New love: how long should you wait after a break?

In short: a month, a year, infinite ...? Enough to be free again. Now in detail: There is no rule of how much time must have passed to overcome the hurt and the longing for the ex-relationship and to be again for a new love. No one can predict how long it takes us to go through all stages of separation.

We do not necessarily process a 20-month relationship faster than a 20-year marriage. Anyone who has long had thoughts of separation is therefore not necessarily faster across the relationship than someone who has found completely unprepared in the empty apartment the farewell letter of his ex. We can either leave behind an unsatisfactory relationship relatively easily, or we can remain attached to it because we can not stand our failure. Do we have children, and the loss of the family is inseparably merged with the separation? Does not the ex let go? Or can we not take responsibility for the ex, because as children we were responsible for mom's or dad's salvation? Everyone has different experiences of separation and farewell that affect whether and how well we can detach ourselves from a lost love.

Am I really over him? Honesty is the best

Anyone who fails constantly in his new relationships, whose thoughts may still be occupied by the transfigured image of an exile. Nobody equals him, nobody has a chance against the secret dream partner. Therefore, smart people looking for a partner ask their counterpart immediately on the first date how long the separation has been and whether he or she is really inwardly ready for a new relationship. But that also helps only conditionally. Because the real challenge often only starts when a new partner comes into being: Now suddenly there is a comparison. And the sharp arrogance of the ex is forgotten, but it becomes painfully noticeable that there was with him a tenderness that does not exist in the new relationship. Thus, instead of love, a transitional relationship may easily emerge, which may fail because the grief must first be processed in it. New in love and still in the separation from the old relationship: These are contradictory feelings that disturb each other.

Oskar Holzberg has been married for over 30 years and has been counseling couples for more than 20 years. He found that some sentences apply to all relationships. In each ChroniquesDuVasteMonde he introduces one of them.

But that is exactly what we often experience. We often part because we have fallen in love with another. And we can not put a newly arising love on ice until we finally have confessed. Our life does not go that way. It is all the more important that we face the pain of losing the old love. As long as we avoid the pain, we do not grieve. Only through the sadness we detach from the once loved one. Only when we can think of him, without being flooded by yearning, we are free for a new love relationship.

Say goodbye to habits

Of course, every loss is never processed after 365 days. But beyond all the rules: Does not it make sense to not experience the next summer, the next Christmas, your own birthday with a new partner? But to say goodbye to the rites and habits of the previous partnership?