Posts in category: Dating Tips, Guide and Advice

If you’ve experienced loss, disappointment, heartbreak, or trauma, you’ve had well-meaning people say that the pain will fade with time. Does time really heal all wounds, as the popular saying goes?

Time is certainly an important factor when it comes to healing. Although it may take away some of the pain, sorrow, or other negative emotions associated with an experience, time on its own is not a healer.  

Does Time Heal All Wounds?

While the saying suggests that grief and pain tend to lessen with time, evidence suggests that this isn’t necessarily true for everyone.

The nature of the wound itself can affect how time influences healing. In one study, researchers found that time did have an effect on whether people were willing to forgive an interpersonal transgression. As time passed, people became more likely to forgive, suggesting that time played a role in healing the hurt.

However, research has also found that time does not heal all wounds. In one study, bereaved people had high levels of prolonged grief one to two years after a loss.

Adverse childhood experiences, for example, are traumatic events that occur during childhood that have effects that last into adulthood. Such experiences can include things like neglect, abuse, violence, substance use, divorce, and the loss of a loved one. 

These adverse early experiences are linked to later problems, including depression, unemployment, financial difficulties, substance use, and health problems. Despite the passage of time, these wounds leave a lasting mark that time alone does not heal. 

How Time Can Help You Heal

What is time’s actual role in healing? According to licensed psychologist and owner of the Baltimore Therapy Group Heather Z. Lyons, PhD, time essentially equates to opportunity. Therefore, how someone heals over time ultimately depends on how they decide to use that opportunity to shape their present and future circumstances.

She explains that people can use time to gain insight, healthier relationships, and an orientation toward growth. “Some people will use time as an opportunity to collect experiences that orient them toward their values and dilute or challenge difficult experiences,” she says.

For example, people can connect with friends, develop new relationships, or engage in activities they find rewarding to aid in the healing process.

She notes that this is contrasted with rumination, which is reflection that does not integrate thought and emotion.

“Rumination is usually all emotion or all thought. Healthy reflection integrates the two to help people gain new understandings,” she explains, noting that when people ruminate, they usually confirm negative beliefs about themselves or others.

For example, this may include a belief like “I knew he’d leave me, that’s just the way all men are” or “I won’t let my guard down next time so I don’t get hurt.”

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What Can Prevent Healing?

It’s possible (and highly likely) that time will not heal all wounds for several reasons. So, what can prevent someone from healing as time goes on?

The following things may prolong your healing even though a notable amount of time has passed:

• Remaining fixated on something, like how a harsh breakup ended
• Refusing to let go of a betrayal by holding a grudge
• Denial that something has happened
• Not forgiving yourself or a person who was accountable for the wound or trauma
• Not having a solid support system or emotional outlet to express your emotions
• Resorting to unhealthy coping and/or distraction mechanisms
• Relying on drinking or taking drugs to numb pain associated with the event

In addition to ruminating, people can use time to support the limiting beliefs that they have that keep them stuck in a cycle of negative experiences.

“[They] find themselves stuck and living in the past as though no time has elapsed after the experience of a difficult event,” says Lyons. “Of course, some experiences are so traumatic that they leave us scarred for a while, and this scarring is our brain’s way of keeping us healthy,” she says.

How to Promote Healing With Time

Time can help with healing, but there are also things you can do to help ensure that you move forward in a way that brings you greater peace.

Essentially, how you utilize your time directly correlates to how well and quickly you will heal. So let’s take a look at some factors that help facilitate the healing process.

Integrate Lessons You’ve Learned

“People need the opportunity to express their pain in ways that marry insight and emotion,” says Lyons. This could mean creating art based on your experience, making music, creating journal entries, or writing stories.

Honor Your Emotions

Give yourself grace to fully process your emotions. This is especially important after experiencing a traumatic situation, like a breakup, a death, or a physical injury. Release any judgment associated with the experience, and allow yourself to accept and feel whatever comes up for you in order to move past it.

Receive Support

Lyons notes that people benefit from social support. So spend time with those you trust who can offer you emotional support in your time of need. This can be friends, family, or a trained professional, like a therapist or coach.

Align Your Actions With Your Values

“People benefit from engaging in activities that help them live lives aligned with their values,” says Lyons. So pursue the hobbies you enjoy and make new memories doing what you love to help yourself achieve a deeper sense of healing.

Techniques to Speed Up the Recovery Process 

Instead of solely depending on time to heal your wounds, there are other areas that you can focus on to promote healing. To achieve a deeper sense of healing, you can try any or all of the following techniques:

“Time heals all wounds” is one of the most popular sayings, but it may not be completely true. Although time is not exactly a healer, it can have healing purposes. Ultimately, though, it’s up to you to find ways to achieve healing during the time that passes after experiencing a wound or trauma.

If you find it difficult to overcome an experience, consider seeking the help of a therapist or qualified mental health professional. An experienced professional will be able to guide you through the healing process in ways that offer much deeper healing than time alone can offer.

