7 Reasons To Take A Break From Dating

We must guard our hearts in dating until we find someone worthy of it, and sometimes that means letting our hearts rest. Taking a step back from actively dating might be exactly what the doctor ordered, especially when it comes to seven common but not so easy to admit signs we need some R&R – and I’ll add a third R for reflection – before we go on our next date.

If You Never Pause Between Relationships

The relationship just ended. Maybe it was really difficult – lots of words and hard feelings on his side, your side, or both. Or maybe it was mutual, but it’s still hard because, well, a breakup is a breakup. However the relationship ended, it’s important to ignore the urge to immediately jump into the next. As licensed master social worker Micaela Stein related to Sanjana Gupta from Verywell Mind, there are two main reasons why some might quickly start a new dating relationship – a rebound – after a breakup. The first is to subconsciously use a rebound (ouch!) while trying to forget an ex. This new boyfriend is someone else to focus on and numb the pain of the past. The second is to form an emotional connection to replace the one lost. The first can be negative and the second can be healing, but it depends on how open you are with said rebound in the process of working through the recent breakup but wanting to move forward. If someone isn’t honest with a new boyfriend, it might fester old wounds from the past relationship and create new problems in the current relationship. 

As for the new man, Stein says, “Feeling rejected, unseen, and confused are common reactions to being in a relationship with someone who is not ready. It is normal for this to activate anxious attachment and feelings of insecurity.” 

Because of this, while Stein acknowledges some rebound relationships can blossom into loving, long-term relationships, these “typically last between one month and a year, and commonly struggle to last past the initial infatuation period. They are often not based on deep compatibility, so differences can start to strain the connection.” 

If you aren’t ready for a new relationship because the prior one still hasn’t been processed, the rebound relationship can suffer, end, and hurt both involved. Taking a break from dating helps us process what happened in the relationship, what an ex did wrong, and what we did wrong, and be able to learn from reflecting on it as we dip our toes back into the dating pool again.

If You’re Dating To Not Be Alone

“What if I end up alone?” The thought comes every once in a while, completely unwelcome but showing up anyway. Let’s face it – this question strikes fear into the hearts of many. It’s not an uncommon fear, as 42% of millennial women and 29% of Gen Z women are more afraid of loneliness than cancer, but that doesn’t make it a good reason to date. Of course, we date to build a relationship and not be alone, but there’s a difference between alone and lonely. Perhaps we need to rethink the fear of being alone and shine a light on our fear of loneliness. 

Author, YouTube creator, and speaker Emily Wilson Hussem has long advised and worked with women to lead fulfilling lives and guard against heartbreak. In her video, “The WORST Reason to Get Married,” Hussem cites the fear of not finding anyone else as the reason why too many women stay in bad relationships and enter a rocky marriage. The root of this fear is ultimately loneliness and not wanting to end up alone. 

The men’s counseling and coaching page, Guy Stuff, has similar insights but in regards to dating: “People who swing from relationship to relationship to avoid being alone never get to know themselves and what makes them happy. Because of that, they find it even more challenging to recognize what they appreciate in other people and what real love looks like.” Regardless of whether it’s a current toxic relationship we’re afraid to break off or running toward the next relationship because one ended, all so we don’t have to be alone, loneliness and our fear of it will keep us from knowing real love, understanding ourselves, and realizing what we actually need in a romantic relationship.

Fearing loneliness is often what drives our desire to be in a relationship, even if it’s toxic, just so we don’t have to feel lonely.

So, how do we beat this fear? As I mentioned before, there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. Often, loneliness is mistaken for aloneness. However, being alone isn’t something we should actually fear because we are often alone – it’s a physical state. Being lonely is an emotion, and we all get lonely at times. Because loneliness is an emotion, it's not exclusive to singleness – you can be in a relationship and still feel lonely. But fearing loneliness is often what drives our desire to be in a relationship, even if it’s toxic, just so we don’t have to feel lonely. Nystrom Counseling states being comfortable with being alone is a good sign – you are comfortable with the relationship you have with yourself – but “avoiding alone time at all costs…may be a sign that you need to work on that relationship.” If the latter is the case, Nystrom suggests avoiding drinking alcohol alone, excessive screen time (social media, anyone?), and seeking other substances to escape feeling lonely, as well as fulfilling basic physical and mental health needs, calming our inner-critics, and accepting where we are currently because of our pasts. I would also add avoid excessive dating to the list.

