5 Reasons We Break Up & 6 Ways You Know If You're Ready to Date Again

This is the iHeart podcast. Guaranteed. Human people are always quick to offer wellness advice, and honestly, some of it can be weird, trendy cleanses and fad diets. But here's some wellness advice you can depend on. Whole Foods Market. Whole foods have a variety of protein options, along with ready to eat salad kits and ready to heat rice and bean blends from their 365 brand, making eating healthy, easy and delicious. And their vitamins and supplements help you be the healthiest version of yourself. Shop all things wellness at Whole Foods Market. Did you know our bodies talk to us. Those weird pains are the body's way of saying, excuse me, I need some help here. Amazon One Medical has 247 virtual care, so you can get help quickly and easily. Thanks to Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful. The start of a new year isn't about pressure. It's about purpose. It's a moment to reflect, to ask what truly matters. Shopify helps turn that clarity into action. Whether you're starting with a simple idea or a growing brand, Shopify gives you the tools to build at your own pace. Templates, AI tools, social integrations. Everything designed to support your vision so your goals don't stay in your head, they begin to take shape in the world. Shopify grows with you every step of the way. If you're ready to build with intention in 2026, go to shopify.com j and begin. In order for relationships to be the source of our greatest joy, we have to approach them differently. We have to approach them from the perspective of learning more than loving. First, you're learning how to love the other person. You're learning about love. You're not just in love. You're not just loving. Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. We're talking about your physical, mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual health and how we can improve all parts of our body, mind, mind and soul experience. I am so grateful for your ears today and every day that you tune in to On Purpose, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're at the gym, whether you're driving to and from work, I appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Now, I've been talking to a lot of friends lately, and you know that these topics that I bring up to our community on, on On Purpose are based on conversations I'm having with my clients, that I'm hearing from friends, family members, and there are a lot of people that either went through breakups during the pandemic or are going through breakups. Right now. And I think the big question is always, how do I deal with the breakup, how do I move on? And then how do I know if that I'm ready to date again? And these are really important questions. We've done a lot of podcast episodes on how to know that it's time to break up. We've also done a lot of episodes on how to deal with heartbreak, but we haven't really ever focused on how to know if you're ready to date again. So whether you're dating right now, whether you're broken up, whether you're single or in a relationship, I really believe that this podcast will still help you because it will help you make better decisions, no matter your situation. Situation. And it's also going to help you help your friends or people in these situations. Now, I want to start off by sharing some amazing statistics that I read on a website called To Date for Love. And in this website, it broke down some of these statistics that really stood out to me that I believe they've gathered from lots of different studies. And it talked about how the average woman goes through seven relationships before finding the one, while men have been through around eight relationships. When I read that, it really made me feel grateful about my own life. I would say that I had three proper relationships before I found Radhi. And I was thinking, wow, I'm really grateful that I got to find it sooner. But it also made me realize that there are a lot of people in my life that have only ever had one or two real relationships and are feeling broken, are feeling lost, are feeling stuck, or feeling confused, are feeling like they're never going to find someone. And that number just gave me a lot of context, and it almost gave everyone permission to just pause and take a moment and say, okay, well, I might have to take a few more goes at this. I might have to try a few more people. I may have to explore a little further. But knowing that you haven't really been through seven or eight real relationships should give you a sense of hope. Now, if you're someone here sitting saying, jay, I've been through, like, 10, I would really ask you the question, were they real relationships or were you just dating? Did you ever get beyond that dating phase? Were you actually exclusive? And then if you were exclusive, were you together for three months? Were you together for six months? Were you together for a year? Right. You want to really look at the amount of time that was committed to and the amount of time that you spent together. Now, here are some statistics that I think are important for us to realize because I think they help us understand that we're not alone. So the same website says that long distance relationships have a 58% success rate. I was quite surprised by that. I was like, that's pretty high, right? Which shows that maybe we've been benefited by the pandemic to be able to have long distance relationships because we're more used to digital communication. This one wasn't a surprise, but I think it's important to know couples that meet online are more likely to break up than partners that meet the traditional way. And I don't think that's a surprise. I think that makes sense. If someone connected with you online, it's easier to ghost you. It's easier to feel less intimate or less personal. But it's a important for us to know because when you hear that, and maybe you've just been through that, or you know someone who has, you're able to empathize, you're able to connect, and that person's also able to recognize that this is a trend. Now, I know that your life never feels like a trend, and I don't want it to. I'm not saying that a statistic is the antidote to your emotions, but I am saying that understanding research and understanding statistics and understanding the probability of something happening or not happening is a great way to understand where you are better. Because otherwise we make very improbable circumstances and scenarios in our mind feel like they should happen. For example, we're obsessed with imagination and fascination more than reality. Now, this one will resonate with a lot of you. 58% of Americans say that breakups are usually dramatic or messy or both. This was from YouGov. A quarter of respondents, on the other hand, disagree. Statistics of breakups show that older generations tend to see breakups in a worse light than younger age groups, with 52% of millennials perceiving breakups as messy, compared to 60% of Gen Xs and 63% of Americans age 55 and over. This blew my mind. But I know that we can relate more deeply with the idea that breakups can be dramatic, messy, or both. And that's why the tips and principles that I'm going to give you today are going to help you unpack how you know if you're ready to date again through that messiness and through that drama as well. Another study from YouGov Elite Singles said that 64% of Americans have gone through the breakup of a long term relationship.