Why do opposites attract? It’s a question you might ask yourself if you’ve ever found yourself drawn to someone completely different than you. The idea that we are drawn to our opposites is mostly a myth.

The reality is that while sometimes we are attracted to people who are significantly different from us, solid relationships tend to be built on shared connections and similarities. Opposities do sometimes attract, especially when in comes to initial sexual chemistry. You can learn from dating someone different from you, but there’s also a lot more potential for conflict.

This article discusses why people who are wildly different from one another find themselves attracted to each other, the pros and cons of dating your opposite, and what really makes a relationship last past that initial phase of attraction.

Why Do We Believe That Opposites Attract?

We’ve heard it again and again. But is there real psychology behind the popular phrase “opposites attract” in relationships?

In old romantic movies that we viewed, we might have seen the good girl attracted to the bad boy. Or we may have a friend, a shy, retiring sort, who is attracted to an outgoing and friendly person. It seems to make sense that they’d be a good match.

For example, if a college student studies day and night in his room and is academically driven, we might set that person up with a more social student who goes out on weekends and gets less than stellar grades. The rationale is clear. 

We reason that the student getting good grades will be a positive influence on the other’s study habits and the social butterfly will draw the other student out of their room for more fun times.

Why Do Opposite Attract in Relationships?

There are a few reasons why you might be drawn to someone different from you.

Excitement

Opposites may attract at first because the other person seems new and exciting. Maybe the object of your attention is a medal-winning professional snowboarder and you are an accountant.

Or perhaps that person who entered the conference room represents something forbidden. He might come from another class, race, or socio-economic background that is different than the kind of partner your family expects you to be with, for example.

Sexual Chemistry

Upon first meeting, the physical chemistry might be off the charts. This might be evidence of lust. Strong sexual desire in and of itself can be healthy. It can also keep the flames of passion stoked in a long-term relationship.

But lust without emotions, intimacy, and commonalities does not make for a healthy long-term relationship. According to scientific studies discussed below, neither does staying with our opposites.

Lack of Early Conflict

After the initial encounter and you’ve both decided to date, the ways you’re both diametrically opposed enhances the appeal of you two as a couple. In the beginning stages, the differences may still seem intriguing. That’s because differences haven’t proven to be obstacles in the relationship yet.

What About Couples With Mismatched Sex Drives?

While sexual satisfaction and frequency contribute to healthy, long-term romantic relationships, partners having different or opposite sexual requirements is common. Past findings linked the mismatch to poorer sexual and relationship outcomes.

But zeroing in on increasing and sustaining desire, and working through differences, was proven to be more important than matching your partner’s desires. Study participants had higher sexual and relationship satisfaction as a result.

Pros and Cons of Dating Your Opposite

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of dating someone who is your opposite.

The Pros of Dating Your Opposite

To be sure, there are benefits of being in a relationship with somebody who is your opposite. For instance, people who have type A personalities might calm down and feel less pressured by coming home to type B personalities with more laid-back traits.

Other ways you may benefit for a while from being with your opposite include:

• Their strengths complement your weaknesses and vice versa
• You’ll get more comfortable with compromise
• You’ll teach each other new things
• You’ll stretch your understanding and empathy muscles
• You’ll keep the passion alive more easily
• You’ll find more balance
• You’ll increase your tolerance level
• You’ll gain more patience

The Cons of Dating Your Opposite

The drawbacks of opposites uniting date back to early research. In one older study, timid, verbally inhibited participants were paired with critical, assertive partners. The study showed that although they might have been attracted at first, the relationship quality suffered as it matured over time. The pairings became unsustainable.

The study consisted of timid, inhibited males alienated by strong critical females. At the time of the study, society’s reluctance to honor assertive females may have come into play (the study was published in 2003).

We also know the limitations of pairing opposites through other studies. For example, if another’s face is similar to your own, you’re more likely to deem that person trustworthy, according to an article published in the journal Psychological Science.

That suggests that if someone looks like us, we are more likely to trust them, and if they don’t appear similar to us, we consider their character not as desirable.

Recently, psychologists analyzed the combined results of over 240 studies in one. They, too, found that similar partnerships scored the highest. Similarities fell into the areas of values, attitudes, personality traits, and interests.

Similarities Foster Stronger Relationships

Michael Kosinki, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business coordinates a global collaboration between more than 100 universities studying Facebook digital footprints of 8 million people. He co-authored a study published in the journal Psychological Science.

By analyzing the digital footprints people left on Facebook—their likes and what they posted about—evidence showed birds of a feather do flock together.

Partners who are opposite to you in certain aspects like in their taste in music or favorite foods can enhance a relationship for sure. And in the short term, opposites can work in relationships.

Just keep in mind that if partners aren’t in alignment regarding many important aspects of a relationship, it just might not last.