You just can’t see someone for who they really are when you are still heartbroken over someone else. You are in a fog. Your perspective is cloudy.
Kate Halim
When you are heartbroken, the temptation to just drown your pain in new attention, affection, sex, or a fling is strong. But, dating too soon after a heartbreak is like drinking to treat a heartbreak: it feels temporarily better, and then feels much worse after.
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Unfortunately, you don’t get to cheat heartbreak. There aren’t any shortcuts or secrets to just stop feeling it. There’s a certain amount of pain created by every breakup and you need to feel every bit of it until you feel better.
So whether it’s binge drinking or dating early, all you do is put the pain on hold, but it doesn’t go away—it waits until you are vulnerable and creeps back in, but stronger, because you ignored it for a while.
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Here are reasons you can’t date while still heartbroken.
You can be too sensitive
You don’t have the usual protective skin that you normally would and that’s the stuff that keeps you from freaking out if someone reschedules a date or takes 30 minutes longer to call you than they said they would. You are still hurting from your heartbreak and so you can be very sensitive.
You can be too needy
Since you are essentially just trying to run from your pain, you are going to need someone to run fast to keep up with you. That means you will come off as needy, wanting to see someone a lot, or talk on the phone several times a day. Being left alone too long lets the pain sneak in.
You’ll encourage codependency
It’s really important to be alone in between relationships so that you remind yourself that you can be alone. It may not be fun but, it won’t kill you. If you don’t show yourself that, you can develop serious codependency issues because you will fear that being alone will kill you.
You may still be paranoid
Your last relationship may have left you a bit paranoid. You can misread little things that new dates do or say, and think that the bad things that happened in your last relationship are happening all over again. It’s like relationship post traumatic stress disorder.
You can’t be giving
You have to be selfish to get over a heartbreak. You have to dedicate all of your healing energy to yourself so, you can’t really be there for someone new who may need your comfort or support for anything.
Your vision is blurry
You just can’t see someone for who they really are when you are still heartbroken over someone else. You are in a fog. Your perspective is cloudy. New people don’t get a real chance.
You will always compare
You can’t help but compare everyone to your last partner, whether that’s negatively or positively. They are still in your system so you will measure everything someone does against your last partner.
You could project anger
If you are still angry with your ex, you could accidentally project some of that anger onto new partners. Since they are still in your system, you see them in everyone else. Then new partners will just think you have anger issues.
New letdowns hurt even more
Since your protective layer is all gone, new letdowns hurt more than they typically would. If a new date you like doesn’t want to see you again, it will hurt ten times as bad as it would if you weren’t still heartbroken over the last partner.
Your standards are messy
You will want to just be with anybody because it’s better than being alone. You think it is because, you didn’t give the whole being alone thing a chance.
You disrespect the memories
Your last relationship, however it ended deserves a mourning period. You can’t just discard relationships as if they never happened, just because you don’t like the way they ended. It’s important for your psyche to mourn.
You haven’t learned the lessons
You probably still have some important lessons to learn from your last relationship—lessons that will enhance your chances of finding a better relationship next time. But you need alone time to really think about those. If you don’t take that time, you could repeat your mistakes.
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