PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

Sometimes, dating feels a bit like playing a child's board game. With every roll of the dice, you take a chance on a new relationship or a new person – and get a chance to create a future with somebody. Unfortunately, though, when those dice roll across the board, they almost never take you to that "happily ever after" square at the end of the game – heck, you're lucky if you roll doubles and get an extra turn every once in awhile.

When your roll of the relationship dice turns bad and things don't work out, it can be tempting to send those suckers spinning right back across the board again. You're in a hurry to win the game, so you've got to get yourself on to the next square, right? But what you may not realize is that spending time between squares is important, too – and that re-rolling your dice too quickly is an all-too-easy way to lose the game.

Take Care of Your Baggage

Alone time after a break up serves a purpose…and its most important purpose is getting you over the relationship that just ended. After you break up (especially if it was a long-term relationship, but even if it wasn't), you have a lot going on in your head and heart. Coming to terms with how the relationship ended and how it affected you is a big part of being ready for a new (and hopefully better) relationship.

Many people take their negative emotions and ideas with them into a new relationship – which is why those feelings are very aptly referred to as "baggage." But taking all of your negative baggage with you into your next relationship will bring a whole host of problems along with it – and these problems will, in turn, create unhealthy conflicts and unnecessary issues with your new partner. You owe it both to yourself and to the next person you date to come to terms with your break-up before you delve into something new – otherwise you'll make your new partner pay for some of the mistakes of your old one. Not exactly fair, is it?

Get in Touch with Yourself

Every relationship – romantic or otherwise – teaches you a valuable lesson about yourself. You just have to know how to look for it. Take the time between relationships to look more deeply at what you've learned and who you are, and try to fully embrace what you see. A huge part of being successful at a relationship with another person is being successful at the relationship you build with yourself: you are who you are and no man or woman is going to change that.

I know, I know…all of this sounds like a bit like, well…psycho-babble. But the truth is, one who takes the time to know, appreciate, and love him or herself is somebody who knows how to be happy. And a person who can be independently happy all on their own will have a much greater chance of being happy in a relationship – and reaching that elusive "happily ever after" square with their next roll of the dice.