Wow.

And it goes on to say in the study if you've ever wondered who the dumper in the average US Long term couple is, breakup statistics say that women are more likely to call it quits than men. 76% of women said that they had ended the relationship, just like 62% of men. Women might end things more often, but they also feel more pain. Some of the hardest things to understand is that 34% of younger generations called it off through a text. And 72% of respondents said that they had been ghosted by a partner. And 65% admitted to ghosting someone. So why am I sharing all of this? I'm sharing all of this to help you realize that you're not alone. I'm also sharing all of this to help you understand that relationships are difficult. They're messy, and they're really, really hard to end, start, find, maintain. Every part of a relationship is messy. And the reason we put in so much effort, the reason we try so hard is because they're also the source of our greatest joy. But here's what I found to be really fascinating and interesting is that in order for relationships to be the source of our greatest joy, we have to approach them differently. We have to approach them from the perspective of learning more than loving. First, you're learning how to love the other person. You're learning about love. You're not just in love, you're not just loving. So I'm going to share with you these principles today that are going to let you know if you or your friends are ready to date again and whether you really have recovered from that breakup. Here's the first principle. The first principle is, did you learn? Have you learned the lesson from the last relationship? It's fascinating to me. I'm interviewing a lot right now for my teams. And whenever I do an interview, I'll often ask people, why are you applying for a job right now? Or tell me why you want to leave your current place of work or why you left your last job. And people who've left their last job so often, they'll say to me, I just didn't like that last job. And you know, this just didn't make sense and I just want to get away from it. And they're still fully absorbed in their last job. They are still fully immersed in, in the pain, the challenges, the stress, the pressures of the last job that they never even get around to telling me why they're excited for a new job. Their answer becomes completely held down and held back by the pain and stress of a last job. If you Feel that pull, that hold from your last relationship, which is stopping you from moving on and knowing if you're ready to date again. It's because you haven't yet learned the lesson that relationship was trying to teach you. The lesson may have been to avoid a particular trait. That lesson may have been to slow down. That lesson may have been to have more healthy conversations. That lesson may have been to be more observant. If we cannot articulate and communicate the lesson we have learned from our last relationships, we are not ready to date again. Why? Because, as karma suggests, we will make the same mistake again and again and again. This is what blows my mind the most. We talk a lot about karma, but I'm going to help you understand karma from a Vedic perspective. Karma is the law of every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That anything we receive in life is based on the intention and the attention with which we made a decision. I'll give you an example. Why do they say, never play around with scissors? Why would you never play around with a knife? Because the chances are that when you play around with scissors, when you play around with a knife, you could get cut. The intention and the attention are not in the right place, and therefore you get a result. You don't get cut because you once cut a scissor. You don't get cut by a knife because once you cut a knife, you get it, because the intention and attention at that moment in time is misaligned. Similarly, when you go through a relationship and something terrible happens, like someone cheats on you, it's not because you cheated on someone. It's because when you look back, you know that you let some red flags slide. You know that you weren't observant. You didn't listen to your intuition. You know that there were parts of them that you could tell that they were ready to do something like that. But you were ignorant or you were so negligent you trusted them blindly. You didn't let them earn your trust. You just gave your trust away. You didn't let them build your trust. You just trusted them because you thought they were amazing and they were wonderful and they were kind. But you got blind in love. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that big moment or difficult conversation? You should try meditation. And I know what you're thinking, Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing. But really, all the time, you need to start your own mindfulness practice is seven Minutes a Day with the Daily J My Daily Guided meditations on the Calm app. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat. You can try it while you brush your teeth, do the dishes or walk your dog. My goal in seven Minutes a day is to help you find calm and feel grounded in your busy world. Plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. Here's what one of the listeners of the DailyJ had to say about their meditation Wow. I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my boss's comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J, which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm.comjay to get 40% off a Calm Premium membership that's only $42 for the whole year for daily guided meditations. Experience the Daily J only on Calm hey friends, quick question. How do your nights feel? Hatch believes the way you wind down at night shapes how you show up the next day. Self care isn't about doing more. It starts with resting better. That's why Hatch created their Hatch Restore, a smart sleep clock that helps you reclaim your evenings, think calming sounds, gentle audio, and even a surprise wake up to start your day right. Check it out at Hatch Co because better nights lead to better days. 