‘I’m still recovering from it now’: What it’s really like to live with your ex

Ben and Lil have just signed the contract for their first London flat. The locks are dodgy, there’s a pest problem brewing and their lettings agent seems both incompetent and mildly unsettling. But at least their relationship’s strong, right? Unfortunately not – Ben is about to admit that he’s cheated on Lil on a drunken night out. Neither can afford to break the lease, so they’re locked in for the long haul: just the two of them, some simmering resentment and plenty of black mould.

The premise for Break Clause, Channel 4’s new romcom series, also feels very much like a modern day horror story. Break-ups can be painful enough even when you are able to sever ties quickly in order to move on. But attempting to untangle your lives from one another and get some semblance of closure while still sharing the same bathroom? It’s the stuff of nightmares.

But the cost of living crisis, coupled with high mortgage rates and soaring rents that have made living alone a pipe-dream for many, is only making this hellish scenario more common. Very few people have the financial means to buy their ex out if they own a property, or to pay two sets of extortionate rents each month.

A 2022 study from Zoopla found that one-third of home-owning couples in the UK end up living together after breaking up, for an average period of just under 16 months. Almost half of them said they were stuck there because they could not afford to move out, with four out of 10 admitting that the atmosphere was constantly bad, and one third saying that arguments were frequent.

Some will even keep a floundering relationship on life support just because it makes sense financially. Last year, research from ISA provider OneFamily discovered that around one in five young adults aged 18 to 40 had stayed with a partner simply to make the cost of living more affordable. The romance of it all!

After several years with her boyfriend, Jess*, 32, realised that their relationship just wasn’t working any more – there was, she says, “no final indiscretion” that forced things to an end, just that slow, steady divergence that creeps up on so many couples. She told him how she was feeling, and they agreed to split. But it couldn’t be a clean break – they were tied into a rental contract on a one-bed flat, having just extended their lease by another year.

Their first ground rule? Taking it in turns to use the bed (while the other camped out on the sofa in the living room). It might have been cramped, but at least they had the option to sleep alone – according to Zoopla’s survey, one in eight of those who have to stay living with their ex are forced to continue sharing a bedroom with them.

Maya* ended up in a similar situation after splitting with her partner. “We actually started off by sharing the bed still and that didn’t go very well, so we decided to alternate couch and bed,” the 31-year-old says. “It was always just really awkward deciding who got the bed, like if someone was feeling unwell – it just made it feel very political.”

Luckily, too, Jess and her former partner had pretty different schedules, so their paths didn’t cross too much. “He was a teacher so he would leave quite early. I would work late or go to the gym, so our contact was fairly minimal.”

Still, the whole period had “a huge impact on my mental health”, Jess says. Because she was the one to instigate the break-up – and because there hadn’t been any major trigger of the kind that makes a split easier for others to parse – she found herself “feeling awful and wondering if I’d done the right thing”. Her friends, she adds, “treated me as if I was mad, because people liked us as a couple. Some told us to just get back together for simplicity’s sake. So it was a lot to contend with.”

For Maya, the whole set-up was made even trickier by the fact that her ex actually owned the house, but she had put lots of effort into its design, so didn’t want to feel like she immediately had to leave the space she had poured so much into after the break-up. But a lot of their arguments, she says, “would kind of boil down to, ‘well, it’s my house, my rules’, which was pretty s****y”.

This living situation lasted a few months. “It was affecting me at work, crying in front of my manager and taking days off – I really care about my career, so that was not ideal for me,” Maya says. She is “still recovering from it now”, because when she was still in the house, she “was surrounded by it”; it’s only with a bit of distance that she is “slowly starting to unpack” her feelings.

Indeed, part of the pain of living alongside an ex is that “you’re trying to get over someone and process grief while being reminded of them every five minutes”, explains therapist Zoe Clews. “You’re no longer a couple, but you’re still sharing a bed’s proximity, a kitchen, a sofa, and all the little routines that made up your relationship. It’s an emotional contradiction – your head knows it’s over, but your environment keeps pulling you back into it.”

Disagreements about seemingly small things, Clews adds, “can become enormous”, because of all the feelings that are bubbling underneath them. “They’re rarely just about the washing up,” she notes. Instead, “they’re about feeling taken for granted, rejected or trapped”, or “what you’re really arguing about is who hurt whom”.

And it can be particularly tricky if both parties are handling things very differently. “One partner may thrive after a break up, whereas the other may feel like their world is collapsing,” says Lowri Walsh, psychotherapist and honorary lecturer at the University of Lancashire. “If you are the one who has ended the relationship, you may need to take a step back from supporting your ex and encourage them to reach out to others to help them instead,” she suggests.

Dating might not be your first priority: as Walsh puts it, “after coming out of a relationship, it’s likely you’ll still be vulnerable, even if you don’t feel like you are” – and “sometimes our brains and bodies need more time to truly process what has happened and come to terms with it ending before we can move on”.

But depending on how long you’re stuck in this purgatorial arrangement, you might well reach a point where you do feel ready to meet someone new. So should you make your living situation clear in your Hinge profile? Won’t that just make most people swipe left?

Jess opted for transparency when she started dating again, but “it was incredibly awkward to bring up.” “Most people didn’t believe me and found the living arrangements uncomfortable,” she adds – although, at this point in the post-breakup haze, she “wasn’t looking for anything serious then anyway”.

She and her ex “made an agreement never to bring anyone back to the flat, as it was still our home”, she explains. But that didn’t necessarily make things easier – absence could still speak volumes. “The first few times the other stayed out all night and didn’t come home was painful, because we each knew the other was staying with someone else,” she recalls. “It was very hard to adjust to. We had a few real rows about it, because we were both hurting quite a lot.”

It got easier over time, though. Six months in, once they were “more used to the separation”, Jess’s ex “would even look through my Hinge matches with me” (perhaps he wanted to suss out who he was competing with on the apps).

Looking back, though, she feels lucky that because she and her ex treated each other civilly, they “came out the other side as friends”, and became just “like any other housemates” – albeit with more complicated sleeping arrangements. This “did take a lot of time and effort and patience”, though, Jess cautions, as well as establishing “clear boundaries” – like their dating rules.

Clews reckons it’s also worth being clear “about privacy, money, chores, childcare [and] guests”, as well as your romantic lives. Just because you lived together as a couple, she adds, you shouldn’t assume that “the old rules still apply” – that will only create more confusion.

Even if you know you can’t move out for a while, Clews recommends getting an exit plan in place, as “knowing there’s an end date can make the situation feel less suffocating and untenable”; it will become a period of your life to get through, rather than sprawling out in front of you. She also suggests focusing on “build[ing] a life outside the home. See friends, make plans and do things that remind you who you are when you’re not someone’s partner”.

Ultimately, she advises, “you can’t create emotional distance if you keep living as though nothing has changed”. Your aim shouldn’t be to “become the perfect exes”, she adds, but to “give each other enough space to let go”.

*Names have been changed for anonymity