Nesting - what happens if 1 person meets someone else?

[Tryingtobepositive123]

Hi,

I told my husband I wanted to leave a few days ago. No abuse or anything but i was fed up by his ongoing lack of enthusiasm for the family and grumpiness. It's been very sad. He's still hoping we can rekindle and has pulled out all the stops to try and turn things around and we are on good terms.

My mind has turned to practicalities of separating and in particular nesting. I've no idea if we could actually make that work financially but it is appealing to keep the kids in one place.

Though it strikes me that this arrangement locks you both in to each other financially. Are nesting arrangements just done on goodwill? Or can you guarantee it in some way?

We currently earn similar amounts (moderate) and live in an expensive area. If we financially go it alone we will both be really skint. We will look after the kids 50:50 or thereabouts.

What happens if he meets someone and wants to set up a life together? he's still of an age where he could feasibly have another kid with someone else. But could the rug be pulled after a year or two?

I explored this idea with my husband but he was not on board.
From what I have gathered from others doing this, it’s very tough going for the parents and typically when another love interest comes on the scene that’s when this set up tends to breakdown.
As with all separations, you can get a formal agreement drawn up but if one person breaks the terms I don’t think there’s a lot you can do to enforce it.

It might be easy for me to say now but I would bet on my partner moving on quicker than me and I unless the new person is awful that I wouldn't mind? Might be hugely naive.

Honestly - I think “considering nesting” is like a stage of separation/ divorce everyone goes through …
I looked at it in great detail.
In reality very few people ever do it. Other partners being one good reason, privacy, housework, running two houses or a house & a flat blah blah. Invariably it’s the woman that would bear the brunt of the mental load and cleaning etc.

What we did - stayed together in the family home but “separated” for 6 months. (My ex originally wanted it to be for 5 years 🤪🤪 until our youngest finished school - I said the most I’d do was 18 months til our eldest finished exams). In the event he went OLD v quick and discovered living with your ex went down like a shot sandwich so he went that summer. We then did a year where he was in a fiat but kids never went so he came back to the family home EOWeekend and stayed in spare room whilst I vacated. I did actually meet someone and stayed at his on my off weekends. So that helped as it would have been hard to find a friend to go to that often. So I supppse it was a form of nesting. He was very respectful of my space - wed had separate rooms really for many years and a big enough house for this to work. Wouldn’t have had him sleeping in my actual bed 🤮

Yeah I was thinking I've only read about this not actually met anyone who does it. Mind you it sounds like you developed a situ where the kids stayed put.

I think @HaggisBurger is probably right in that it's a stage rather than a long term solution. Your own question hits the nail on the head really, one of the partners will eventually meet someone new and the arrangement breaks down fairly quickly after that.

As a stepping stone to allow the weaker financial party to up their hours, retain, get a better job etc and to get to the end of a mortgage fix without EPCs it has its uses but I wouldn't look upon it as a long term solution.

We have been nesting the kids successfully for about 5 years. He lives with his partner the rest of the time and I live with mine. He has his own room and we get along well, so there haven’t really been any problems. He stays there 2 nights a week and then one of the kids goes to his for a night at the weekend - they take it week about - that way we get 1-1 time with each of them (the kids decided to do this themselves, unprompted).