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Because the challenge that I have seen is that most of us will just move on, right? Most of us will just move on to the next relationship. We don't learn the lessons, we don't learn the journey, and we end up in pretty much the same situation each and every time. And even if we don't end up in the same situation, we have limited our ability to learn how to love. If relationships are designed to teach us how to love, we have to learn that from every relationship. So you know you're ready to date again when first of all, you've learned from your last relationship or relationships and you're able to talk about it. There's a brilliant graph in the Journal of Social and personal relationships from 1998, reproduced from Battaglia. Breaking up is easy to do. A Script for Dissolution of Close Relationships. So it says that the reason and how it works is it goes lack of interest, then you notice other people, then you act distant, then you try to work things out. Then there might be physical distance or avoidance. Go back to lack of interest, you consider breaking up, you communicate your feelings. Finally you try to work things out, but then you notice other people, you act distant, you maybe even date other people, get back together, consider breakup, move on, recover, and then break up again. Now what that shows is a complex set of emotions. We go through so many different emotions in a relationship, and the challenge with all of those is that we're not able to do one thing, and that is we are moving so fast that we don't get to process those emotions effectively. You know you're ready to date again when you're ready to go slow and you're ready to take every step for what it truly is. When you first started walking, you started walking and you took a step. Actually before you started walking, you were rolling, you were pulling yourself. You've seen kids like literally drag themselves across the room. You were then crawling, you were doing each thing step by Step. You didn't try to go from rolling and dragging to walking. Don't try and leap from just rolling around in relationships and dragging yourself through a relationship to finding love the next day. So often we are just trying so hard to find that perfect love, which is like running. Forget walking. We're trying to run before we can crawl. And we have to really allow ourselves to say, well, wait a minute, let me slow down. You know, you're ready to date again when you're okay with slowing down, when you're okay with taking a slower approach. Slower doesn't just mean pace. It means widening your perspective. When you change the speed of your relationship, you're moving at the speed you can see everything from a certain height. A plane moves very fast, but it stays 30,000ft in the air while it moves that fast. So we have to go, okay, I want to move fast, but I want to be able to maintain this vision. I want to be able to maintain this view. I don't want to cannibalize that, right? Like, I don't want to lose that in this journey. So accept that speed. The next one is making sure that you know what to avoid, what to be aware of, and what to articulate up front. These go beyond the lesson you learned, which may have been a bigger lesson, but you have to ask yourself, have I created an understanding of what I need to avoid, what I need to be aware of, and what I need to articulate? Genuinely think about it as a job interview. You may say, I need to avoid companies that are looking for this skill, because that's not a skill that I have or want to display. You need to be aware that, hey, if the work environment on day one doesn't seem inviting, I've got to be careful about that. I'm being aware of it. That doesn't mean it's a deal breaker, but I'm going to remain aware of it. And then finally, we also want to articulate something we may say, well, this is really important. I realized that I haven't always said this in past relationships. I haven't always shared this in past relationships. And in this relationship, I'm going to make it really clear. I was speaking to a friend recently, and they were saying, jay, I'm so glad that we've been listening to the podcast, and I'm so happy that you always tell people to articulate what they need and what they feel. They said that they just met someone new and they said exactly what they needed. And that even though it was uncomfortable for the other person, they were willing to add it to their awareness. And I think we have this challenge where we go, okay, we're going to get to a point in this relationship where we no longer need to avoid stuff, no longer need to be aware of anything, and we no longer need to articulate anything. We're all trying to get to a place where things don't have to change. Wouldn't it be amazing if you watered a tree so perfectly that one day you could stop watering it and it would just stay the same? Wouldn't it be amazing if you were doing a work of art and after a few brushstrokes it just stayed that way and just became more amazing? Wouldn't it be incredible if everything in your life you didn't have to tend to every day, you just worked out, you got the six pack stopped working out, and then it just stayed. Everything is either growing or dying. Is your relationship growing? Your relationship is growing as much as you're investing in it. How to know if you're ready to date again, you're ready to invest again. Daily, you have the energy to invest again. Daily, you have the ability to invest again. Daily, are you ready to put in the work to date? And you may say, I'm not, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But you have to know, you have to be aware what energy levels you have and what ability levels you have. The next principle is that, you know, this time around, you have to set boundaries and you have to make the other person understand why