Dating after narcissistic abuse—especially before you’re ready—is letting your damaged self-worth pick your next heartbreak.
I know this because I was that person.
I ran straight into the arms of someone who promised to fill the emptiness, I hadn’t learned to fill myself yet.
And it took me a good few guys to realise what I was doing.
It wasn’t until I banned myself from dating altogether, that my real healing took place.
You see…
Downloading Tinder isn’t the way to go—trust me!
There’s a lot more prep involved before you’re ready for that self-esteem destroyer!
(Unless your idea of romance is some strangers tongue in your mouth that you’re so not ready for)!
So below you’ll learn from my lived experience, as well as my research and expertise, on what you need to do before you get yourself back out there.
That way you don’t end up fucking some guy in his bedroom while his parents are sat downstairs watching TV, smoking fags (true story)! (Sorry mum)!
Why it’s a bad idea to date straight after a narcissist
There’s nothing worse than being fresh out of a discard.
To this day, it’s still the most dehumanising experience I’ve been through.
Because if you were like me, someone you thought loved you, suddenly and cruelly discarded you.
And you learned they’d lied to you, manipulated you and hidden their true intentions from you throughout your entire relationship.
So when you’ve had blind trust in someone, and that gets ripped apart, your whole sense of self gets shattered with it too.
Think about it:
When trust is missing from a relationship, there’s no relationship.
So when there’s no trust in yourself, there’s no relationship with yourself either—there’s a disconnect.
And until you gain that back, you’ll keep:
- repeating the same patterns,
- second-guessing your instincts, and
- abandoning yourself for the sake of someone else’s approval.
But you also won’t be able to:
- set boundaries,
- enforce them, or
- recognise when someone’s crossing them.
This is why dating after narcissistic abuse can’t happen straight away.
Because abuse takes a fuck load of time and work to get over!!
But if you follow my advice and learn from my mistakes, you will find love again. Just like I did.
Why dating after narcissistic abuse fails without self-work
The problem with feeling so terrible, is what you try to do to stop it.
You want a shortcut, a quick fix to end the discomfort you’re feeling. So when you get desperate, you do desperate things, like jumping on Tinder.
That app is specifically designed to give you instant gratification, or reinforce how shit you already feel. And both outcomes are too risky when you’re vulnerable as it is.
Because 1:
You’re more likely to run into something toxic again,
And 2:
You’re avoiding the real healing work you need to do.
How are you supposed to develop your sense of self, if you don’t allow yourself the time to be alone?
You need to shed the identity the narcissist engrained in you; the one that strengthened your belief that another person defines your worth.
That’s deep work that doesn’t just happen in a few weeks between relationships.
Take myself for example, I’m still getting to the root of it all now—more than six years after my ex!
And I’m not saying “no dating after narcissistic abuse for six years!” I’m purely highlighting that you can’t shortcut self-trust.
But you can end up delaying it if you continue dating fuckwits and not giving yourself the solitude you need to repair.
Skipping the work just means you’ll carry the same patterns into your next relationship. And you don’t want to get to your fifth narcissistic relationship and only realise then, that you’re actually the common denominator.
How to prepare for dating after narcissistic abuse
Dating again means you’ve not only healed, but you’re also resilient enough to handle what might be coming your way. Because I’ve heard—it ain’t pretty out there! Dating’s got a lot more brutal and it’s not for the fainthearted. Which is why this next section’s about the healing work you need to do to prepare.
The 4 phases of healing before dating again
When I think back to how I got ready to date again after narcissistic abuse, I see my healing as four separate parts. And they didn’t necessarily happen in the below order, but they were all areas that I had to cover to get to where I am today:
The first part:
Recognising and accepting that you were with a narcissist
This is the Googling stage: when you first discover what a narcissist is and you become completely obsessed with finding out everything there is to know about it!
You’re trying to evaluate the significance it plays in your relationship. Like how the narcissistic abuse cycle fits your dynamic, noticing the patterns, the love bombing, the confusion of gaslighting. You’re putting all the pieces together to try and make sense of it all somehow.
Which undoubtedly leads to a whole host of overwhelming emotions…
The second part:
Understanding and validating what happened
So once you’ve figured out what you’re potentially dealing with, and you’re fortunate enough to have access to therapy, you’re in the:
“Fuck I need back up stage!”
You want to fully understand and confirm that you dated a narcissist. And while a therapist won’t be able to diagnose and confirm 100% (without physically seeing them), you’ll still want their reassurance and expertise.
