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If you follow this break up advice to save your relationship, it will most likely work to saving your relationship.

A mutually-beneficial relationship is similar to a friends with benefits relationship. Neither person is pursuing a “real” relationship with the other, doesn’t mind or ask if the other is dating anyone else, enjoys the excitement and comfort of the set-up, and also “gets” something from the other—besides sex. Well, that is until someone else comes along.

Many times mutually-beneficial relationships will surface when people can gain in areas such as financial matters, emotional/psychological needs, business, and leisure. We all know the classic case of the sugar daddy with the arm candy stuck to his side. Clearly, both of these parties benefit in the relationship. The affluent, older man has the resources to provide for his younger woman—wining and dining her, taking her on exotic vacations, wooing her with gifts, etc. The younger woman, on the other hand, offers her lover companionship, revitalizes him, and serves as a morale booster.

So if these relationships offer advancement, convenience, and pleasure, can they also create problems? Maybe, but only if the conditions of the relationship are not clear or are unhealthy. As a therapist, I’ve encountered the mutually-beneficial relationship a few times (people love “free” therapy!). I haven’t been unethical. I’m just saying that sometimes troubled men see an advantage to dating a therapist; and before I know he’s lying on the sofa sobbing about his childhood, and I’m sitting cross-legged, taking notes. So in these atypical mutually-beneficial relationships I found myself in, I doled out therapy, in exchange for a little “something or another” from my suffering partner. This trend became increasingly problematic as it doesn’t make for a very healthy relationship. Let’s just say what I was getting wasn’t paying for the tissues, and didn’t rejuvenate the emotional drain.

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