In order to be comfortable with being alone, we have to allow ourselves to be alone. This may mean finally facing something that happened a long time ago, working through it, creating a routine of taking care of ourselves and our responsibilities, and discovering interests beyond what’s on our phones. We may unearth talents we never knew we had or never got to nurture, and that may change how we see ourselves in the mirror. The right man will find this newfound confidence attractive. It just takes time to cultivate.

If You Have a History of Toxic Boyfriends

Another boyfriend-turned-crazy-ex is behind us and we’re ready to look for a guy who is “better,” but if our entire dating history consists of a string of men who turned out to be not just bad for us but truly toxic, how can we trust ourselves to find someone who isn’t like the last? What if we’re blinded to the red flags that are key to letting us know this guy is not it? And if that’s the case, how can taking a break from dating help?

As discussed here on Evie before by Meghan Dillon, there seems to be an attraction to toxic relationships. Dillon explains how teens are inundated with characters whose arguably toxic love stories were all the rage, and this is a trend that continues in the media today. Pop culture love stories that we become obsessed with at an impressionable age are everywhere. We’ve grown up and can easily see that many of these relationships are toxic, no matter how much we may have “shipped” them in the past or still today. While this may or may not explain the tendency to fall for the wrong guys, it does lend to how we’ve been influenced to accept them in our lives. 

Yet, Dillon digs deeper to explain that women, despite knowing these relationships are unhealthy, may be attracted to such men for two main reasons: the belief we can fix him and we’re addicted. “I can fix him” is a common trope, but as Dillon says, “that’s not what love is about.” Our goal shouldn’t be to change him. Dating is meant to help us meet the one who brings out the best in us. The process of dating shows us who complements us as people – it’s an indicator of who we should spend the rest of our lives with despite flaws on both sides. In a healthy relationship, the love for the other is often what improves the person because it's the motivation to be better for them. 

Our addiction comes from manipulation on the man's part. Unlike with changing him, we might enter a relationship not knowing he’s a bad guy. His toxicity can’t be easily read. These men play with the woman’s heartstrings to make her feel for him even while he makes her at fault for everything. Lindsay Dodgson from Insider explains, “With something called ‘trauma bonding,’ victims become addicted to the emotional push and pull of their partner, with high levels of the stress hormone cortisol when things are bad, paired with a rush of dopamine when given affection as a reward for behaving.” The victim becomes addicted to the man’s unpredictable emotions and the potential of expressed affection.

Dillon recommends cultivating the relationship with yourself to get out of the rut of being addicted to toxic men. But, if you continually seek out toxic men to fulfill a desire to change them, believing we can fix him can become an addiction in and of itself. With any addiction, an addict has to evaluate the addiction objectively and make active changes accordingly, and during that time, a romantic relationship is usually discouraged. It logically follows that someone with an addiction to certain romantic relationships should spend time away from dating to find and address the root causes of the addiction to toxic men.

If You Feel Negativity toward the Opposite Sex

“Men are trash.” Yes, some men are toxic. However, it’s concerning just how much male-bashing occurs today, which has spurred a heightened woman-bashing response. In other words, misandry fueling misogyny. 

Sarah Begley with Time Magazine argues women use misandry as a joke in their fight against the patriarchy – that they don’t actually hate men but that these jokes have led to unintended consequences. She makes a good point: “But inherent in this word ‘misandry’ is hatred. And inherent in phrases like ‘ban men’ and ‘male tears’ are cruelty and violence. If a man wore a tee shirt that said ‘misogynist,’ even if he were a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, wearing it tongue-in-cheek, it would not be funny. It would be misguided. … Telling half the population that we hate them, even in jest, is not the way to [make allies].” It’s not surprising that men feel hated by women when many target them to show their disgust for the patriarchy; it’s also not surprising that men would show their dislike for the messaging by resisting and fighting back.

