When to Start Dating Again After a Breakup

There's no waiting period. Three months, six months, half the length of the relationship, not until you're fully over them — all invented, same as every other number in this business. Nobody is going to tell you it's time. There's no starting gun and there's no official.

But that's not really what you're asking, and the reason this question is so sticky isn't the timing. It's that "am I ready?" has no answer, and you can spend a very long time finding that out.

So here's the argument of this page: it isn't about whether you're ready. It's about the fact that there's now going to be a second person in this, and they're the part of it that isn't yours to decide.

"Are you ready" is unanswerable, which is why it's popular

Look at the shape of the question. Am I healed enough. Am I over them enough. Have I done sufficient work. Would it be fair to someone.

Every one of those is about your interior, measured against a standard nobody has ever specified, using an instrument you don't possess. You can't see how far along you are — that's the whole trouble with being inside something. So you'll turn it over, and it'll turn back up next week completely unresolved, and you'll conclude you need more time, which is what you concluded last month.

It isn't a question. It's a loop with a question's grammar. And it's comfortable, because as long as you're weighing it you're doing something responsible-looking and nothing is at stake.

The real questions in here are much smaller and you can answer them tonight.

"Rebound" isn't a kind of relationship

It's a description of a motive, and everyone uses it as a description of a calendar.

Six weeks out with someone you actually like, because you like them: not a rebound. Two years out with someone you're seeing because the flat is quiet and you can't stand another Thursday alone in it: a rebound, and the two years bought you nothing at all.

The timing is a proxy for the motive. It's a bad proxy — it's just the only one visible from outside, which is why it's the one people judge by. You have something better available: you can see the motive directly, if you're willing to look at it, and no one else's view of your calendar is worth anything.

So ignore how long it's been. It's the wrong instrument.

The question that does the work

Would you want to see this person again if you weren't lonely?

That's it. That's the whole readiness question, in an answerable form.

Not "am I over my ex." You'll be litigating that one for two years. This one takes about four seconds and you already know.

If yes — if there's some particular thing about this particular person, and not just the relief of being wanted, or the evening not being empty, or the fact that they said yes — then go. Not being fully over someone isn't a disqualification. Nobody arrives at a relationship empty. Everyone is carrying something, and the people who look like they aren't are usually just further from the last thing.

If no — if what you want is someone, and this person happens to be the someone who's available — then it isn't dating. It's medication. And there's a person in the medication.

The person in the medication

Here's where I want to be careful, because the standard warning about this is aimed at the wrong target.

You'll have been told not to rebound because you'll get hurt. Or it'll set your recovery back. Or you'll waste someone good on bad timing and regret it. Those might all be true.

They're also all about you — which is a strange thing to be the point, when there's now somebody else in the room.

The actual objection is much plainer than any of that. They don't know. They're sitting across a table thinking this is what it looks like. They're going to move their week around you, mention it to a friend, feel the small nervous thing people feel when something might be starting. And you're there for the anaesthetic.

That isn't a tactical error you'll pay for later. It's just a thing being done to a person who hasn't been told what's happening.

I'm not moralising and I'm not telling you you're a bad person for wanting the evening to not be empty — that's the most ordinary want there is and I've no interest in making you feel worse than you already do. I'm pointing out that they exist. Everything else here — timing, readiness, what your sister thinks, whether it's "too soon" — is a matter of opinion, and yours is as good as anyone's. That one isn't. It's the only part of this that isn't yours to decide, because it isn't about you.

What you owe them, and what you don't

Not your history. Not on a first date, not on a third. Nobody wants the full account over a starter, you don't owe it to anyone, and the person who delivers it isn't being honest — they're being unloaded.

What you owe them is not being misled about what's on offer. That's a much smaller thing than the confession, and much harder.

In practice it's about eight words. "I came out of something last year and I'm still sorting myself out a bit." That's it. It's true, it costs you almost nothing, and it hands them the actual facts — which is the entire point, because they're making a decision too, and they can't make it on the wrong information.

What it isn't: a confession, a display of depth, or a way of pre-excusing yourself for what you're about to do. And if you catch yourself calibrating it — how much to say, when to say it, whether it'll put them off — stop. You've turned a piece of information into a move. It's information. Say it plainly and let them have it and let them do what they want with it.

You will compare them

Constantly, and probably from about minute four. That's not a character defect and it isn't evidence you're not ready. You have a memory and it's doing its job.

