Gay Advice: How to Leave a Toxic Relationship

When you’re in the middle of a toxic relationship with a man you feel invested in, it can be very, very difficult to get out of that relationship. Not only will emotional ties prevent you from feeling you can live without your current man, but logistical difficulties (such as intertwined finances and living together) can make a breakup seem truly impossible.

If you need to get out of a toxic relationship, follow these steps:

Embedding yourself once more into those loving social circles is necessary if you’re going to get out of your toxic relationship. Your friends and family will support your decision, they will provide you with the emotional assurance you need to feel that you can live on your own again, and they will provide you with safe spaces to stay throughout the process, especially if it involves moving out of your current living situation.

Most relatively healthy breakups take weeks, if not months, to play out. This timeline gives you and your man time to acclimate to the idea of being apart, to begin to take care of the logistical elements of your split, and to generally exit on as mutual terms as possible.

Unless you live within a truly abusive relationship where your safety is at stake, it’s better to end things gradually and mutually than to incur the karma of a sudden, unexpected split.

You need time and space to reconfigure your feelings toward him, to process a lot of the negativity, resentment, or just plain boredom you accumulated with him, and to figure out who you are without him acting as a serious pillar within your life.

Aside from your personal needs, you and your man’s relationship needs this space to determine what form it will take now that you’re no longer lovers and never will be again.

Jumping into a new serious relationship all but guarantees total failure. Casually dating a lot of new people after a serious breakup gives you the ability to reset your expectations and to explore what sort of man you might want to date next.

Don’t worry about the morality of being a little more promiscuous or uncommitted than you’re accustomed to. If you’re upfront with all the men you meet, you’ll find most of them will totally understand and will be more than open to providing you your new needs.

Have you found the right one, or are you still searching?