How do you know when you're ready to date again?

A little over a month ago, I (30F) broke up with a guy (32M) I'd been seeing for about a year. After ignoring a plethora of red flags, I found out in April that he had been cheating on me (mostly emotionally, but also physically) with another woman for the entire duration of the relationship. There are a lot of messy details about the relationship, infidelity, and breakup, like you'd expect, but for me, the important takeaways was that I ignored many gut feelings about how things were not good, ignored many (I mean MANY) red flags, and gave way too much to a relationship where I received very little reciprocation, all for the sake of being "loved." My self esteem has been shot through this whole ordeal, and I know I have to work on loving myself, healing, and (for f*ck's sake) learning to enforce boundaries and have standards. (Note that I'm not even talking high standards here -- things like "shows up and calls when he says he will" and "appears equally enthusiastic about being in a relationship.") My ask is -- when you realize you've been in a relationship that's thrashed you and you have a lot of things to work on to be in a better place, how do you know you're ready to date again? (Also, for what it's worth, I am one of those people who has jumped from relationship to relationship, with no real periods of single-dom of which to speak.) Appreciate your experiences and thoughts.

Submitted July 08, 2019 at 12:01AM

A little over a month ago, I (30F) broke up with a guy (32M) I'd been seeing for about a year. After ignoring a plethora of red flags, I found out in April that he had been cheating on me (mostly emotionally, but also physically) with another woman for the entire duration of the relationship. There are a lot of messy details about the relationship, infidelity, and breakup, like you'd expect, but for me, the important takeaways was that I ignored many gut feelings about how things were not good, ignored many (I mean MANY) red flags, and gave way too much to a relationship where I received very little reciprocation, all for the sake of being "loved." My self esteem has been shot through this whole ordeal, and I know I have to work on loving myself, healing, and (for f*ck's sake) learning to enforce boundaries and have standards. (Note that I'm not even talking high standards here -- things like "shows up and calls when he says he will" and "appears equally enthusiastic about being in a relationship.") My ask is -- when you realize you've been in a relationship that's thrashed you and you have a lot of things to work on to be in a better place, how do you know you're ready to date again? (Also, for what it's worth, I am one of those people who has jumped from relationship to relationship, with no real periods of single-dom of which to speak.) Appreciate your experiences and thoughts.