However, the misandry expressed by some feminists may have already inflicted its damaging effects upon the male population if Micheal Gurian’s research is any indication: 

• Boys create 90% of discipline problems.

• Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD and be medicated.

• Boys make up 80% of high school dropouts.

• Boys make up less than 45% of the college population.

Arguably, men are less inclined to do well because of decades of women demanding men take up less space in society to make room for female achievement. Not only has it potentially affected male success in comparison to their female counterparts, but radical feminism has vastly altered the dating sphere. In an article from the Good Men Project, Ezra Griffith focuses on how the adoption of victimhood (women are never wrong) and consumerism (women can have it all) mentalities has led to women not acknowledging their responsibilities in the dating process and becoming hyper-selective when it comes to the kind of men they’ll agree to date. 

The villainization of men has led to 53% of single men fearing even to approach women because they don't want to be seen as creepy. In considering these implications and the fact that young men and women are becoming even more extreme political opposites, perhaps all of this combined could be the reason why 63% of young men today are single by choice. Men are obviously finding it harder to connect with women in the current social climate, though we must recognize that this may also be due to some men who are “satisfying” themselves with pornography and using it as a way to avoid settling down.

There are good guys out there, but they’re not going to be attracted to women who have fallen into the “victim” slump or who don’t respect them.

So, maybe we’re not the kind of women to jokingly (or perhaps seriously) demean men or buy into the idea that women are never the problem. It would also be unfair to say women are at absolute fault for why men are lonelier and more addicted to pornography simply because we’ve become needlessly picky about who we’ll date. Men have agency and an obligation to self-control. But maybe we have let our past experiences with not-so-great dates, boyfriends, or men in our lives sour our personal opinions of men in such a way that it’s difficult for us to take men seriously or not secretly resent them. There are good guys out there, but they’re not going to be attracted to women who have fallen into the “victim” slump or who don’t respect them. 

Just like women, men need a partner who builds them up instead of tearing them down. And, let’s face it – it’s not always only the man who did something wrong that ultimately led to the bad relationship or an emotional breakup. If we’ve begun to find ourselves disrespectful or resentful – or both – of men, then it’s time to take a step back and evaluate why we’ve begun to adopt such a negative view of the opposite sex and understand what part we play in contributing to healthy or unhealthy dating and good or bad breakups.

If You’ve Been Ignoring Your Emotional Baggage

A common thread in the discussion up to this point has been that there is something that needs to be dealt with that has been continually avoided. Rebounding is often avoiding the emotional process of closure after a breakup. Dating to not be alone is avoiding confronting the fear of loneliness. Consistently dating toxic men is a product of avoiding the reasons why you’re attracted to bad men. Dating while not having a good opinion of men is the avoidance of reflecting on self-responsibility in dating. Each involves facing some sort of emotional baggage, and we need to work to resolve these issues. Even if not completely, understanding why we do what we do in the dating sphere is getting somewhere.

These kinds of avoidance aren’t the only emotional baggage we may need to face. The phrase “working on myself” may be overused and is sometimes an easy cop-out for ending a relationship, but it’s still a valid activity to partake in. Some things that happened in our lives have left invisible, though indelible marks on us, and the trauma can still be influencing us. For example, perhaps there was an absent or abusive father figure who impacted your perception of men. Working on mental health, going to therapy, and developing healthy habits – which can include eating well, exercising, discovering new hobbies, or cultivating your faith – can be key to growing past the trauma and moving forward. Working through the past and the pain can create a foundation that is ready to have a romantic relationship healthily built upon it.

If You’re Dating without an End Goal

Casual dating yet is another reason a woman should take a break from dating. It’s a high risk activity, including an increased physical risk in comparison to men, emotional risk, and damaged perception of worth. 

