"time-out" between relationships- yes or no?

[SleepyWitch]

hey guys,
my sister-in-law and her ex boyfriend broke up this summer after 5 years together. They were planning to get married next year. 5 months later, her ex has already got a new girl friend. I don't know how long they've been together, but it must have been a while.
Lots of times I see people going from one (long-term) relationship to the next without any 'breaks' in between.
What about you guys? Do you normally take some time out to reflect after you've broken up with someone? Or do you move straight on to the next long-term relationship? If you move on or know people who move on quickly, how do they do it? I mean, how do they get to know a new partner that quickly etc. Do you know any couples that got together right after a break-up and are still together after 3+ years and genuinely happy?
What's the longest you've ever gone without a relationship? (I mean because you choose to, not because you couldn't find a partner). What's the shortest? Which worked better?

[Niamh]

I think breaks are important. You need to find your grounding again and refelct on what went wrong to make sure you dont make the same mistakes and to accept it was the right decission. It also gives you time to "heal" emotionally. My ex went straight into a new relationship after we spilt from a four year relationship. She was either already on the side lines or he met her a week or two after we broke up. I didnt hear for six months but i was angry when i did. And it wasnt because of the whole being in a new relationship so soon that made me angry... It was the fact he had been constantly annoying me for months asking to get back etc an all the time he was seeing someone else. I pitied her very much. Still do.
It was almost a year before i even considered seeing someone else. I needed the break for me more than anything.

[no-angels]

this choice is a matter of one's personality, psychology after the break-up and of course, chance.

it may change according to depth of the traces on my heart after the years spent with my boyfriend. of course i can not ignore the reason for the break-up. if he hurt me deeply, this harmed the relationship and i can't forget it easily, i choose to make use of other opportunities :) this helps to forget the painful days. but i don't want to cause misunderstanding, this is not a kind of manipulating somone...

everytime we say "this was the last, i'll close the doors of my heart", we meet new people and welcome them to our heart. this is a circle. because LIFE MOVES ON...

[Hank Stamper]

it depends how needy and insecure they are! i always find that those who jump from one relationship to the next usually fall into that category...

[1n50mn14]

I think you need time between relationships to be YOU. I see way too many people who morph into the person that they're dating, and when they hop from one long term relationship to the next, they just become the new person. They take on attributes of their personality, dress the way that person would like, do the same things as them, listen to the same music, etc. It's pathetic. One of the reasons it can be so scary for them to be on their own is because *drum roll* they have no personality, as they've sacrificed it to become the 'ideal girlfriend' *yeah, I guess I'm only talking about girls, here*.

[skib]

Edit- nevermind! Read the post wrong!

[RobinHood3000]

I don't have enough experience with relationships to have what statisticians would call an appropriate "sample size," but I will say that unless the prior relationship has already basically disintegrated by the time of the official breakup, I'd probably want to take a break.

[soundofmusic]

When I was young, I quickly jumped from a break up to another relationship; or sometimes, I would date a few people at a time. The point was, I didn't want to take time to "hurt". Most of the time, these people had the same annoying qualities as the person who I broke up with; so I could kind of watch things in retrospect, while they went wrong again.
Now that I am much older, I understand one thing. There are very few relationships in which love is felt equally. So there is normally one person almost glad to leave; and the other who is severly wounded.
If you are the one who is wounded; give yourself time to think.
Try to have a relationship with yourself: can you enjoy a movie or go out to eat without carrrying someone around?

[wlz]

What's the name of that novel???

[Mathor]

When I was in high school I would go from girlfriend to girlfriend, the longest of which lasted two years. After high school I have found that I needed a lot of time. I needed time to think about who I was and what I wanted, because I had spent so much time thinking about what other people wanted and needed, and trying to make other people happy. I have been single for about a year and a half, and I am pretty happy I guess. From 7th grade to 12th grade I had gone little more than a month without a girlfriend at any given time, so I feel like now I owe myself some time to myself.

However, I do not think going on to another girlfriend is such a crazy idea after no time at all. I feel like by the time two people decide to break up, they probably saw it coming a while ago. In most cases I felt broken up to that person like a week or so before we officially broke up. So by the time we actually broke up, in a lot of cases, I was already pretty much over them. The only case that works opposite this is the case of the girlfriend I had for 2 years. With really really long relationships, I feel the mind takes a little more time. Like it's just hard to adjust to life without a person if you spent most of your time with them for many years.

[SleepyWitch]

I think you need time between relationships to be YOU. I see way too many people who morph into the person that they're dating, and when they hop from one long term relationship to the next, they just become the new person. They take on attributes of their personality, dress the way that person would like, do the same things as them, listen to the same music, etc. It's pathetic. One of the reasons it can be so scary for them to be on their own is because *drum roll* they have no personality, as they've sacrificed it to become the 'ideal girlfriend' *yeah, I guess I'm only talking about girls, here*.

I'm glad you mention that. I had 2 friends who were like that. One of them, always had a boyfriend from the age she was 13 and if the boyfriend was into HipHop she became the greatest HipHop fan ever. If he was into punk she started listening to punk.
The other one was 20-ish when I got to know her at uni. Her ex-boyfriend read Lord of the Rings 18 times. So she read it, too. Then her new boyfriend was an opera singer, so she suddenly remembered how she'd always loved operas. :confused: