I’m 50 in less than two weeks, have been with my partner for 25 years, we have two school aged children together, and this week It looks like we’ve come to an end. Things aren’t perfect between us but overall we tick along quite nicely until something trivial happens which blows up disproportionately. On this occasion, I was cleaning the house because we were thinking about moving and I’d made an appointment for a valuation. On our hallway staircase, there is a shelf with dp’s bike gear on it plus some of the kids stuff. It’s messy as it’s an open shelf and I thought it would look nice with plants on it instead. I’d asked a few years back for a door to be put on it but it never happened….busy family life and always jobs to do. Anyway, I put some stuff away and other stuff like a bike lid, I put on the kitchen table thinking it was about time it found a new place to live. Well, when dp asked me why his bike stuff was there and I said I’d cleared the shelf because I wanted ‘my’ house’ to look nice, he went ballistic bellowing at me and repeatedly telling me ‘fuck-you’. I said what a disappointment he was for verbally abusing me over cleaning a shelf and spent the night in one of the children's room. Spent the day working but tearful and very upset. Went he came home from work and ignored me, I felt even more upset and I reacted by asking him to leave. He won’t leave. We are unmarried. He says we will sell the house and I will have to deal with the children. He won’t apologise. Apparently I was being abusive trying to remove all trace of him from this house by clearing the shelf and he’s had enough of my abuse. Honestly, his decks are in the front room, speakers in the kitchen, bike stuff in the washing machine cupboard, third bedroom and our bedroom and the garage. It seems so irrational. It’s obviously deeper than the shelf but I can’t tolerate being verbally abused and being told it’s my fault. Where do I go from here?