The A-Z Guide For Successful Singles: “R is for – Recover–Regroup–Reinvest”

When a relationship ends you feel a bit bruised and battered.  You know what I’m talking about, whether you’ve been there once or whether you’ve been there many times.  Your self esteem plunges a few notches and you can be left feeling a bit of an emotional wreck.

If that’s the place you are at, then I’d suggest you take time to repair the damage before you start looking for a new lover and partner.  If you jump into a new relationship too soon:

1.  You won’t really be able to focus on your new partner or the new relationship because you will still be consumed by the old relationship.  You see, everything that you’ve counted on and known until now is suddenly gone – your life plans, your hopes and the dreams you shared about the future with your partner.  You are left with a broken heart and a huge, great, gaping hole in your life. You are feeling heartbroken, hurt, angry, confused and lonely and it’s the absolute worst time to get hitched. You will be going through a grieving process – it’s what happens after you experience a significant loss.  The grieving process is about finding closure on the old relationship and allowing you to let it go.  You can only move on once you let go of the old relationship.  If you don’t go through this process, it will interfere with your new relationship.

2.  You won’t be able to show your new partner the real you.  Because you are feeling a bit bruised and battered you will naturally go into self-protect mode – it’s what we naturally do so as not to get hurt again.  Healthy and happy relationships are about deepening levels of intimacy which requires being open and vulnerable.  Having an emotionally intimate relationship is simply not going to happen if you are living your life from a position of defence.  You can’t let love in, if your heart is blocked.

3.  You will project stuff from the old relationship into the new one. And doing this is a sure fire guarantee to ruining your new relationship. See, we are programmed to assume that the future will pretty much be a repeat of the past.  So if your ex- partner cheated on you, you will assume that your new one may do the same too.  You will mis-interpret their actions and you will be suspicious even when there is no ‘evidence.’ You will filter everything through the lens of what happened in your old relationship.  Your new partner will eventually tire of this.  You will experience the death of another relationship and your already bruised self esteem will just feel even more bruised now.

4.  Even if you found your perfect partner, they will only be ideal for who you are now. The hurting, needy and vulnerable person you are when you meet your new partner will not be the same person once you have recovered.  Once you have recovered, you will be feeling confident, independent and strong – and that’s not the person your partner met and fell for.  What started out as a perfect match won’t be anymore.

Successful singles take time to recover and re-group before they start re-investing in a new relationship.

• Recover: Allow your wounds to heal before embarking on a new relationship. Recovery is a process of time and of looking after yourself.  Yes, there may be some scarring – but that only adds character, doesn’t it?
• Re-group: Take time to get to know the real you and to become the best of who you are and you will find that you attract a different type of person than you do when you are needy and vulnerable.
• Re-invest: Put time and energy into other parts of your life.  You and your life will be a more interesting and people will be drawn to you.

You know when you are ready for a new relationship, when you have moved on from feeling the pain of the old relationship, when you have had time to let the real you grow and when you have reinvested in other areas of your life.

What you will find is that you naturally attract and you will meet the person who is really right for you!