Your past relationships do not introduce you to your future relationships. Your past relationships do not bring more compatible people into your life. You would have met the person who you are with right now, whether you had past relationships or not.
Instead of giving us all these skills to have better relationships, our past relationships often create confusion and bitterness which causes us to separate from ourselves and prevents us from being our authentic self in the next relationship.
There are many people in their forties and fifties who are dating the exact same way they did when they were in their twenties. The relationships in their twenties did not teach them how to find love in their future; instead, it caused them to create certain patterns and beliefs that are preventing them from having that deep meaningful connection that they are craving.
When our relationships end, we like to tell ourselves that we can just dust ourselves off and move on, that we “learned a lot” and we are “better off” and “there are more fish in the sea” and “no regrets”. We believe that the failed relationship will just prepare us for the real thing. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking prevents us from doing our work. It gives us permission to remain ignorant to our own patterns. We walk into our future relationships with the same beliefs about ourselves, about relationships, and about significant others that we had when we started our last relationship. Often these beliefs come with additional pains and bitterness that get carried forward rather than exposed and dealt with. Telling ourselves to “get over it and move on” prevents us from doing some much needed reflection and belief repatterning.
We like to think that we are creatures that learn. We learn from past mistakes, we learn from past relationships. But we aren’t. Logically we tell ourselves that we have received new information about what not to do next time, but the reality of it is, we are creatures of habit, not creatures of knowledge. We do what feels normal, even if we know our experience of normal is not effective (or not healthy). This is why so many people continue to create one identical relationship after the other. They are acting out of habit; doing it the same way they have always done it.
So how do you know when you are really ready to move on? How do you get to a point where you have really learned something?
When you can think about the person of the “failed” relationship and not feel pain. When you are aware of the beliefs and desires you had when you entered that relationship and you can retrospectively see the relationship differently than when you were in it. You will recognize that you have learned something when some of your beliefs about relationships have changed, and when you are consciously aware of how you will do and think differently in your next relationship.