. In addition to physical challenges, give a go at digital detox from dating apps and social media in general.
8- Start a new hobby
If you become good at your challenge, make a hobby out of it. And since this is something you get to discover on your own, you can make it your go-to safe activity whenever you have some free time on your hands.
Think of learning music, taking dance lessons, playing a sport, or even learning a second language. These are activities that can soothe your heart as well as put you in the company of potential dates.
How To Get Back to Dating After a Long Relationship
It takes hard work and iron-clad determination to move on from a recent relationship. To get you in the right state to date again, here are a few things to try:
Cut off contact with your ex
No contact is the rule of thumb when looking to move on from a past relationship. The faster you sever ties with your ex, the faster you can face the tough times ahead.
It is within reason that you will meet your past love in the future but immediately after a breakup, go for 60 days of zero contact.
No texts, no calls, no “accidental” meetings on social media.
Stay busy to keep your mind from drifting back to bygones. Nevertheless, expect the 60 days to suck, hurt, and seem long. If you stay committed though, you’ll come out stronger.
Be emotional, cry
Looking for a healthy way to overcome a past relationship? Allow the emotions to wash over you, including crying your heart out. Do not try to suppress what you are feeling with the thinking that shedding tears makes you look weak.
As a matter of fact, sobbing is said to provide much-needed mood improvement whereas suppression of emotions leads to mental health issues (Asmir et al, 2014).
Granted, crying may make you feel weak in a short time nonetheless, in the long run, you will hurt less. The best way to go about it is to give yourself time and space from other people unless they are part of your trusted support system.
Talk about it
Research has proven that talking about or sharing bad feelings helps in conquering your worry.
One such study involved 52 undergraduate students from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Asked to give a speech in public, the study found that the task was less stressful after participants relayed their fears amongst themselves or with the researchers.
For best results, talk to someone who has, or is, undergoing a similar breakup.
Why?
The study concluded that “sharing a threatening situation with a person who is in a similar emotional state, in terms of her overall emotional profile, buffers individuals from experiencing the heightened levels of stress that typically accompany threat.”
Don’t blame yourself
Relationships end for a lot of reasons. It could be that you were ultimately incompatible, friends interfered with your life, or the other person decided to cheat.
The bottom line is that no matter the reason, once a relationship comes to an end, life must go on.
Stop blaming yourself for the breakup. Instead, focus on making the rest of your life happier than before.
Flirt
Once you have come to the realization that your last relationship is over, and you are in the right mind to entertain new relationships, it’s time to date.
Truth be told, starting to date after a long time can be more than challenging. First off, dating will inadvertently have changed and so will your social skills when engaging potential suitors.
If we are talking of a 20-year relationship, then you met when SixDegrees.com was the closest it got to a social media site. Now you have chat rooms where you can flirt when playing video games on a smartphone.
Worry not though, if you’d rather flirt the old-fashioned way, attend singles events near you and chance on meeting a person worth your time. You can also sign up on sites such as Tinder and Bumble where you can make casual friends.
Investigate why the serious relationship failed
Once you can fathom flirting, it signals readiness to confront what really went wrong. You can now take positive criticism from family members on your own failures.
You might just come to realize that you spent all the time during the breakup blaming the other person while you were solely to blame. Not that you did anything wrong, but you may have expected your partner to change into someone they weren’t.
Simply put, you need to take stock of the relationship to find the root cause of the breakup. This will help you date with a clear head knowing the red flags to look out for.
Ask the hard questions
Additionally, by the time you are flirting, you are almost ready to face the last step of moving on after being single for a long time, going on a real date.
I recommend that you first take a pause and ask yourself:
- Have you truly healed from the breakup?
- Were you to blame for the failure of the relationship?
- Can you trust others again?
- Are you mentally ready to start another serious relationship?
- Are you ready to make yourself marketable again?
- What qualities are you looking for in the next person?
- Suppose you are on a date and your ex shows up, will you cause a scene?
These are questions to help you know if you are in a healthy state to realistically date again.
Start dating
The process of dating is complicated as it is to start. That’s why you need to take your time flirting until you are ready to face the possibility of spending life with the next person.
A level head is paramount at this stage to ensure that you don’t fall into bad choices all over again.
Feel free to ask a friend to set you up with a suitable date. Another best way to get a suitable date is by joining dating apps. Be cautious though, social media can irreparably wreck your love life since people can misrepresent their true intentions.
How long is too long being single after a breakup?
There is no timeline for getting back to dating after a break-up, no matter how long the relationship lasted. It all depends on how intense or invested the companionship was. Some relationships are over and forgotten the moment you are out of the door while others take years for you to go through the healing process.
How do you get over a long-term relationship?
Apart from serious soul searching, you need to allow the grief of breaking up from a long relationship to wash over and learn how to be single again. It is only then that you can start dating afresh. That said, it sometimes takes the services of a psychologist to help you get over a relationship and come out mentally healthy to carry on.
Is it okay to be single for a while after a long relationship?
Staying single after a breakup is probably the best idea when looking to date once more. Considering that a long-term relationship means the intertwining of lives to the extent of almost losing your individuality, it helps to be single for a while to regain your identity and independence.
Conclusion
Relationships that go on for more than two or three years are considered long-term and can be difficult to get over. You need to face the emotions of a breakup up to the point that you accept to let go and risk dating other persons.
The process is usually a marathon and not a sprint.
That said, some people take less than a month to pursue new relationships while others take years to be courageous enough to move on.
