Struggling with Mental Health? 5 Tips To Protect Your Wellbeing While Dating

If you're vulnerable or struggling with your mental health, you may need to take some extra steps to protect your wellbeing. But don't let it stop you from dating altogether.

Approximately one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year, so if you're struggling at the moment, you're far from alone.

But what does that mean for our dating and relationship prospects? Should we stop looking for love altogether when we're feeling vulnerable? The answer is not necessarily - but there are some extra steps that we can take to help to minimise the chances of dating affecting our mental health in a negative way.

Here are our five rules on how to approach dating - even when you're mental health isn't the best.

1. Don't use dating as a distraction

We've probably all - at some time or another - felt sorry for ourselves, and looked to online dating as a way to change. But looking for validation through others can be very damaging for our wellbeing.

If you're not in best place emotionally, the people who you seek out, or whom you believe that you're worthy of, may in fact be very toxic.

It can feel 'comfortable' to look for someone else who is 'just like you' - so you may find yourself drawn to someone else with the same challenges. And although empathy is important, it is rarely a healthy combination. Equally, if your confidence is low, you may be more easily lured in by someone unsuitable just because the attention is flattering.

Another common behaviour is to date someone in a lower league, or who we're just not that in to - because, even if it goes wrong - you hold the cards and feel a form of safety from knowin