How do couples break up and still live together?

I have never understood how people could do it either.

The virtues of humility and self-sacrifice are almost non-existent anymore. : ((

It has to be the most awkward and miserable experience.

By then “breaking up” is merely a formality and they most likely have “been just living together” for some time now.

Unhealthily, I imagine.

Spite?

I wouldn’t do it and wouldn’t want too.

If you have love, respect and compatibility but not all the romantic aspect to maintain a relationship then you often do it. I’ve done it a few times and our reasoning was until other people came breaking down the door to sweep us off our feet then why should we disrupt an otherwise comfortable routine? Some people share a circle of friends and become close to one another’s families which makes it seem almost painful to part unless there is no other way to be sane and comfortable.

I had to do it for a few months until we were able to move out. We separated our rooms and even bought separate groceries. I still played with her kid, but I also went out more and when I came home I just went straight to my room because I let her have the living room. Of course no one would choose it, but we had to do it.

My girlfriend and I broke up…. things had just kind of wound down between us, so we thought we could be friends and still live together. We had a house and a third roommate and we had pretty different schedules, so we didn’t think it would be a problem.

Well, she kind of went on a rampage, and was sleeping with guys she’d pick up on the street. Mostly she didn’t bring them home, so she wasn’t rubbing my face in it. But then I did get a new girlfriend, and she would come over occasionally, and this must have really pissed off my old girlfriend.

Somehow, she found a guy—a gay guy, no less (our other roommate was gay, fwiw), and at first he was just staying with her, but then he didn’t go away. Then he was a roommate we hadn’t bargained on, and he was doing weird shit to our house, like baking pine boughs in the over, thinking they might scent the house. The boughs burn, idiot. Duh. I came home to find wood smoke filling the whole house.

At one point, we started fighting. At first it was yelling matches, and then, finally, one day, it rose to violence. I’m never violent. But I was then. So my other roommate got together with me and his boyfriend, and we told them they had to be out… I don’t know, we might have given them a few days.

I think my ex was using this foundling as a way to get back at me. He ruined my favorite records. He pretty much destroyed everything he laid his hands on. Made our lives miserable, and she refused to do anything about it.

These things are weird. I think it is very difficult to live with an ex. It’s as difficult as it is to co-parent with an ex-spouse. You have to be calm and play fair and inevitably someone doesn’t and once the bad feelings get going, they just don’t seem to stop.

I guess my answer to this question is that I really don’t think ex-couples do live together. At best, it’s a temporary thing. Often, it’s much worse.

It’s not that hard. When I left my husband, we continued to live together for a very long time even as I was dating Alex and pregnant with his child, too. We were in separate rooms and he didn’t bother me..he was such a lazy person, he didn’t even care to move out..so I moved out because it was getting ridiculous and he lived in my parent’s home with them and I lived elsewhere…it was ridiculous…eventually when I was 8 months pregnant, I said ‘look, you gotta leave, I’m moving back in’ and so it took him another 2 months to get all his shit out, jesus…it was all so ridiculous but we didn’t mind being around each other, all the while…

I have a friend whose mother and father decided not to date each other any longer. They continued to live together and raise their children together for several years more—but while dating other people outside the house and maintaining their friendship. My friend describes it as “just the next phase in their relationship.” And to this day (though they no longer live together) they’re still great friends.

Obviously, it varies from situation to situation. Often in a break up tensions are too high to maintain close quarters. But this isn’t always the case.

I have no idea. My cousin and her husband fought all the time, divorced, and moved back in together, then finally bought a duplex, and they live in each side.

Very often, there is so much debt in a relationship that in a no fault divorce, one person bears a heavy financial burden of splitting up, and it makes sense to keep the structure together, for stability for the children. As long as people are not fighting, and certain ground rules are adhered to, a marriage could concievably morph into a “family” situation, where everyone is “family”, and there is no “couple”.