Separating or living together apart

[Francks]

My and my OH (we're both women) are going to split up sometime soon. We have 3 DC. She's still hoping we're going to survive but I know it's over. I can't handle any more rows and I'm exhausted from 2 years of upset. For practical reasons we can't actually split right now (DD1 is very vulnerable right now, so we have to put her first for several months, and my DPs are living with us, for at least another month), so I'm trying to use these few weeks to decide what I really want the outcome to be when we do finally discuss splitting up. It won't be the first time we've had the discussion, we've been all round the houses with it all, but this time it will be for real.

So, I've been thinking that the best thing for the DC will be if they can stay in their own home. My OH and me will definitely want to share care equally. So, two options I've been considering are that the DC stay in the house and we move in and out on a rota. Or we all live together but in separate rooms, and still have a rota, so we're not together too often.

Has anyone tried either of these? Am I in cloud cuckoo land? I really want to avoid the DC moving from house to house every few days option if at all possible. It seems so unfair that they would have to suffer because their parents are too shit at sorting out their differences.

I think the shared living would only work in a mutual agreement split. It sounds like you are instigating it so be prepared for her not to want to carry on living together.

Have you tried counselling?

Yes, I suppose I am instigating it this time. But she has said so many times that we're over and I'm the one who always talks it round. So she may be relieved in fact, when she gets used to the idea that it's final.

We've had loads of counselling, to no avail.

Sounds like you may be able to come to an agreement then. It depends on the age of DC. I 50:50 share DD and it works really well now but probably because for her sake we are both very relaxed about what she wants - stuff flows freely between both homes and if schedule changes are required we deal with it like adults and both happily change other plans to make sure she's okay. Special occasions are hard but again we do what we need to do so she still gets to spend time with both her parents and we work hard to present a united front when required.

But having said that there's no way that would be the case if we still lived together!!

So chicken you don't think the moving from house to house is too annoying or difficult for her?

Still here if anyone has any views...

Well the moving in and out surely requires running 3 homes rather than 2? So from my perspective yes it's not easy for her at times I am sure but it would be very confusing her dad and I taking turns to be there and leave. Plus each paying for our own place to stay the rest of the time eats up money we can spend on her. Sharing a 'non DC' with your XP to come and go will surely lead to issues that have caused relationship problems?

Hi op. I share 50:50 care with my two Dc with exh. It works well. It was a fairly amicable split, but I instigated it.
We live very close, like. 10 min walk, 2 min drive. We are both close to the dc school and their friends. It takes a bit of organisation on my part, as exh is not the most organised, just remembering stuff etc but I'm used to it now. If you both put the Dc first then there shouldn't be too many probs.
My dc have never shown any upset about moving between 2 homes.

Good luck op.

Watching with interest. We are also amicable. I am considering buy to let to buy him somewhere as we cannot afford to rent an additional home.

Yes cost wise it's difficult either way which is one reason why staying put just in separate rooms is I think a good idea. But keeping our house and getting a 2 bed flat or 2 studio flats should in fact be cheaper than buying 2 separate houses - esp for the DC to have their own rooms.

Living together whilst separated strikes me as a bad idea. How is that really different to what you're doing now apart from sleeping in another room? And what happens when one or the other of you meets someone new. Personally I think clean breaks are the best way forward, where would you both go though in the event you take turns in the house?

We'd have to buy or rent another place. But it could be small, whereas if we do a full on clean split we'd have to buy two whole houses.

The difference would be that we'd no longer be trying to fix this relationship so we could just get on with our lives - that's a v different headspace from being constantly on the verge of splitting up.