Moving after a failed relationship can be difficult. You still feel them in your heart, you miss them every day and you may still be struggling to figure out what went wrong and why it blew up.
You may have pictures, or constant reminders of them around your house, or on your phone.
You need to decide when/where/how to get rid of those reminders so you can slowly work on moving on.
A new person isn’t going to want to come in, and feel like they are being compared to your ex constantly, or like they come second to a failed relationship.
You need to be ready to move on and let go of the past before you start dating and getting serious with someone new.
Relationships take two people. You can only take responsibility for your part in the relationship. Once a relationship is over, sometimes it can be hard to move on, especially if you have kids, or it was a long term relationship with years invested together.
If you have children, I suggest having photo albums where you can store all the pictures so the kids can look at them anytime they want.
I probably wouldn’t keep photos of your ex husband all over the house out in the open, reminding you of what you lost.
The kids still need to be a part of his life, and you’ll still need to try to get along with him, but if you want to start dating again, you have to make room for a new person, and start fresh.
Once the relationship ends, you have to work on letting go, and moving on.
This doesn’t mean going out and sleeping with every hot male that looks at you, although some women do choose to heal a broken heart with meaningless sex.
If you choose to do that, please be careful and use protection.
STD’s and unwanted pregnancies can be an undesirable side effect of messing around with strange men.
If you need sexual activities, but don’t want a man, I can highly recommend a battery operated boyfriend instead. Just takes a couple batteries, it’s always available and no STD’s or pregnancy as a side effect.
I’m not here to tell you what’s right for you, other than advising caution about jumping into another relationship until you figure out what went wrong in the last relationship. Make sure you are truly ready to move forward, without holding onto the past.
No one wants to be second best, or compared to your ex constantly, nor do they want to hear about him nonstop instead of focusing on the relationship that’s right in front of you that is healthy and working.
Don’t throw away a good man over an ex. So until you are actually ready, be cautious with your own emotional health and wellbeing by putting dating on the back burner until you are ready to move forward for real’s.
You can kill a potential relationship by talking about all your past lovers. Make sure you can let go before moving on. You want to give your new partner your undivided attention.
Make sure you’ve healed enough and are ready to move on to a new one before getting involved with anyone to prevent leading a good man on, or hurting someone because you realize in the middle of it, you aren’t ready to let go.
Here’s a list of things to consider to see if you are ready to date again:
1. Can you talk about your ex without bursting into tears, or feeling full of rage every time you hear his name?
If you haven’t worked through unresolved feelings to be okay with yourself, and moving on, you may not be ready to move to the next relationship.
2. Can you think of another person intimately without your ex creeping into your brain during intimate moments?
If you are going to compare your ex in the middle of sex and kissing, or even just a moment of intimate cuddling on the couch, you may not be ready to move on to a more serious relationship. Either that, or the man you are with isn’t the right man for you.
3. Have you been able to get rid of everything that was left over from your ex in the house, removed him from your home and intentionally lost his email, Facebook, and other contact information?
(If you have children, obviously you need to stay in touch, but don’t go out of your way to stalk his new girlfriend online.)
4. Can you handle the idea of him dating someone else without feeling like he’s doing it to hurt you?
When a man moves on to someone else, they aren’t usually thinking about you, or what you are feeling, or doing. Can you say the same?
5. He’s not trying to replace you, you need to be able to move on enough to not care if he has someone else.
If you are still obsessed with his life and call his sister or his mom to check up on him, you aren’t ready to be dating.
6. Have you talked to someone about the breakup?
Whether it’s a friend, family member, or even a professional to work through any unresolved feelings. If they have doubts about you being ready, it might be worth listening to them.
You should be able to let go enough that when you go out on that first date with a new man you don’t feel guilty, or like you are cheating because your heart still belongs to your ex.
7. Have you had a good cry over the situation, and been able to be okay with yourself and start picking up the pieces of your life?
Take responsibility for your parts of the failed relationship, and realize that not all of it was your fault. It takes two people to make a relationship work, and one person cannot compensate for the lack of participation from the other person.
But by acknowledging your part that failed, you may be able to prevent it in the future.
8. Figure out what went wrong, with you, with him, with the big picture and started to correct the relationship faults you had so you can improve yourself and do better next time.
Whether it’s admitting you can’t change someone who doesn’t want to change, or not enabling bad behavior or making excuses for yourself, or for your ex, working on you is the only thing you can change to improve and fix what went wrong.
Can you accept the things that went wrong? If you can and are ready to move past it, you’re ready for a date!
9. Have you pinpointed where the communication and trust went belly up so you can try to make sure the next time, your relationship can have honest, open communication and you and your new partner can build a healthy foundation of trust?
Without talking and trust, relationships will fail. Communication is one of the hardest things for people to do, and it’s the root cause of most problems in relationships.
10. Are you ready to learn new tools for communication to make the next relationship successful?
Being able to realize how to compromise, work together as a team, and be willing to actually invest yourself emotionally.
Having been burned in the past may make you gun shy to try again, but you can’t go into a relationship with only half of your heart and emotions involved.
If you don’t think you can put your all into a relationship, you are probably not ready to date anyone seriously for now.
Breaking up is hard. Moving on is hard, letting go is hard.
But in order to be ready to move on to a new relationship, you have to accept your past, embrace the future and be able to move on without letting it dictate if you get out of bed each day.
Work on yourself, working on forgiving yourself for your mistakes, and work on moving past whatever went wrong in your last relationship so you can embrace the next one with your whole heart and mind.
Just because one relationship didn’t work out, doesn’t mean the right man isn’t out there for you.
Having patience with yourself, working on communication issues that caused problems in the past, and being ready to move on are the keys to being ready to start dating again.
When you find Mr. Right, you don’t want to be such a hot mess he passes you by because you’re not ready for him.
You wouldn’t want a man who wasn’t over his ex either. When the two of you start dating, you want it to be about the two of you, with the focus on each other instead of the skeletons in the closet.