Anyone split with partner but still living with them?

[Unconventional]

I can't be the only one? (I'm a namechanging regular btw)
DP and I have been together nearly 10 years but in the last few months have decided to split for various reasons.
This was mainly my decision as I'd fallen out of love with him years ago mainly due to his emotionally abusive behaviour. We've got into so many negative patterns of behaviour with each other that it's become unfixable, and frankly I don't have the energy or the inclination to try to fix it. He wanted to try to fix it but seems to have accepted that I don;t want to.
The problem is, he won't move out because he can't leave his children (aged 5 and 7) who he adores and they adore him.
I can't move out as he'd never let me take the children with me and there's no way I could ever consider living without them, not even temporarily.
So the problem is, we're stuck living in the same house (and in the same bedroom for the time being) while not being 'together'.
Can this work? we get on ok on a day-to-day basis as friends so the children aren't living in a war zone.
Anyone got any experience of this sort of situation?

No. We actually own two houses, one of which we rent out, so living apart wouldn't be that much of a problem practically (losing the rent would hit financially) but he says he's not prepared to live separately from his children.

DP did this with his ex for a few weeks before getting a flat- even still sharing a room and bed for a while. I was doing the same- no sex with ex etc, and was desperate for him to get his act together to leave. I think the difficulty comes when one or both of you starts a new relationship. I know I wasn't keen on the set-up, even though I was in no way suspicious that DP and his ex were still intimate, and I knew my own situation. It just became untenable after a while because we needed to get on with our lives.

Even with no-one else involved, I think sharing a bed, in particular, locks you into a feeling of still enduring a shitty kind of unwelcome intimacy, and it doesn't give you that feeling of relief and freedom that having your own space provides.

I would say that you at least need separate sleeping arrangements for now, and just let events take their course. At some point events will come to a head and you will find a way to live apart, simply because it's untenable for most people for this not to happen.

If either of you gets a new partner are you going to be happy for them to come back to the house (just to spend time together not the night), get to know the DC etc?

thats not so bad that you have the two houses.

Would you consider shared care of the children?

New partners won't comeback to the house. We've agreed on that for the children's sake.
Hayes, I suggested that we live apart but share custody of the children. He still won't go for that option.

Yes but what about if either of you are with that new partner for quite a length of time. Then it's only natural for the next step to be to introduce them to your DC surely?

I suggest if you want the split and want to live alone then he will just have to accept this. You will have a new life and meet someone else, its only natural. What would be unnatural is bein in a new relationship and not being able to develop it properly due to the ties of still living with your ex.

You never know you may drift back into a better relationship than before??

I went through a long period with my H when I was saying that we needed to split and it always came down to 'I'm not leaving the children'. But this was a sort of stubborness, really, a way of retaining control in a situation which he was failing to acknowledge and address.

It was also a way of trying to get a split to be 'my fault'. He could stay the 'good guy'. Refecting on what the relationship would be like if it worked really helped me to see how bad things had become.

We are trying, also, to be fairly unconventional about our split - we're taking the attitude of protecting our friends as well as our children and have even been out together as a family.

However, having really wanted to keep the family together, worked at it for years, thought I would be devastated when he left, I am finding I have more energy than I have had for years. I have discovered lots of new things about myself and how strong I am, how much I have been compromising etc etc. Far from being devastated, I feel like I'm on an adventure (well, okay it's only been a few days but I would never have predicted that this was how I would feel ever again).

I invited ex-Dp to stay at my (rented) house for 3 months or so after we split, as he didn't know where to go and needed to consider his options. we had to share a bed also- I started sleeping with DS who had a big room but he didn't like this and took DS to sleep with him, so I went back to bed-sharing (while thinking that i could afford to be dictated to since he was out soon!) It took 8 months in the end, he decided to stay locally and he decided unilaterally on a 50-50 arrangement so after all my efforts at a nicey-nicey arrangement I took him to court anyway. We now have a shared residence arrangement about 65-35.
You need to decide whether you're going to go along with this living together thing and if you're not prepared to, tell him that you'll have to go to the courts (who will send you to mediation anyway). You can tell him as sympathetically as possible and offer a shared residence arrangement- perhaps 50-50 if you think he's going to be stable enough to carry through (my ex-DP is not British and wants to leave, hence my reluctance on 50-50). Be sympathetic to his point of view, but don't be bullied. Court cases are combative but after things settle down and everyone's adjusted, your relationship will probably go back to being cordial if he's being cordial now.

You situation is better than most if you have another house to go to, and your salary's better than most too, so you have some advantages.

secretskillrelationhips totally agree with your post. The "I am not leaving my kids" stance is a way to prevent the split from moving forward and blocking the change.