It’s that validation piece we so desperately crave after dating a narcissist. We just need to hear that we’re not crazy and have a right to be feeling the way we do.
Intellectualising your experience helps you understand why you have to detach from them too. Because now you’re realising the harm they’ve done as you’ve got confirmation from a professional.
The third part:
Recovering from the relationship
This part is all about processing the impact trauma’s had on you emotionally—we’re talking feelings!
And as a somatic coach, this is like my bread and butter!
Often, survivors will prioritise their mental health and neglect their physical health—their bodies. And this is not down to stupidity. But because there’s a lack of awareness about how trauma embeds itself physiologically too.
That’s your fight, flight and freeze (there’s fawn and appease too). And these conditioned stress responses can interfere with your dating life for years to come.
Let me explain…
Your nervous system may react to neutral situations as threats. Like panicking if you don’t hear back from your date right away (fearful of silent treatment). Or minimising your feelings to avoid conflict.
And these responses have kept happening because your nervous system learned they were necessary for survival. For example:
If your narcissistic ex was an aggressive person and yelled at you a lot, it probably felt safer for you to not bring things up with them. So you learned to discount your feelings in an effort to avoid conflict with them (flight response).
Over time, these habitual responses get engrained and when they go unaddressed they can start to disrupt your relationships. Which can lead to:
- self-sabotage because you’re terrified of getting hurt again, or
- repeating toxic relationship patterns
Somatic trauma-informed coaching
This is why somatic work is so needed; it teaches you how to regulate your emotions in a language your body understands. Because when you learn how to restore balance in your nervous system, you’re teaching it what safety feels like too.
And this is how you begin to rewire your survival patterns. So you stop overreacting to non-threatening situations, or feeling attracted to familiar but unhealthy dynamics, or mistaking a ‘lack of spark’ for boring!
The goal is for you to get to a place where you can recognise genuine incompatibility, from your trauma-driven discomfort. Which is exactly what I can help you with in my one-on-one somatic coaching sessions:
The fourth part:
Working on boundaries to prevent it happening again
This is where your healing stars to get more practical.
After narcissistic abuse, your sense of healthy behaviour gets distorted. So you might be overly cautious, second-guessing yourself and distrusting your instincts. But when you learn to set boundaries somatically, you can change this.
By noticing your body’s physical cues (like a clenched jaw when you’re interrupted, or stomach knots when you’re pressed for an answer), you’re developing awareness of the language your body uses to communicate a boundary’s been crossed. So when you start to pay attention to those cues and honour those needs, you build more trust in yourself.
For example, if a date pressures you to go home with them, your old self might’ve caved to avoid an awkward discussion. But your post-healing-self, will recognise that pressure as a violation and choose to walk away instead.
So boundary work helps you develop comfortability of your wants and needs, so you can feel confident enforcing them. And the more you practice them, the less you’ll accept behaviour that used to seem “normal” because it was familiar to you. You’ll stop questioning whether you’re being “too sensitive” and start trusting your gut when something feels off.
You can start building this skill today with my free Boundary Blueprint: a body-led guide for identifying, communicating and keeping your boundaries.
Follow these tips before you begin dating again
These are a few tips I’ve put together to enhance your healing. They’re to help you be mindful about the recovery steps involved to get you closer to your goal of dating after narcissistic abuse. Here’s what you need to know:
Take it slow and be patient with yourself
I’m going to be honest:
It’s going to take a really long time for you to be ready to date again after narcissistic abuse. Because before you get back out there, you have to heal from the abuse—that’s the fucking long and hard bit (for all these reasons here).
It took me about 18 months until I felt like narcissistic abuse had loosened its grip on me. Like my ex wasn’t an everyday thought, my moods were stable and I felt happy in my own skin. And this seems to be the general time span for what others say too (along with some supporting anecdotal research I’ve also read).
But here’s the thing…
Healing in 18 months also depends on a few other factors, like:
- if you managed to stay no contact
- if your relationship didn’t last years
- if you didn’t have children
- if you didn’t have joint finances.
So when it comes to healing from narc abuse, it’s not just a case of waiting for the time to pass. And rather what you do in that time to help you heal, which depends on your circumstances and the options you have available to you. So what might’ve worked for me, won’t necessarily work for you. Just be patient with it, don’t rush it and prioritise what you do to look after yourself, above everything else.
No dating for a good a length of time
Like me, you might need to force yourself off the dating apps and go solo.