Beyond the risk of STIs, when a woman has casual sex, there’s greater potential risk than for the man because sex is a reproductive act. If a baby is conceived, a woman is faced with allowing her child to live or aborting it. If a woman decides to keep her child, instead of putting it up for adoption, the father might decide it’s her problem and leave her as a single mother. The brunt of parenting, raising, and providing for her child rests completely on her shoulders. A woman might choose abortion, but the abortion procedure brutally ends the life of the child, no matter if it’s a first, second, or third trimester abortion, and has many negative effects on the mother. A British study showed, in comparison to women who gave birth, post-abortive women were 225% more likely to attempt suicide. A study on the abortion pill found that 83% of women said their abortion changed them, of which 77% of them said negatively; 77% regretted their abortion; 60% felt isolated; 38% had problems with drugs, alcohol, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. 

Women are emotional creatures, and admitting it is not a bad thing. It’s part of our nurturing nature. Hookup culture hurts us through our emotions too. Sex is a reproductive act, but it’s also a bonding act. Oxytocin, the “love hormone,” is responsible for bonding with your partner when engaging in sex, and, according to Healthline, “The more time you spend with your partner, the more oxytocin you produce; the more oxytocin you produce, the more you may desire your partner.” When we engage in intercourse before marriage, we’re bonding hormonally with the man we’re dating, telling our bodies that this person is our life partner. 

Hookup culture isn’t meant for bonding because it works exactly as it sounds – a person gets lured in, caught on the momentary attraction, and then sent back into the dating pool. That’s where a woman’s biology and hookup culture contradict, and it’s the cause of why (even though we tell ourselves the hookup didn’t mean anything) we’re hurt when the guy just wanted us for pleasure. 

The psychological risk of hookup culture is a damaged perception of self-worth and value. In her Evie article, Juliana Stewart notes that when it comes to finding a spouse, the person dating for marriage is usually looking for someone who didn’t spend years participating in hookup culture. She states, “Women know this intuitively, and it’s the reason many lie about their number. According to a survey conducted by the student publication The Tab, ‘A quarter of female students lie about lovers. 20% reduce the numbers so they look less promiscuous, but 12% of male students exaggerate their numbers.’” The trends captured in this survey can be easily seen outside the college campus. In an episode of the Whatever podcast, a self-professed red pill businessman, Justin Waller, told the sexually active women at the table that they were not “high-value” women because of how many partners they’ve had, yet he proudly professed not being married and having multiple families – which made him “high value.” 

Regardless of being male or female, a person’s value is not dependent on sexual activity. The worth of a man or a woman is unchangeable. However, casual sex and hookup culture have negative impacts on the perception of worth, as well as on both the individual and overall dating culture. Having too many partners can hurt us, and makes the dating experience more about the physical than about truly loving the other person and ourselves well. If love is willing the good of the other, do we really want to engage in meaningless sex with huge consequences? As we grapple with wanting love, we must grapple with our beliefs about dating and if sex is really “required” to get to know a person. 

If we aren’t dating for marriage, or even for the sake of a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, then we’re really only dating for the wrong reasons. 

It could be the case that we’ve never engaged with hookup culture but don’t feel ready to date for marriage, so we’ve dabbled in dating aimlessly and led some guys on while knowing we wouldn’t get serious with them. While some articles claim making goals for relationships is wrong, i.e. looking for marriageable qualities in the people you date, and lament that this approach is turning dating into “significant-other shopping,” you could argue that is what dating should be – without making dates and a current boyfriend commodities we “deserve,” of course. From her article in Medium, Arianna E. discusses why modern dating is frustrating and shallow: commitment and communication have taken a severe hit, relationships are ambiguous to say the least, promiscuity is the new “normal,” no intentionality is rampant, and emotional exhaustion is taking a toll on people hoping for love. 

To make dating less of a dumpster fire, she suggests not participating in what she calls “semi-quasi-pseudo-relationships” and bringing back the courting mindset. She explains, “There is no reason to be dating at all unless you are looking for someone to marry.” If we aren’t dating for marriage, or even for the sake of a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, then we’re really only dating for the wrong reasons. We’re wasting the other person’s time and our own, and we’re still the receiver of all the dating hurts and blues. Dating is never “no strings attached.” Allowing ourselves time away from our previous dating habits so we can reflect on the purpose of dating is a must. If we’re not actually not putting ourselves on the market, then we shouldn’t advertise.

