Has a bad breakup made you lose faith in romance – or even yourself? Are you fed up with scouring the apps? Here, relationship experts explain the healthiest ways to look for love
ince she separated from her partner five years ago, Sarah has been on two dates. “Every time I think about it, I recoil at the idea of trusting someone like I did before,” she says. On the rare occasion she looks at a dating app – the last time, she deleted it after 24 hours – she scours the profiles for warning signs. “It’s very hard for me to see positives in people’s profiles. Would I like to meet someone again? Absolutely. But I think my trust levels are damaged.
One woman, who is black, realised that she was being “fetishised by white men”. On her last date, in which she met a man for the second time, he tried to kiss and touch her; when she asked him not to, he told her he wasn’t going to see her again. “All these experiences reinforce my belief that men get physical quickly,” she wrote – and they are quick to reject her when they don’t get what they want.
“The pain of being in a toxic relationship doesn’t leave you and you wonder if you are going to go back to the same thing again,” says, a behavioural psychologist and relationship coach. “It makes people reluctant and fearful of patterns repeating themselves.” There is always a risk that you will be disappointed or heartbroken again, she says: “You’ve got to be aware that any relationship could unravel for whatever reason.” But by taking the time to learn from previous relationships, rather than jumping into another, “you get better at spotting the signs”., a sex, relationships and trauma psychotherapist.
When we talk about losing faith in love, “what it really means is losing faith in our own lovability”, says, a psychotherapist and couples counsellor. “A lot of people come into therapy when they’ve had a bad relationship experience or breakup, and often the first step is training them to believe that they are lovable, that all of us are worthy of love. That starts with being more loving towards ourselves.
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