The comparison isn't the problem. The audit is — running the new person as a scoring exercise against a composite who doesn't exist. Your ex, in your head, has been edited. Whole years of ordinary Tuesdays have been quietly removed. The person opposite you is at full resolution, with a real laugh and a real annoying thing they do with their phone and a face that's doing something unflattering under this lighting.

Nobody wins a comparison against a memory. Not because the memory is better. Because it isn't there. There's nothing to lose to.

So when it happens — and it will, mid-sentence, out of nowhere — you don't have to fight it or feel guilty about it. You just don't have to treat it as a finding.

The thing this page has to name

There's a reason this page is on this site rather than a neutral one, and I'd rather say it than let it work quietly.

There's a version of dating again that isn't about the person across the table at all. It's about being seen dating. By mutual friends. By whatever's left of the shared network. By them.

I'm not going to argue with it on effectiveness, because effectiveness isn't the objection and I don't know anyway. The objection is that there's someone at the table who thinks they're on a date.

If that's what's happening, you've found a way to do one of the most personal things available as a public statement, addressed to a third party who isn't in the building — and the person who is in the building is a prop. That's not a plan going slightly wrong at the edges. That's the whole of it, and it's the entire content of the evening.

So:

If you knew for certain — actually certain, no crack in it anywhere — that your ex would never hear about this? Not now, not from a friend, not in two years, not ever. Would you still be going?

If no, don't go. Not for your sake, and not because it would backfire. Because there's a person at the other end of it who'd be finding out they were scenery.

And if you're not sure — which is the honest answer for a good number of people reading this, and it's not a shameful one — then wait. Not until you're ready. Until you can answer that. It's not a long wait. It's usually a week and one slightly uncomfortable evening on your own with the question.

That's the last this page has to say about them.

Then just go

There's no permission coming. There's no threshold you cross where it becomes officially fine, and the people who look like they crossed one didn't; they just went.

Two things that'll happen, so they don't ambush you.

Somewhere in this you'll get an evening where you're genuinely enjoying yourself, and then remember halfway through that you're supposed to be in pieces — and feel a lurch of guilt, as though you've been caught cheating on the grief. You haven't. Grief isn't a shift you're clocked into. It'll be waiting when you get home. It won't have taken offence.

And you might go out with someone good and have it not work, because that is simply what dating is and always has been. It won't mean you weren't ready. It'll mean you dated someone and it didn't work out, which happens constantly to people who've never had a breakup in their lives.

So, the whole thing, boiled down: not am I healed enough, which has no answer. But is there a person I actually want to see — and are they getting the truth about what they're getting. Both of those are answerable tonight, by you, without waiting for anything.

If what's actually holding this up is the feeling rather than the timing: how to stop loving your ex. If it's the not-knowing-why: how to get closure. If you want the whole of it: how to get over your ex.

Common questions

How long should I wait before dating again? There's no number, and everyone who gives you one is guessing at a calendar when the thing that matters is a motive. Whether it's six weeks or two years tells you almost nothing. Whether you want to see this person, as opposed to wanting to not be alone, tells you everything.

Is it bad to date someone just to get over my ex? It's not great for you, but that isn't the objection. The objection is the other person, who isn't being told what they're taking part in. They're making decisions about you on information you've withheld. That's the whole of the problem with it, and it doesn't depend on how it turns out for you.

Should I tell them about my ex? Not the history — that's yours and nobody wants it on a second date. But don't let them be misled about what's on offer. One honest sentence does it. If you find yourself drafting and redrafting that sentence, it's stopped being information and become a move.

What if I'm still not over my ex? Then you're like nearly everybody who's ever started seeing someone new. There's no clearance level. The disqualification you're imagining doesn't exist and never did — what matters is whether you want the person in front of you, and whether they know roughly what they're walking into.

Is a rebound always doomed? "Rebound" describes why you're there, not when. Plenty of relationships that started far too soon are still going twenty years later, and plenty of very sensibly-timed ones were somebody using someone. The timing gets judged because it's the only bit outsiders can see.

I felt happy for a whole evening and then felt terrible about it. What's wrong with me? Nothing. You had a good time and then checked in on the grief and found it hadn't been informed. It's an unpleasant lurch and it's extremely common and it means nothing at all — you're not on duty, and nothing's being betrayed by an evening.