Why You Don’t Get Over a Man by Getting Under the Next One
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Ann-Kathrin Petersen is the author of Ellavate: 7 Steps to Elevate After Toxic Love and host of the podcast Team Ellavate. As a trauma-informed Healthy Love Coach, she helps women heal from toxic relationships, build self-worth, raise their standards, and create healthy, secure, and deeply fulfilling love and relationships.
After a breakup, the temptation to seek attention from someone new can feel like a shortcut to feeling wanted again, but distraction is not the same as healing. A dating sabbatical can create the space to process what happened, understand your patterns, rebuild your independence, and reconnect with the life that is uniquely yours.
You don’t get over a man by getting under the next one
There, I said it. After a breakup, getting attention from somebody new can feel like medicine. You download the apps, somebody starts flirting with you, your phone lights up again, and suddenly you have proof. I’m still attractive and wanted. I’ve still got it.
Maybe you have a little fun. I’m not against fun. But I do think we need to be honest about the difference between moving on and distracting ourselves from the fact that we haven’t.
That is why I love what I call a Dick Free Season, a deliberate dating sabbatical. A period in which you are not looking for the next relationship, recycling the ex, entertaining a situationship, or collecting matches because silence feels uncomfortable.
It is not anti-men. It is not anti-sex. It is a decision to give yourself some space before another person takes up that space again.
Replacing someone is not the same as processing what happened
A breakup can hurt even when you know the relationship needed to end. You are grieving more than a person. There are routines, plans, physical closeness, the version of yourself you were in that relationship, and often a future you had already started living in your head.
Then somebody new comes along and wants you. Of course that feels good, especially if the breakup left you wondering whether you were somehow not enough.
The problem is that another person cannot permanently repair that feeling for you. If your self-worth falls apart when one man stops choosing you and suddenly comes back when another man starts choosing you, your self-worth is still sitting in somebody else’s hands. You have just changed hands. Sometimes we need to stop dating long enough to notice that.
You can change the man and keep the exact same relationship
This was one of the biggest lessons for me: leaving a relationship does not automatically mean you have left the pattern.
You can block him, delete every photograph, buy new bedsheets, swear you will never tolerate that behaviour again, and still walk straight into a very similar dynamic six months later. Because the pattern was never only about him.
Maybe inconsistency makes you work harder. Maybe somebody pulling away makes you want them more. Maybe you confuse that nervous, slightly obsessive feeling with chemistry. Maybe you overgive because being needed makes you feel secure. Maybe you see potential and start building a relationship with the person he could become rather than the person standing in front of you.
Or maybe you are so busy wondering, “Does he like me?” that you forget to ask, “Do I actually like him? Do I like how I feel around him? Do I like what he is offering me?”
A new person does not automatically create a new pattern. You do that by becoming aware of your part in the old one. Trauma can be part of the story. It doesn’t have to become the whole story.
I also want to be careful with the word trauma. Not every breakup is trauma. Not every emotionally unavailable ex is a narcissist. Not every questionable dating choice needs a psychological diagnosis.
But our earlier relationships and attachment experiences do shape us. If closeness used to come with unpredictability, rejection, conflict, or the feeling that you had to earn love, those experiences can affect what feels familiar later.
Familiar is not the same as healthy. You can consciously want consistency and still feel strangely drawn to inconsistency. You can say you want an emotionally available partner and then feel far more activated by the person who keeps you guessing. A dating sabbatical gives you a chance to notice this without immediately acting it out with somebody new.
Do I actually miss my ex, or do I miss being wanted? What happens to me when somebody pulls away? Why did I stay when I knew something wasn’t right? What did I tolerate because losing him felt scarier than losing myself?
Those questions are uncomfortable. They are also far more useful than analysing his last WhatsApp message for the 47th time.
Being single for a while does not mean nobody wants you
This is where the Dick Free Season can get difficult. A few weeks go by. Nobody is sending the good morning text. There is no Friday night date. Your friends seem to be coupling up, and the dating apps are sitting right there, promising you that somebody could be interested in you within the next ten minutes.
Then the story starts. Maybe nobody wants me. No. You have temporarily stopped applying for the position. There is a difference between being unwanted and deciding that, for now, you are unavailable.
I don’t want your dating sabbatical to become a sad waiting room where you sit around until a man arrives and your “real life” starts again. I want it to feel like getting your life back.
No mixed signals to decode. No checking whether he has watched your story. No rearranging your weekend because he might be free. No negotiating with yourself about whether behaviour you dislike is actually “not that bad” because you really fancy him. You get your attention back. Use it.
Build a life that is actually yours
This, for me, is the heart of the whole thing. Use this season to find out what you like when nobody else’s preferences are in the room.
Relationships naturally involve compromise, but it is surprisingly easy to slowly build your life around another person. You start doing his hobbies. His friends become the people you see. His schedule determines your weekends. His dreams become the plans you are both working towards. None of this necessarily looks dramatic while it is happening.
Then the relationship ends, and you realise you are not entirely sure what is yours anymore. So I want you to ask yourself very basic questions again. What fills my cup? What makes me happy? What do I want my mornings to look like? What do I want to do on a Sunday? Where do I want to travel? What do I want to learn? Who do I want around me? What do I want to build? What makes me feel alive? Then go and find out.
Train for something. Take the trip. Try the class. Start the project. Make your home somewhere you love being. Spend time with friends who make you laugh. Go dancing. Sit in a café alone. Do things badly. Try things you thought you wouldn’t like. Create traditions that have absolutely nothing to do with a relationship.
