One of the many things I tell anyone who gets into conversation about living life, gay or straight, mostly gay though, is that you can’t be afraid to be alone. Whether anyone believes it or not, being alone is usually one of the largest reasons people remain in unhealthy, toxic relationships. They aren’t comfortable having to live life by themselves, theoretically. The truth of the matter is most people feel they need to have someone sharing their life, and space, in order to have a complete and full life. I don’t completely disagree with that sentiment, but I’m not fully in favor of it either. I believe there is and can be a happy medium between having your own space and sharing it with someone you love.

Far too often individuals choose to remain a couple with someone they know they’ve fallen out of love with because they don’t really know how to live or lead a life that doesn’t involve someone being there to support them and aid them in all things. Be it financial support, most common, emotional or mental support, that lack of someone there makes people scared and feel as though they must keep a man or woman around, even if they don’t have all of their best intentions for them. I’ve seen it paralyze people to the extent that they reject opportunities for betterment and prosperity in life all because they don’t want to be without, fill in the blank. I’ve yet to understand why that dynamic is so strong and prevalent, but it is and most times what’s forgotten is that if you have a strong circle of friends, or family, you aren’t alone anyway. No, you may not have someone living with you, but your journey is still being shared with people who love and care for you.

Why I feel that once a person understands how to live alone, they are better equipped to be with someone is simple. When you live alone, you have to learn how to live with yourself. You learn your traits, your patterns, your habits. You understand your likes and dislikes, which will make you better at identifying people you could see yourself sharing your space with, be it on a permanent basis or regular/frequent basis. It allows you to discover these things without sacrificing the relationship that you’re in. I believe that when you don’t know how to be with yourself, it impacts your ability to be with someone else. Ultimately, you’re learning yourself while learning and living with someone else at the same time. While this is definitely possible, it usually winds being detrimental because as you learn yourself you change, and what you like and want changes. If you have to learn another person at the same time, it could be that the two of you are changing separately. Be alone and learn you, then introduce someone to your space and see how they fit into your world and you in theirs. Then you can make adjustments and compromises on the things that you feel aren’t critical to who you are.

The truth is for me, I hate being alone when I come home. I’ve done for a long time, and I’ve also been in relationships where me and my partner lived together. That joy and sense of fulfilment when I had that was intoxicating. It was something that I knew I wanted and didn’t want to be without. Sometimes it came at great personal hurt for myself, because at times I had chosen the wrong person to build that life with. When I was younger, I would struggle to end those types of relationships because I hadn’t learned how to be comfortable with being by myself. My mom was always in a relationship, be it married to my father, or being divorced and in relationship with someone else. Right after I came out, my first boyfriend wound up being the first person I lived with. It came less than three months of being together. For two years all I knew was him and building a life together. I was growing and evolving, and so was he. Sometimes together and sometimes apart. The crazy part is for the first 5 years that I was dating, I lived with my partner for 4 of those years. Talk about not learning to live by yourself. It showed itself too. Even in dating, I would want the person to stay the night and be under me, because that’s what I used to and hadn’t learned how to be by myself.

The reality is once I learned that it’s truly ok to be by yourself and I accepted that challenge, I grew even more as a person. I evolved into the human that I feel fits who I am, and it’s allowed me to discover how to remove people quickly who aren’t good for me, to accept that things have a shelf life, and I can’t hold onto it past the expiration date, and that moving on my time is perfectly sufficient. My challenge to everyone is to find that space with being comfortable being by yourself. Learn yourself. Learn your mind, body, emotions, preferences, likes, dislikes and all those things you need to know to make yourself the best version of yourself. It can be painful and lonely at times, but close family and friends that you trust will always be there to occupy that space until you’re ready to let the man or woman in that you want to try and build something with.