What can you say to that? Where can you go? "Yes we will split, but I am not leaving my kids and I know you won't so I will carry on living here, nothing will really change and in time you will stop all this rebellious nonsense and knuckle down into the relationship again."

I think it could work but not if you have to share a room. I didn't share a room with exh for about a year before he left. I probably could have carried on living with him after the split as he came and went as he pleased even when were together. The split did take the pressure off greatly and we even found a way to have a laugh together. In the end what put the lid on it was his drinking. I was frightened for how it was going to affect my kids seeing him drunk on the sofa with the tv blaring out every morning. Otherwise I think I would have been happy for him to stay, so much less disruptive.

how come it's stuborness on a mans part to not leave his kids, but it's not if it's the woman?
surely they're taking exactly the same stance?

Depends what either party has done within the relationship. Some have more rights to stay in the family home and with the dc than others. My ex was unfaithful and emotionally abusive. If you don't behave in a decent way male or female, then you should be the one to leave imvho.

I was purely speaking from my own perspective in my last post.

mayor - if you read both mine and sunfleur's posts you'll realise we're not talking about 'wanting to stay with the kids' but control manifesting as stubborness. If you're in the situation you can really see the difference. In one, the person will move heaven and earth to change things so that you can move forward, in the second it's used as an excuse to do nothing.

Exactly Secretskillrelationships. Decent people might not want to leave their kids but recognise that leaving would be for the greater good. Behaving like an arse and then saying righteously "well I am not leaving my kids" is a way of continuing to control a situation in an abusive relationship. My ex used to say "why don't you leave?" as though we were equally to blame for this awful marriage. He knew I never would and he never would so what could happen? I just had to put up with it thats what. It was irrefutable, there was no way to move forward. Healthy people want to move forward imvho.

OP do you think this is happening in your situation?

Op.. I still live in the same house as H after the split.. It's easier maybe for us as neither of us wanted another relationship for the forseeable future.

Also we weren't in an abusive relationship.. things for many reasons just broke down and we were still pretty good friends tbh.

we were like this for many months..

weirdly we then actually started getting on again.. and could see the attractive bits about each other again..
so we are taking things very slowly and seeing how it goes.

it's all rather strange tbh.

Hi I just wanted to say - it must be emotionally draining for you but also confusing for the kids?
What about finance...Is he going to pay you child support?
Who does the chores - do you split it or still fall into the marital roles etc?

basically it sounds like a de facto separation - which is fine if you don't have financial commitments etc - but gets very complicated with school, as kids get older -
Might be an idea to see a solicitor ( you can arrange to see one initally witha fixed sum for a fixed amount ) and get all your options
Good luck

I did this with DH for 2 weeks. (It wasn't a proper split, but a row that got out of control!) We ended up like BCNS - getting on fabulously, no pressure, like right back at the beginning of the relationship.

Why not get single beds delivered? You can get ones that clip together into a double if things change (or for after you properly split). That will jolt him into realising that a change is happening.

hi,
im on the verge of splitting up with my dp. i cant see how one of us can move out either, not yet. we have an open relationship anyway so its a bit different, we already have some ground rules about partners not staying over, and we already have seperate bedrooms...although we do usually share mine at the moment. he 'joked' the other day about splitting up that he would obviously keep the house and custody of our ds.
we do 50/50 childcare (actually he does slightly more cos i work and he doesnt)and i think moving from house to house would perhaps be more traumatic for my son than anything, and dp certainly wouldnt be okay with being a 'every other weekend' kind of dad. i wouldnt want that either.
but im not in love with him, and we argue too much and i feel miserable, and he obviously is too. we keep trying things to make our relationship better but fail. ouch, it hurts so much, and when i think of the practicalities of moving out i dont know how to begin.
what worries me, unconventional, is you said you are splitting up cos he is emotionally abusive. now that doesnt sound to me as if you should be staying in the same house. i think there are issues of power that realistically have to be recognised and confronted.
good luck!

