Getting Back Out There: Secrets to Successful Dating and Finding Real Love after the Big Breakup

by Susan J. Elliott JD, MEd

Overview

You're ready for a new romance, but how can you avoid repeating past mistakes? The author of Getting Past Your Breakup offers an essential guide to building a healthy relationship.

Plenty of dating books offer advice on how to flirt or catch someone's eye, but they won't help you make better decisions during the selection process so you can find real love. Based on years of research and work with her own clients, Susan Elliott offers a proven plan that will help you to:

Examine past relationships for unfinished business and negative patterns
Identify warning signs and red flags
Keep your standards and boundaries high, even when you're head over heels
Work through rejection, rebounding, and other bumps in the road
Decide when to take a relationship to the next level and when to say goodbye

With practical rules, strategies, and self-assessments — including tips for dating as a parent and dating online — Getting Back Out There will help you transition from your split to a happy, healthy new relationship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738216836
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	01/27/2015
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	614,663
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Susan J. Elliott, JD, MEd is the creator of the Getting Past Your Breakup blog and seminar series. A sought-after relationship commentator, motivational speaker, certified grief counselor, and attorney, she has helped thousands of clients and readers transform their love lives. She lives in New York.
GettingPastYourBreakup.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface: How Getting Back Out There Came to Be xi

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1 The Steps from the Big Breakup to Happy and Healthy Dating, Mating, and Relating 1

Chapter 2 Are You Ready? Five Questions to Ask Before You Take the Plunge 11

Chapter 3 Preparation, Cultivation, and Boundary Setting 41

Chapter 4 The Standards and Compatibility List 61

Chapter 5 Bumps in the Dating Road: Readiness, Rejection, Recycling, Rebounding, Retreating 83

Chapter 6 Becoming Sexual and Becoming Exclusive 121

Chapter 7 The Ex and the Children: Timing Is Everything 155

Chapter 8 The Early Relationship: Identifying Issues and Working Them Out 169

Chapter 9 The Couples List of Standards for a Healthy Relationship: Communication, Compromise, and Compassion 197

Chapter 10 Real Love Is As Real Love Does 231

Epilogue: Love Stories 243

Bibliography and Recommended Reading 257

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2014
Lawyer and grief counselor Elliott (Getting Past Your Breakup) offers readers humble and perceptive advice for recovering from heartbreak and reentering the dating world. In the five years since her acclaimed debut in 2009, Elliott has faced a number of ordeals: the death of her husband from brain cancer, a debilitating back fracture, a break in her hand that wouldn’t heal, and a tumor found in her knee during an MRI. In addition to her own experiences with love and loss, Elliott draws from friends, family, and colleagues, as well as couples who have sought her counsel. Elliott’s underlying message is that one must first grieve properly and learn to let go of past relationships, no matter how toxic, perfect, or tragic they were, before beginning new ones. Perhaps most perceptively, she identifies the early stages of grief as the crucial time to build reasonable standards and realistic expectations for future relationships. Elliott’s wisdom—well reasoned, unassuming, and based on experience—is not to be missed. Agent: Diane Freed, FinePrint Literary Management. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

InfoDad blog, 1/29/15
“Elliott deserves credit for tackling so many issues involved in post-breakup life and for handling them in a plainspoken way…Her willingness to discuss everything from specific sexual issues to the right time to introduce children to a new partner is admirable. On balance, her statement that ‘this is a different kind of dating book' is accurate, and Getting Back Out There is a useful counterbalance to more-superficial books about dating and mating.”

Publishers Weekly, 12/1/14
“Elliott offers readers humble and perceptive advice for recovering from heartbreak and reentering the dating world…Elliott's wisdom—well reasoned, unassuming, and based on experience—is not to be missed.”

Library Journal, December 2014
“Extremely encouraging for those who wish to build a healthy relationship and get on with life.”

Hudson Valley News, 2/20/15
“The most valuable part of the book…is the collection of love stories at the end.”

Bookviews Blog, March 2015
“[Elliott] does not shy from the fact that exes, children, and boyfriends with kids are components of the modern dating scene.

From the Publisher

12/01/2014
Elliott, creator of the blog Getting Back Out There, leads readers through the steps of attaining success in the next relationship, using an approach that helps us to recognize, evaluate, and change the negative patterns that have sabotaged previous partnerships. She organizes her advice into the "Five Rs": Readiness, Rejection, Recycling, Rebounding, and Retreating, and demonstrates, via case studies and personal accounts, how to handle snags along the way. Elliott's experience as a lawyer and grief counselor buoys her suggestions, such as creating a compatibility checklist and deciding which attributes are unacceptable and which ones are negotiable. VERDICT Extremely encouraging for those who wish to build a healthy relationship and get on with life.

Library Journal