Too scared and too scarred to jump into your next relationship? Don't feel too distraught over it, many women feel the same way after a tumultuous relationship. One of the things we should treasure most is our love, and who we give it too is extremely important. At least, it should be. If we make a mistake and give it to someone undeserving, we can set ourselves up for ruin. Being mentally scarred from a bad breakup is the result of a combination of things. An inaccurate assessment of people is one of them. Sometimes, we are so determined to see what we desire to see in a person even when their actions are contradicting everything we are forcing ourselves to believe.
With that being said, we must be careful not to skew our entire perspective based on negative past experiences. There is a difference between learning from past mistakes and growing wiser, more careful and calculated in our dealings with people, and irrationally assuming every new guy you meet is associated with turmoil and abuse. It isn't fair to them and it isn't fair to you. Of course, this is easier said than done because your self-esteem has been heavily damaged. While in your dark place, you'll be led to believe that everything was your fault; you'll convince yourself that you're toxic and can't be trusted to manage a healthy relationship. And it is this line of thinking that will force your actions. So in a way, you are encouraging a cycle where you believe you are terrible, then behave terribly to justify your negative thoughts. And the new guy across from you has to deal with the confusing, messy mindset you are displaying to him.
It should go without saying that after a break up, time needs to be taken to work on yourself; time needs to be taken to identify and improves flaws you may notice within yourself, but it shouldn't be a time where you constantly beat yourself down about things that happened within the relationship. The objective is to rise and grow, not to fall and shrink.
The hardest part of dealing with past pain is that, in some inexplicable way, it's almost a comfort to stay in that dark place; it's easier to put yourself down than to lift yourself up, easier accepting the guilt and faults than it is to work on your issues one by one. Don't fall into the trap of believing there's nothing worth fixing; convincing yourself that you don't deserve happiness is absolving yourself of the responsibility of remodeling broken confidence. The only way to enter the next relationship with a renewed, refreshed mindset is applying the medicine of self-reflection. It's the kind of medicine you can't pick over the counter, not the kind of medicine anyone else can provide. Sometimes self-love is the strongest mental medicine to healing the wounds of past pain.
Understanding that a healing process needs to take place before going on yet another journey with someone new --- where personalities have to be learned all over again, habits have to be identified, compatibility has to be measured --- don't make the mistake of attaching yourself to someone as a coping mechanism. That is it to say, you fall under the assumption that you can't be happy, you can't be fulfilled, if you are alone. You believe you can drown out the bad memories by hopping from relationship to relationship, never slowing down to properly address the afflictions you are dealing with inside. These methods of distraction will simply leave your heart rotting on the inside, and those moments where you lash out in your next relationship, behaving erratically and placing a strain between you and him, these are the manifestations of negligence; skipping the healing process, and allowing your heart to be blackened and stripped away piece by piece without any healing will destroy you eventually.
Just as a medical emergency might require an EMT to rush over to a stiff body, fall down and render rigorous CPR, such is a requirement for you as well, when your mind and soul is being tarnished by past pain. Your soul needs to be resuscitated, it needs the warmth of your love. To escape the dark place in your life, you have to understand that before anyone else can get involved and help you, you must be willing to help yourself. Accepting the pain of anything that has ravished your past is far from easy --- it's likely the most difficult thing to do. But your will and desire to climb out of the darkness will empower you. Your heart is an engine that needs motivational gas to run. It needs that push, that motivation...it needs you. The light of your love will wash away the blackness of dark memories.
I believe in you. Now you believe in you.