“Don’t let toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and get them out of there.” – Marc Chernoff

Life is full of ups and downs. Friends, family and co-workers may hit highs and lows and with them comes the associated mood swings. That’s not what we’re talking about here. The roller coaster of life comes and goes taking people for a ride, but toxic people are here to stay, constantly bringing you down. Toxic relationships can stifle our creativity and keep us from reaching our goals, all the while self denial tells us that we need this person. Not so my friend, not so.

Some people in your life are hyper critical, judgmental and often unhappy with your success. Toxic relationships come in all shapes and sizes like complainers that constantly dump their life frustrations on you or needy friends where the conversation always revolves around them. Toxic friends may love to shame you in front of others or talk about you behind your back.

You can identify toxic relationships because you often feel less like yourself in front of these people. You may feel the relationship is one-sided or that the relationship doesn’t allow you room to grow and change.

Now that you’ve identified a toxic relationship, can you release it? Here are some tips to set you in the right direction:

1. Face the truth.

Toxic relationships involve a lot of self denial. Often times, we don’t want to admit what these people do to our inner gods and goddesses. We let them rule our being for worse, not better. Using the criteria above, get real about your toxic relationships and get rid of those who drain you dry.

2. Seek help.

Sometimes you may need help getting out of a relationship (especially a toxic romantic relationship). In this case, the brave unknown may be too much to bear. Or you’re just scared of their reaction to your impending exit. Don’t be afraid to seek help from a counselor, life coach or a good friend.

3. Feel the pain.

In my life, I’ve had one relationship that took its toll. I knew it was toxic but couldn’t deal with the pain of leaving it behind. The pain was real, and once I allowed myself to feel the pain and admit I had fallen apart, it finally started to lift. Once in a while I look back to those times with a sense of pride. I fell apart but I was more resilient for it, and in the process, I learned a whole lot about myself.

4. In the end, honor you.

By being honest, letting go and facing the pain you’re honoring yourself.

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Image: woodleywonderworks

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Roses are red, violets are blue, everything was great ‘til he moved in with you.

Couples move in for all sorts of reasons: love, convenience, flood damage, rodents. Using the above as a very rough estimation, that means only 25% of move-ins are intentional. Wait. A whopping three quarters of co-habitating partners are living together by accident? It’s entirely possible. No wonder 50% of marriages end in divorce.

According to Airbnb, a global network that hooks travelers up with hyper-local accommodations (be it an empty apartment or cozy corner in a loft), the love shack needn’t come crashing down quite so hard.

Here’s how:

The trend of house swapping and shelter sharing is as current as typography. Like the font Helvetica, a good sublet will suit just about every occasion. An apartment swap in Paris, summer in Bushwick, campaigning in Washington – all housing conundrums easily remedied with a sublease. Hidden in that clause, too, is an opportunity to test-drive your significant other’s long-term potential.

Airbnb conducted a poll that found 58% of women would prefer a test move-in with their lover but rent being what it is, all too often the bachelorette pad is sacrificed in the melee of good sex or a bed bug infestation.

The company provides monthly sublets in 17,745 cities and 188 countries. It’s a eureka solution, and an opportunity to take a more long-view approach on your relationship before commingling cutlery.

No matter what kind of relationship you’re in, it’s a win-win. For example,

Young lovers:

The hot new boyfriend has a horrid roommate, and so do you. On the other hand, your downtown lover also a gaming habit you’re not so sure about. Get a sublet, live month-to-month in a furnished pad before jumping into a 12-month lease.

Long-distance:

Are you sleepless in Seattle? Awww, that’s about as cute as Meg Ryan’s pantsuit in 1993 (to say nothing of Rosie’s shoulder pads).

We’re in the middle of a housing crisis. You’d have to be as codependent as Alice Hill to give up your Harvard Square apartment for some dude you Skype with on Friday nights. Test-drive and keep your mortgage paid by listing your apartment on Airbnb first.

Newlyweds:

Kate Winslet is a city girl. Country life drives her bonkers. The suburbs leave her feeling unfulfilled. Yet in role after role, she ends up barefoot and pregnant in the ‘burbs and it never ends well. If you find yourself recently married, do not pull a Winslet and move to suburbia just because Leo asks you to. Trade in your East Village apartment for a sublet on Metro North in three-month increments. Move back to the city, try commuting again. Then decide if your happily ever after resides in New Rochelle.

Images: CinemaSeries; IMDB; Ali Leila; IMDB

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A new survey from Splitwise.com says it might be time for this dude to start chipping in.

I once had a roommate named M. and we lived in a very narrow brownstone apartment off Smith Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Soon M. started dating T. “Starting over,” she said, despite his criminal history and faint scrapings of a tattoo he attributed to jail. (M. was a lawyer who was previously a lesbian, making the whole T. episode even more perplexing.)

They made loud love twice a week, thrice a week, five times a week until one day T. asked to use my laptop. It was then I discovered that while I was sleeping, we had acquired a move-in boyfriend. The evidence: his name emblazoned on the top of a mock-up business card, our address pointedly pixilated underneath – done in my Photoshop.

Not a single one of us escaped our living arrangement unscathed. I moved out. Last I heard, M. went back to women and T. went back to jail.

After that I had a roommate named R. on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. We were very close friends – too close, I realized. Remembering the issues I had with T., when I first started dating the guy whom I eventually married, I heeded her collection of sensitivities. She’d just broken up with her last boyfriend, which tended to put her in an exceedingly fragile state of mind.

“No sleepovers during the week,” she asked.

Fine. Why rub her nose in my pre-marital bliss? So I crossed Atlantic to stay with him in Fort Greene.

But having given R. an inch, she took a mile.

“No sleepovers this Friday night or next because I’m having a really hard time at work and you know what a light sleeper I am and I’m really scared of not getting enough sleep and I just know that if there is someone else in the apartment when I’m trying to sleep I won’t be able to get to sleep and…”

Oh, dear. My move-in was thwarted by an emotional carpet-weaver.

While I could appreciate M.’s lust and R.’s vulnerability, according to John Bittner of Splitwise.com what was missing from our leases was a certain fairness clause.

In an article for Forbes, he explains, “Bottom line: if a roommate’s significant other stays about half the time or less and has their own place, they shouldn’t be expected to systematically contribute to bills or rent. If they have their own place but are staying five times a week or more, they should probably count themselves as a ‘half-person’ towards bills, but not rent.”

He doesn’t take emotional carpet weaving into account, being a dude and all, though he does add that significant others should at the very least arrive bearing gifts. Wine, chocolate, condoms. Whatever.

Bittner has all sorts of fancy charts to illustrate the equation.

And…

Bittner, who’s also a PhD student at Harvard in Boston (expensive city with a low vacancy rate), invented a split-the-rent-calculator, which can be used to tabulate contributions from boyfriends, girlfriends, couch-crashers and long-term guests.

The thing is, if you live in a high-density metropolitan area splitting the rent with a roommate is sometimes unavoidable. The emotional stuff of roommates, the “I like this boyfriend and not that one” or “I’m just so vulnerable right now,” is really none of your concern, or business. Until it’s time to get down to business. Not that kind, you minx. The utilities kind.

Either money talks or the move-in walks – to a hotel around the corner where he can get some room service. Anything else is emotional carpet-weaving.

Images: Roomeo; Forbes

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