I want your life to become so full that the next time somebody comes into it, you can ask a completely different question.
Not, "Can he make me happy?" But, "Does he add to the happiness that is already here, or does he subtract from it?" That question changes dating. Financial independence is wonderful. I want emotional independence too.
I love independent women. I love women with careers, who make their own money, know what they want, and know they can provide for themselves. But I think we need to talk about another kind of independence, too–emotional independence. I don’t mean becoming a lone wolf. I don’t believe the goal is to need nobody. We are human. We need people.
Have friends you can call. Have family if that is a safe support for you. Build community. Work with a therapist or coach when you need that kind of support. Have hobbies that get you out of your head. Have people who can sit next to you when life is awful, and you do not need them to fix it.
What I do want is for you to learn how to care for yourself without requiring a romantic partner to be your entire emotional support system.
Get curious about yourself. What happens when you feel rejected? What happens when you are lonely? What does overwhelm feel like in your body? What actually helps you?
Maybe you need to move. Maybe you need to cry. Maybe you need to talk. Maybe you need to be alone for an evening. Maybe you need to call a friend and say, “I’m spiralling. Please talk to me about literally anything else.”
Learn yourself that well. Because I hope you meet someone amazing. I hope you fall in love. I hope you build something beautiful together. But even beautiful relationships aren't guaranteed against life. Relationships can end. Circumstances change. People leave. Sometimes life simply does something none of us planned.
If that happens, I want you to know that although you may be heartbroken, you have not lost your entire world. You still have you. You still have your friends, your work, your interests, your favourite places, your routines, your dreams, your community, and the strange little things that make your life yours.
Emotional independence does not mean you never fall apart. It means falling apart does not mean losing everything. That is the kind of independence I want women to have.
So how long should you stay off dating?
There is no magic number. People love rules: 30 days, 90 days, six months, a year. But you can spend six months technically single while checking your ex’s Instagram every morning and never emotionally leave the relationship. The point is not to win an abstinence competition. The point is to use the space.
Can you think about your ex without immediately needing to do something about it? Can you feel lonely without reaching for romantic attention as pain relief? Do you understand what you ignored in the relationship? Do you know what you would do differently now? Can you walk away from inconsistency even if the person is ridiculously attractive? Do you actually enjoy the life you have built?
Then ask yourself one more question, "Do I want to date because I am genuinely curious about meeting someone, or because I need somebody to make me feel okay again?" Your answer will tell you far more than a calendar will.
When you date again, don’t go back with the same operating system
Eventually, the Dick Free Season ends. It should. The point is not to hide from love. But when you go back, I want you to date differently.
Stop making “Does he like me?” the main question. Is he consistent? Is there clarity? Do his actions match his words? Do I feel respected? Can I be myself here? Does this relationship fit the life I have created, or am I already shrinking that life to make room for him?
Please ask the question women sometimes forget to ask when they are busy trying to be chosen: Do I actually like him? Not his potential. Not who he might become if he finally commits, communicates better, goes to therapy, and stops disappearing for three days. Him. Today.
That is one of the gifts of stepping away from dating for a while. You stop approaching love like an audition and start becoming more discerning about who gets access to you.
Being single is not the emergency
We have made being single sound like something women need to fix. A relationship ends, and almost immediately the question becomes, "When are you getting back out there?"
Why the rush? The dangerous part is not being single for a season. The dangerous part is being so frightened of being single that you repeatedly accept relationships that cost you your peace. So have the Dick Free Season.
Have it because your heartbreak deserves to be processed, not passed on. Have it because your patterns are easier to see when you are not busy repeating them with somebody new. Have it because I want you to build a life that is unmistakably yours, based on your desires, your friendships, your interests, your ambitions, and all the things that make you feel like yourself.
Build it so well that when somebody enters it, you can tell whether he adds to your happiness or slowly subtracts from it. Build it so well that even if you meet an incredible person and, for whatever reason, he is no longer part of your life one day, you know you will be devastated, perhaps, but not empty.
You have yourself. You have your people. You have a life. That is emotional independence. That is what I want the dating sabbatical to give you. Not a break from men for the sake of taking a break from men. A return to yourself.
I want you to come out of it knowing yourself better than you did before. Trusting yourself more. Knowing what calms you, what excites you, what matters to you, and what you are no longer willing to trade for a relationship.
Then, when somebody does enter your life, you are not asking him to give you one. You are deciding whether he deserves to be part of the one you already created. You don’t get over a man by getting under the next one.
Sometimes you get over him by staying where you are for a while, getting your own life back, and realising that the empty space you were desperate to fill was never really empty. It was yours. Maybe that is exactly the space you needed to elevate.
Read more from Ann-Kathrin Petersen
Ann-Kathrin Petersen, Healthy Love Coach & EFT Practitioner
Ann-Kathrin Petersen is the author of Ellavate: 7 Steps to Elevate After Toxic Love and the host of the Team Ellavate podcast. As a trauma-informed Healthy Love Coach, she helps women heal from toxic and unhealthy relationships, raise their standards, build self-worth, and create lives they genuinely love. Through Team Ellavate, she shares empowering education around healthy love, emotional healing, attachment styles, conscious dating, nervous system regulation, confidence, boundaries, and creating secure, fulfilling relationships and families. Her work helps people move from survival mode and relationship chaos into healthy, connected, and deeply aligned love.