that boundary exists. Now, you don't have to tell them your life story, but you can say, I have a boundary around physical touch. And I will share that with you when I feel comfortable. But I want you to know that, right, when you share something like that, sure, it could frighten someone, sure, it could scare someone away, but if. If you being honest scares someone away, then there was never anything there in the first place. There was never the potential of something there in the first place. You don't need to regret that. I think we always worry that, oh, no, I scared them away. Oh, no, they ran away. And it's like, well, if they ran away because of your honesty, then that means they would have only stayed for your lies. Think about that for a second. If you're saying they ran away because I was honest with them, does that mean if you lied, they would have stayed? Do you want someone to stay for your lies, or do you want someone to stay for your truth? And if your truth is too unbearable or intolerable then is that the truth? That is. Is that that person who doesn't want to stay for that, is that your truth? I'm sure the answer is no. So honesty may scare away someone, but actually I think it scares away the right people. Right. When I say the right people, I mean it scares away the people that are rightfully should not be near you if you're being honest and truthful and articulating it effectively and saying what you're working on. And someone can't accept that or understand that. And the other thing you also have to understand, I'll give an example. Is how we shortcut. We have to avoid shortcuts if we're ready to date again. I'll give an example. You say to someone, hey, you know what? I've been going to therapy for the last three months because I've been working through something, and they say, oh, I understand that. I go to therapy. And you may say, oh, that's amazing. They go to therapy. Okay, we're all good. Well, no, I actually asked them, well, thank you so much. You might say so. So let's. Let's do a bit of role play in this direction, right? So you say to the person, hey, I've been going to therapy for the last three months. I'm working through this thing. And they go, yeah, I know all about therapy. I love therapy. It's amazing. My sister went to therapy. And you may. You could go, oh, that's great. This person goes to therapy. We'll have a great relationship. No, no, no. Oh, that. Thank you so much for understanding about therapy. Can you tell me a bit more about your journey or can you explain to me, like, what made you go or what your feelings about it are? Now you get to really see whether that person's just glossing over it. Now, remember, you're not testing them, you're not investigating them, you're not trying to interrogate them. You're just trying to be curious and understand whether that person really knows what they mean. Now, they may come back and say, you know what? Actually, my sister went through therapy and it was really tougher. And obviously they may not got into specifics, but just say, look, I care about, you know, I really understand how it can help people, and I'm really happy you're doing it. Or they're going to give you some contrived answer, and in your head you go, oh, right, they were just attracted to me. Or they're just. They're just telling me that it's all great, right? So in that scenario, I want you to recognize that just saying the same words doesn't mean you have the same realization or having the same interests doesn't mean you like them for the same reason. Now, I know I'm really reading into stuff, but that's kind of what it takes. Like two people could like the same movie, but they like it for two different reasons. And it's the reason that's more important than the movie that they like. The reason you like a movie shares more about you than the movie that you like. And I know I'm reading into it with movies, but the same applies to TV shows and the same applies to people. The same applies to people. And I'm not saying you have to have the same reason. You have to like their reason, you have to respect their reason, you have to understand their reason. And the last way to know if you're ready to date again is try it out. Stop overthinking, stop procrastinating, stop wasting so much energy to check if you're ready. I think that's one of the biggest issues is even the question, how do you know if you're ready? You'll never know until you try. That answer applies to everything. How do you know if you're ready to be a stand up comedian? Try it. How do you know if you're ready to write a book? Try a page, right? Try the simplest version of it. How do you know if you're ready to be a manager? Manage one person. Try it out. Sure you'll fail, sure you'll get rejected, sure there'll be difficulty, but that is the only way to really, truly give it a go. Go on a date. Try and put yourself in a position where it's the simplest, easiest way. Meet a friend of a friend. Take some friends with you. Connect in a place that makes you feel comfortable, right? Make it as comfortable and as casual as you need to. Make it easy. And when you make it as simple, as easy, as accessible for yourself, you'll get to see for yourself and you won't have to play this game in your head of am I ready? Am I ready yet? Am I ready yet? Am I ready now? Do I know if I'm ready now? Am I ready? Right? Like try it out, break out of it, give it a go, and be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself and be aligned with yourself. Thank you so much for listening this week. I'm so grateful to you and I will see you again next week. Thank you for listening to on purpose. And I cannot wait for you to share this impossible.

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How To Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley. And I'm Hari Kundabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health, which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley.

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