If You’re Dating While on the Pill

There has been a rise in social awareness about the birth control pill: how it’s often prescribed carelessly for a myriad of health issues, how sometimes it doesn’t even work, how it may be masking rather than healing the health problem for which it was prescribed, how it’s a Group 1 carcinogen, and how it has a sordid past of eugenics, racism, and unethical clinical trials. These are good reasons to get off the pill in and of themselves, but how it affects our behavior is another. 

A clip from comedian Taylor Tomlinson’s Netflix comedy special Look at You on the topic of birth control went viral. The clip begins with Tomlinson wishing she could get off the pill because “I’d love to meet me.” She proceeds to ask the audience if anyone has gotten off the pill and what happened. One guest said she broke up with her boyfriend of six years – once off the pill, her sense of smell changed, and she was disgusted by her boyfriend. Tomlinson joked, “You were like, ‘When I was on birth control, he smelled like the future, and when I got off, he smelled like the past.’” It’s one of those moments when it’s funny because it’s true. When birth control was influencing who we were attracted to, he did seem like a good option. But after getting off? It might be a completely different story. 

An altered sense of smell seems like a random side effect – why does it matter? Woman actually use their sense of smell to identify men who are immunologically different and therefore more genetically compatible with them. Natural Womanhood says, “women who are contracepting choose men with similar immunity genes to themselves, as opposed to naturally cycling women, who choose men with different immunity genes (and mating with an individual with different immunity genes is evolutionarily beneficial). One study even proposed that this phenomenon could have downstream effects on the health of future children.” 

Even more dramatically, hormonal birth control can interfere with our sense of attraction so much that it can nudge women into feeling bisexual, according to Dr. Sarah Hill. Dr. Hill says, in a state of pill-induced hormonal imbalance, “a woman's behavior may be altered and she may be attracted to a different type of partner.”

Some studies claim this is all hearsay, while other studies and personal experiences point to it being true. Take, for instance, Catherine Guidici Lowe, Bachelor Sean Lowe’s wife, who began to take birth control leading up to their wedding. Talking about her experience on hormonal birth control, she said her breasts swelled, she gained weight (and couldn’t fit her wedding dress), she became overly emotional, and she was rude to Sean over things that shouldn’t have even made her react or get angry. Catherine remembers Sean telling her, “You need to get off of that. You are not the same person.” 

So, if we’re dating while on the pill, we’re potentially under the influence of something that could distort our ability to choose the right person for us. But the reality of getting off birth control is our bodies will need time to rebalance, replenish, and heal, and it can be a difficult process, especially if we have serious fertility issues. One option is Toxic Breakup, a birth control detox supplement that detoxifies your body from the synthetic hormones, replenishes the essential minerals and vitamins that the pill depletes, and supports your hormonal health with essential fatty acids. It may be a good idea not to begin a new relationship as we begin the process of “meeting ourselves” after the pill and letting our bodies readjust into a regular rhythm of health or acquire necessary medical attention.

Maybe you’re dating for marriage, but you’re not comfortable with potentially having kids right away. But if birth control can be so harmful for you, what alternatives are there? Fertility-awareness based methods (and, no, it’s not the rhythm method) are cycle-based fertility charting systems that help us learn more about our bodies by tracking certain biomarkers like cervical mucus changes, basal body temperature changes, cervical changes, or the hormone LH on a daily basis without exposing us to hormonal or toxic methods to avoid pregnancy. When practiced correctly, fertility-awareness based methods can be 99% effective in achieving pregnancy and as or more effective in avoiding pregnancy as other types of contraceptives, and it has the added benefit of both wife and husband taking care of their reproductive health naturally. 

Closing Thoughts

When it comes to modern dating, it can be chaotic. Yet, knowing when to take a break from swimming along with the dating pool currents can help bring some clarity and much needed rest from it all. There are wrong reasons to date, and allowing ourselves to recognize them can help us in the long run, especially when we return to dating in the future. So, whether these signs apply to you or someone you know, maybe it’s time to take or suggest a dating fast. When we’ve dealt with these signs that we need a break, we can approach dating knowing what we need and what we’ve learned to meet our goal of finding our forever someone. 

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