After a distasteful or painful dating experience, it’s tempting to stop dating for a while. In fact, some people find a heartbreaking experience so odious that they swear off dating for years.
While it’s a good idea to take a break to heal your wounds, if you go too long you lose your rhythm. You get rusty. It can affect your self-confidence. Yes, it is like riding a bicycle, the skills comes back. But sometimes it’s hard to get your head back in the game.
My strategy is to take a little time to regroup, assess the lessons, refine what I want — and don’t want, but then get back on the horse that threw me. If you don’t, you’re saying the setbacks win. You’re letting a guy get you down who has undeveloped communication skills, lack of integrity, emotional unavailability, immaturity or who just realizes it isn’t a match. You’re letting his actions determine your happiness (or unhappiness). Don’t give anyone that power.
Everyone has setbacks in life, it’s how you deal with them that determines your future. If you let a few mishaps make you give up on finding the love you want and deserve, you are giving up on your future. Not all dates are fun and enchanting, although my experience is only about 10% have been less than enjoyable. The great majority are unremarkable — not great, but not horrible. A few are heavenly, some resulting in equally sublime second and subsequent dates.
After an unpleasant experience, journal about the lesson(s) from it, take a bath, get a massage, go out with a gal pal, have a good cry, enjoy a little chocolate, go for a rigorous workout, attend a comedy club, update your perfect boyfriend’s job description — whatever it is you enjoy. Decide how long you will wait to get back on the dating horse. Maybe it’s a few days, a week, or a month or two. But don’t wait too long. Or the horse wins.
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Comments
3 responses to “Get back on the horse that threw you”
I absolutely love this post! I can think of quite a few very good women who have let the horse win – I’m directing them all here for the encouragement they need to climb back on!
[…] Yes, once more another provocative post by the Dating Goddess has inspired me. Sorry, to be so lazy with my own ideas: she writes such good stuff! In any case, DG wrote a lovely post about not letting a bad relationship keep you from dating. I agree with what I believe is the main idea: don’t let a bad relationship control you long past the actual breakup. Hear! Hear! […]
Well, I guess in my case, the horse has one the Triple Crown! Haven’t dated in about three years. My job keeps me very busy, which leaves me with little time and energy to date. Also, just haven’t really had the interest, and the pool of quality eligible men is quite low. If I wanted to date just anybody, then I could probably have one date a week if I made some effort. But, I don’t want to date just anybody, and so I keep to myself and stay home.