Oh what a releif to hear this, my marriage broke down after the birth of our son, last january he told me he was in a relationship with a friend of mine this did not go down well!
we lived together for a year which wasnt easy especially as i was still very much in love with him and had to watch him go off every evening but he refused to move out because of our son. I soon fell out of love and realised what a mug i had been as he had said alsorts of thing to our friends and lied to just about everyone including me and his new parnter, then tried to play happy families when he was home then off to his girlfriends when she finished work. In january he moved in with her after i said i couldnt carry on. it was a god send but he then started to spend every spare minute at home i couldnt work it out in April he turned up with all his belongings and said they had finished i stupidly said he could come back and now i am back in the depressing state i was in a year ago (the lies to our friends continue)as he insisted its over with her but i knew and have the prove that it isnt he just said what he thinks i wanted to hear.
I told him last month that enough was enough and that i wanted to sell the house and move away as i have nothing to stay for. Now he is openly seeing her again and is asking for another chance in a new home with me.
the best bit - he wants to try again in a new home and that he doesnt want to loose me or our son but he is not going to give her up until i have told him i will try again! so i still sit here a watch a man who says he wants to give it another go with me get in his car to see her 3-4 times a week! is it me or is he still trying to have his cake and eat it

He can't stop you leaving with the children, he is still being emotionally abusive to you as he is refusing to do anything other than what he wants.

Hi,

If you are still on here, can I ask how you got in? I’m in exactly the same boat right now 🙄

Hey! I'm wondering if anyone can help me in my current situation.
Me and my baby daddy have split of 7 years. Baby he's 17months. I am 26 and he is 43.
For the past 4 years I have seen several times him liking hot girls pics on facebook. Adding/following stunning local girls. We had a drink 1 night 4 years ago and had a fall out and left to stay at my mum's and he started to message my friends. And several other girls 😟
He apologised and silly me forgave.
Recently I have seen on his Facebook that he is following more girls and sending waves to them.
I also don't feel comfortable with my body any more so therefore we don't do "the deed" and he has said to me in the past If he was 20 years younger he would of gone elsewhere by now.
When we first met we did party a lot and was always "at it" (sorry TMI)
But I would do anything to get my body back to how it was then as I was so confident and felt like he loved me more.
I have told him in the past how it makes me feel when i see he's is liking stunning girls pics and he knows I've lost all confidence in myself.
He never compliments me anymore or says how good I am with the baby because I do, do everything with him. He had never bathed the baby and can't remember the last time he got him ready for bed or got him to sleep.
He would rither sit in the conservatory watching telly and playing on his phone.
I am a hairdresser so some nights I only finish at 7 and I come home to to the baby in his high chair still with food on him watching telly and he says "He's just had his tea".
In past arguments I have told him to go several times because that's how much he pushes my buttons. He started to pull me off the couch with my pj top. Hit me with a cushions on my head. Grabbed me at the back of the neck and pushed me towards the stairs. All in front of the baby.
In which I retaliated with my mouth and told him to go and die which I feel terrible about and have apologised for. Now this is the only thing he has to throw at me. And I have all the above ☝️
He did always cook nice teas and clean around the house and when we was good we was really good always had a laugh. He was my Best friend. But that's how it started to feel in the end, just a friendship.
I don't know if i regret him going, or if it's because I am just used to him being here.
He has paid for a storage place to store all his furniture in .. 55inch tv from living room and tv stand, leaving me and his son a small one on a kitchen table and chairs, table and chairs from the garden. He has left me with a small tv for the living room which looks pathetic. I just feel constantly sick and I'm waiting to hear from him all the time.

Sorry for the long post. I just needed a little rant 😭 xxxx

Sorry if this is on someone else's post. 1st using mum's net xx

OP, I am still living with my DH 18 mths after we agreed to 'separate'. We get on well, the love just wasn't there anymore. We have a young son. Neither of us can financially afford to live elsewhere a.t.m.
So, I started O.L.D. when my DH spent w/e's at our caravan. I've never had a baby-sitter apart from my Mum so there were many occasions when I had to invite a date home. My son know's the situation between DH and myself. He has ASD and just wasn't interested in my dates, spends most of his time in his bedroom playing video games anyway.
I now have a b/f of 6mths. He has met DH and we've had a few drinks together. He sometimes stays over even if my DH is here. My view is life is too short and I'm not prepared to put my life on hold until the house is sold.
I'm not saying all this has been easy. You have to work on it. My DH has a g/f who lives abroad and will most likely move out there eventually.
The hardest part of all this is other people's reaction to our set up and the negative comments, especially in the early weeks/months. It has got easier now they see we are making it work. Communication is very important.
Whether he moves out or not, we agreed to sell the house in 2 yrs due to our son's schooling. What I'll do then, god knows.

I am there too. Abusive relationship. Waiting for mediation. He refuses to move out despite having other properties (all about control). He has effectively baricaded me from the bedroom so I am on the sofa. I cannot wait for some sort of resolution, but he will be tenacious AF because he wants to punish me for ending it after several miserable years. It's so hard, but I had to not share a bed with him as he was also sexually pestering me and actually raped me. I can't believe I just wrote those words. Horrific. Trouble is - I have no legal right to chuck him out so I am looking at all my options. He is not a decent man and therefore not a great father that everyone thinks he is