Dr Ramani actually recommends a minimum of one year away from dating, maybe less if your time together was short. (Then again, narc relationships feel like they age in dog years, so a year’s probably going to be your safest bet).
Use this time to invest in yourself. So that you can feel confident being alone again and be in a place where you don’t need a partner to make you feel whole.
Get support
Connecting with a community of other survivors (Reddit’s a great place for this), can humanise your experience and reduce your loneliness. It’s reassuring to know you’re not the only one who’s been through narcissistic abuse. Plus it’s helpful to have an online space where you can exchange healing tips and get guidance from other survivors.
Be careful with who you lean on for support
There’s only so much trauma dumping your friends and family will be able to cope with! And if they don’t understand the dynamics and impacts of abuse, you risk receiving some terrible advice too.
Although well intentioned, friends tend to advise you off of their experiences. Meaning… they don’t realise how much work goes into healing from narcissistic abuse. So advising you to “get under someone else”, has a lot more risk attached to it than if you’d had a break up with a “normal person”.
Ignore the dating pressure from others
Your friends mean well when they wish for you to “get back out there”. But if they haven’t dated a narcissist, they have no idea how damaging that can be to you.
So drown out the un-informed opinions of others and just go off the expert advice.
Professional support
If you can afford it, get a therapist—one who specialises in narcissistic abuse and trauma. They’ll be able to validate and normalise your experiences, as well as help you to make sense of what happened.
And if you’ve already exhausted therapy and still feel stuck, somatic coaching might be a more viable solution for you. You can learn about the difference between somatic coaching and therapy here to see what’s better suited to your needs.
Signs you’re ready to start dating after narcissistic abuse
Figuring out when you’re ready to date again after a narcissist, isn’t so clear cut. Sometimes you might just need to dive in and see how you feel after a date to determine where you’re at.
But below are some signs to guide you to know when it’s time. The key thing is to not rush into it—take as long as you need, so history doesn’t repeat itself.
Signs you’re ready:
- Your ex is no longer an everyday thought
- You’re not hypervigilant and panicky about everyone you meet
- You feel happy alone and realise a partner should add value to the life you’ve created
- You don’t feel the need to bad mouth your ex to anyone who’ll listen
- You prioritise your needs, rather than moulding to someone else’s
- You feel better off without your ex and don’t wish for them back
- You don’t seek the approval of others, or need them to define your worth
This list isn’t exhaustive. And you might start dating before you can even confidently check all these things off.
I know for me, I started dating my current partner before I was properly ready. But the difference was that I was aware of my issues and I was actively working towards my healing. So I was regularly seeing a therapist as we began dating. But I kept the gory details of my last relationship private, until I felt ready to share and talk about it with him. (Basically until I knew we were serious about each other and he wasn’t going to just leave).
Which brings me to my last point:
You don’t need to overshare on first dates
Honesty is a valuable quality to have and you should strive to have that with your partner. But when you first start dating after narcissistic abuse, you need to be cautious with what you reveal about your past relationships, to someone new right away. Because if you’re super unlucky, and you end up dating another narcissist, you’re volunteering information they could weaponise against you later.
So take your time, and go slow. Slowing down allows you to be discerning and to pay attention to what you feel. So you have more agency and control over your decision making. It’s also a great tool for sniffing out a narcissist out because they like speed and intensity!
A patient and kind person won’t pressure you to reveal things you’re not comfortable with yet. It’s perfectly fine for you to just say “I had a tricky last relationship, and one day when I feel ready, I’ll tell you about it”. It’s literally what I did with my current partner and he respected my every word and never pressed me for any details. I think it was about 3 months into our relationship when I finally told him what happened. And he was supportive and understanding—which is how they should be.
The old you’s gone—and that’s a good thing!
I know you hate feeling the way you do right now. You just want to speed through this dark phase of your life, find love again and get back to who you were.
Newsflash: that gal’s long gone!
And I don’t mean that in a down-on-your-luck kinda way. In fact, I mean it in the opposite way.
Because believe it or not, this will be your most transformational era. You just can’t see it right now—just like I couldn’t either.
But I know the OG: Dr Ramani, has said herself that she’s witnessed many fantastic love stories happen after narcissistic relationships.
And I have my own successful love story to add to that too (almost 6 years together at the time of writing this).
So many women go onto bigger and better things, and I know you will too.
So be patient, take it slow and give yourself permission to be picky.