5 Reasons Not to Rush into a Relationship
After a break-up, you may find yourself all of a sudden fervently needing to become involved in a new relationship. You feel the need to avoid the overwhelming loneliness that can sometimes be felt after ending a relationship.
It might not even be a desire for a new relationship, exactly, but simply the need to have someone by your side. It is the need to share your life with someone and to have a feeling of intimacy. You may feel to want someone in whom you can take refuge from the pain that you feel.
It is sometimes hard to understand why many people, after a break-up, seek out a new relationship. Maybe they feel alone, maybe they feel empty…but what is true is that it is most likely that you, too, have passed through something similar.
Today, we will give you 5 reasons to not rush into a new relationship.
1. A new problem doesn’t solve the old one
This concept is an important one, and one that must always be remembered. However, sometimes it can be ignored and in turn greatly affect certain circumstances and situations in your life.
It is completely acceptable to try and find a new person to fill the void of loneliness felt after a break-up. This makes sense because it hurts to lose someone who was an important part of your life, and you want to move on.
But be careful to not do this selfishly. Don’t use a new person and a new relationship to try to get over the old one.
No one deserves to be used in this way, and if that is your intention upon meeting someone, then it will only be a fleeting and unproductive relationship. You are not ready to start anything with anyone at this point, so forget about trying to resolve your feelings by looking for distractions.
Think about being alone with your pain for a little while. Don’t seek out shelter and protection in someone else. Savor your solitude. It is the perfect moment to discover yourself and what you are truly looking for.
2. Take time to breathe
The fear that you must confront at this time is the fear of being alone. This fear can enter and take hold of your mind quickly after a break-up because your life has just changed drastically from one moment to the next.
Maybe you had always imagined a future, an idealized future, with your partner, in which you weren’t alone and you had that person you loved by your side. However, these things can and do change.
Why not look at the glass as half full? Now you are alone and can take a deep breath and return to being you.
When you are part of a couple, you start to think in terms of the common good. In other words, you start to base your choices off of what would be good for both of you and for the relationship. But when you are alone, you are the only one you have to think of.
Take advantage of this solitude. There is nothing bad about being alone! Furthermore, you should learn how to be alone and not let your happiness depend on being with another person.
3. Think about the relationship that has just ended
Why did your relationship end? What went wrong? These questions should all have answers, and it is your job to figure them out.
Something can be learned from every relationship. Each one is an important opportunity to grow as a person, to have new experiences, and to emerge strengthened by them.
In your moment of solitude, think about what happened that made things take a turn for the worse. What mistakes were made by both you and your former partner? This will help you know what it is you truly want and what you will not be willing to tolerate in your next relationship.
Don’t for one moment think that you will never again be loved. One chapter has ended, and another one will begin. That is a certainty, and you will open it whenever you are ready for it.
4. Free yourself from emotional burdens
If you jump out of one relationship right into the next one, it’s likely that you are carrying with you some emotional baggage.
At first, these emotional burdens are not an issue. But with the passing of time, they may lead you to the same end in your new relationship. Your new partner may feel suffocated by the surfacing negativity that you have suppressed in your subconscious. You have just left a relationship, and you are seeing all relationships through a negative lens.
Do you truly want a new relationship? Is that what you are really looking for? You are not prepared to be part of a new couple. It is likely that it will only bring pain, for both you and the other person involved.
Worry about yourself; be you and only you for a while. Until you are able to shed your emotional baggage, you will not be free to begin a new relationship from scratch.
5. Take the step from “we” to “I”
Being in a relationship changes your life completely. Everything becomes pluralized: “you two” not “you,” “we” not “I.” After a break-up, this can make you feel slightly disoriented.
Thinking as part of a couple and not as an individual can cause you to lose part of yourself. So much that when you lose this “other half”, you feel the need to find someone else to fill that void right away. You reach a point where you can’t feel whole unless you are with someone else.
Learn from this, and get to know yourself again. As we have already mentioned, you are not ready to start a new relationship right after a break-up. It’s scary, we know, but it is necessary. It is an amazing opportunity for personal growth.
Think about all of these reasons and ask yourself: why not decide to take some time and spend it alone? Not knowing how to be alone can be a big problem. There will be times in life when you have no choice but to be alone.
Take advantage of a break-up to learn and get to know yourself better. This will help you to become the person you have always wanted to be.
