Stepping away from the dating game may feel like a step in the wrong direction if you’re looking for love. In reality, it’s the complete opposite. In fact, the best thing I ever did for my love life was take a much-needed dating sabbatical. A break will give you clarity, energy, and best of all, new opportunities. Here’s why you should consider taking a dating break too.
- A break lets you re-evaluate. Have you ever been caught up in the dating world only to realize that you don’t actually know what you want? If you don’t know what you’re looking for in a date, it’s really difficult to know when you’ve found it. Taking a break from it all gives you the chance to think about things clearly. You can evaluate what you like, what you don’t like, and what you are looking for when you get back on the horse.
- It boosts your desires again. There’s nothing worse than dating when you don’t want to be there. And it’s easy to feel like you don’t want to be there after a string of bad dates. The beauty of taking a break is that it will give you the chance to actually want to date again. When you are happy and enthusiastic about being on your dates, you’ll naturally have more fun. Also, you’ll probably leave a better impression.
- It builds up your patience again. Dating can definitely leave you frustrated and out of patience. Like many things that are hard work, it’s important to take regular breaks so you can give your tolerance levels a chance to develop again. Can you imagine how irritable you’d be on Monday morning if you didn’t have the weekend to recover from a week of work? It’s the same with dating. You need that downtime to become your best self again.
- You can rest and re-charge. In addition to developing your tolerance again, taking a break allows you to rest and re-charge. In other words, it gives you the opportunity to practice some self-care. This is especially important if your last few dates didn’t treat you particularly well or left you kind of traumatized. Don’t worry—it happens to the best of us! Dating is hard and you deserve to let your hair down.
- You’ll have time to focus on your other relationships. Because dating can be so overwhelming, it can leave us with less time and energy to put into our other relationships. Friendships and family relationships are still important, whether or not you’re looking for love. Take a break and spend a little time nurturing those relationships, especially if you haven’t had the chance to hang out with your people while you’ve been busy dating.
- You’ll properly recover from past heartache. Unfortunately, dating can be more than just irritating. Some bad experiences can actually leave you heartbroken or worse. Removing yourself from the dating scene will give you the chance to breathe. You’ll be able to understand what went wrong in the past. And you’ll have the chance to start to heal. It’s super important to deal with your past dating stuff before you continue to date. The last thing you want to do is bring all that to a new and potentially great relationship!
- You’ll be able to work towards your other goals again. Since dating can take up so much space in your life, it can also reduce the time you get to spend on your goals. They might be career goals or a personal bucket list. You’ll regret it if you spend too much time utterly focused on your love life and forget everything else that matters to you!
- A break will let you recognize and stop relationship patterns. Do you ever feel like you’re dating the same person over and over again? Or you keep having the same fights with different people? It could be that you’re stuck in some negative patterns that follow you from relationship to relationship. Stepping away from it all will give you the distance you need to understand what keeps going wrong. And more importantly, what you can do about it.
- You’ll see people in a new light. When you’re officially not dating, you’ll stop seeing everyone you meet through the lens of someone looking for love. That means that you won’t wonder whether everyone who comes into your life is potential spouse material. Instead, you’ll actually see them for who they are without over-analyzing everything. Who knows what good can come from that? Maybe you’ll get to know someone who ends up being special because you don’t freak yourself out trying to make them the one.
- You’ll learn how to be independent. Taking a break from dating will teach you that you can be on your own. This is totally important if you tend to bounce from partner to partner and don’t know how to be single. You are capable of being alone, so you don’t have to settle for crappy relationships just to avoid being single. And taking a break will prove it to you.
