Deciding when you are ready to start painting the town red is difficult for most divorcees. Some feel the urge to escape their sadness right away while others have no desire to be with anyone but themselves and their pain. How we all react to the pains of divorce is different, so the decision about when to start going out and seeing others will be different as well.
Going Too Soon
The danger with starting to see other people too soon after a divorce is that you escape the emotions that come from the divorce so they are not dealt with properly. When you avoid feeling those feelings and working through your lingering issues you don't make them go away. You simply allow them to build up inside your soul, which will eventually cause problems in other relationships.
What often happens for someone who gets divorced and immediately starts seeing someone else is that they start treating their new loved one as if they are guilty of the crimes of their ex-spouse.
For instance, if your marriage broke up because your husband had an affair and you never dealt with your anger, grief, pain and other emotional reactions to that situation, you may treat your next boyfriend or husband constantly with suspicion. Your self esteem may be at its lowest and you may not be able to trust them completely. Unfortunately that will cause problems and possibly prevent you from having other healthy, emotionally satisfying relationships.
How do you avoid this? Simply by making sure you are emotionally whole again before you start seeing other people with romantic interests. Unless you deal with your anger, grief and pain, you will bring them into your next relationship. And unless you begin to value yourself again, no partner will value you.
This doesn't mean you have to live like a nun! If you feel the desire to get out of the house and have some fun, ask friends to go out with you. Take up a hobby that you perhaps did not have time for during your marriage. Or, start doing things that made you happy before you were married.
Someone new will come into your life when you are ready and you won't even have to go out looking for them in most cases.
Waiting Too Long
If the desire to start mingling with others never comes back, what do you do? Just as jumping into the dating scene too quickly can lead to problems in the future, there are some complications that can happen for people who wait too long to get out there.
The longer you wait, the more intimidating it becomes to go out on dates, and the more anxious you may feel about sharing romantic moments with someone new. Some people may decide that they simply don't want to compromise anymore and don't want to be in another relationship, and that is okay if it is your genuine desire.
If on the other hand you feel you've had enough of feeling alone and lonely, and it has been quite awhile since you've even smiled at a man with desire, it may be just the right time to start going out.
For some people the right time to start seeing others may be just a couple months after the divorce, while others need a couple years. There is no set time frame that is acceptable. You just have to make sure you have dealt with the issues that led to the divorce as well as the lingering emotions from the divorce itself.
© Vanaja Ghose 2010
