Breaking Up After Living Together

Breaking up after living together is harder than breaking up after living apart. It’s harder because you have to collect your belongings and gifts, leave behind pets, lose the money you invested in the place, and find a different place to stay.

You have to move back to your parents, crash at a friend’s place, find a hostel, or rent a new place. All of these can feel like you’ve accomplished nothing and wasted tons of time with your ex. The breakup can make you feel extremely nostalgic and insecure and cause you overwhelming anxiety and pain.

The longer you stayed with your partner and the more memories you created, the harder it can be to separate and settle for something less.

It can be especially difficult to break up with someone you live with when you have a joint mortgage. Financial commitments that tie you to your ex can make you worried and uncertain about the future. They can remind you that you’re in a loss-loss situation and that your financial situation will be difficult.

Breaking up after living together requires some forethought. You’ll need to contemplate who moves out, who keeps what, what room who should sleep in, and if one person owns the place, how much time to give the other person to find new accommodation.

You’ll need to be fair and considerate of each other and avoid misperceiving each other and getting into arguments. 

If you’re breaking up with your live-in partner, you’ll need to keep in mind that the breakup will make your ex feel rejected, shocked, and depressed. It will trigger your ex’s separation anxiety and force your ex to say and do things you may not be ready for.

Your ex could beg and plead for another chance, demand explanations, call you selfish or mean, and refuse to give you your stuff back. What your ex does depends on his or her impulse control/maturity and how you deliver the bad news.

If you’re empathetic and answer your ex’s questions truthfully in person, your ex will still feel hurt, but your ex won’t feel like a total failure who doesn’t even deserve sympathy and a response from you.

So make sure not to dump your partner over text, when your partner is in public, or when he or she has something important to take care of. Wait till he or she is in a safe environment at home with you and start the conversation then.

Tell your partner why you’re breaking up and how you expect the breakup to work. A healthy closure conversation will give your partner a chance to talk and get things off his or her chest. It will prevent resentment and promote healing.

However, if you’re getting broken up with, then your best option is to ask the questions you need to ask. Ask why the relationship ended and what you could have done differently. This will help you realize your mistakes and enable you to grow.

Once you’ve found closure, discuss what the breakup means for your living conditions.

Who moves out and who keeps what? It’s best not to postpone such topics or you could get confused and have a harder time talking about them later. If you can talk about the breakup and the place you live in right away, do that immediately.

Don’t leave it for later or someone could change his or her mind and cause issues. Your ex could feel smothered and say he or she wants to talk later, but when exactly is later? Dumpers who avoid difficult conversations tend to ignore them for weeks or months.

You don’t want to leave important discussions for that long and keep wondering what happens to your stuff and/or place.

So as difficult as it may be, try to stay calm and encourage your ex to discuss important things. The sooner you talk about them, the quicker you can go no contact and avoid emotional setbacks.

In this post, we talk about breaking up after living together. We discuss how you can break up with someone you live with and how you can recover from a difficult breakup.

Breaking up after living together

If you’re breaking up after living together, something didn’t go how you wanted it to go. Of course, every relationship is different, but someone lost feelings and devotion to the relationship and developed negative perceptions of the other person.

Because the relationship lost its meaning and hope, breaking up seemed like the only option. The thought of leaving made the disconnected person feel relieved and pushed him or her to initiate the breakup despite being live-in partners.

Living together doesn’t stop couples from breaking up. If anything, it makes them break up sooner because couples spend a lot of time together and experience various difficulties. If they’re not capable of dealing with those difficulties, they become bitter and detached.

They give up on maintaining the relationship and wait for an opportunity to leave. Usually, they abandon ship when they find things or people to replace their partner with.

So if you and your partner are breaking up after living together, something must have changed recently. Something or someone worsened your opinions of each other and made you think you could be happier without each other.

Whether it was unsupportive parents, another love interest, stress at work, or constant arguing, something caused a loss of feelings and commitment. You or your partner lost faith in the relationship and determined that leaving it was the best thing to do.

I don’t know what’s best for you, but the person quitting must think that he or she has given the relationship everything he or she could and that leaving it is the only option. Due to such beliefs, he or she no longer wants to work on the relationship.

All he or she wants is to break up and focus on things that provide peace and comfort.

If you’re the one who wants to break up, you probably already know why you’re breaking up. You understand that you lost feelings and the drive to fix the relationship and fall back in love. The relationship now makes you feel pressured and uncomfortable and urges you to go your separate ways as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, if your partner wants to break up or has broken up with you already, you probably don’t want that. You feel anxious and abandoned and want your partner or ex-partner to think things through.

A relationship gives you a sense of security whereas a breakup scares you and makes you think you’re not good enough and that it’s your fault for breaking up. 

It’s making you take the breakup personally and causing you to forget that the dumper is the one who failed to communicate feelings and resolve things. He or she took your commitment for granted and left some time after you moved in together.

That means the dumper focused on things that weren’t working and perceived you as someone who wasn’t making him or her happy. I’m sure you weren’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean you’re entirely to blame.

You both made mistakes and needed to work together. Because you didn’t or couldn’t, the relationship deteriorated and caused you to break up.

So now that you’re breaking up, you’ll need to cooperate for a while. You’ll need to discuss what to do with shared items, vehicles, bills, finances, properties, and joint custody. You’ll need to act mature and value your contracts and agreements. 

If you don’t respect each other’s time, money, belongings, and feelings, you could become resentful, vengeful, and competitive. You could even sue each other and live with hatred in your hearts. That would keep you obsessed with each other for the wrong reasons and affect your mental health.

So try not to handle the breakup poorly and let it get that far. Try to end things respectfully and move on to better things. Your partner may not cooperate, but that’s okay. Consider his or her behavior one of the main reasons for breaking up.

Doing so will help you process the breakup sooner.

You don’t need your ex to get closure and move on. You just need to think about your relationship and realize that your ex’s relationship mentality wasn’t good enough for a serious relationship. When you get some space, you’ll gain a fresh perspective on your ex’s mentality and understand things very clearly.

Wait until that happens and things will get much easier.

Many couples break up after they start living together. The most doubtful ones break up after a few weeks of moving on together whereas more determined ones break up after months or years.

A breakup (regardless of whether couples live together or not) is a sign that something major is wrong with the relationship and that couples have some things to work on.

They shouldn’t just consider each other incompatible and move on to someone else. If they start dating right away, they usually face the same issues and break up.

Exes should take a break from dating and commit to self-improvement. By reflecting on their shortcomings and mistakes, they can grow within and prepare themselves for their next relationship with their ex or someone else.

They can become people they should have been when they were with their ex.

With that said, here’s why breaking up after living together can be so difficult.

If you’re renting a place together and your ex wants to break up before the lease expires, it’s not unreasonable to expect the dumper to find a new place and continue paying for the place.

Your ex should respect the written contract and be a responsible tenant.

If finances don’t allow you and your ex to move out before the lease expires, you can stay together until then. But know that if it’s longer than a few months, things could get very complicated. The dumper could bring other people into your shared home or stay out at night and make you anxious.

It’s best that you move out as quickly as you can. It will make you both feel better.

How to break up when you live together?

Breaking up with a person you live with is hard, but it’s still easier than being on the receiving end of the breakup. It’s much easier than getting your heart crushed and letting go of hope.

If you care about your ex, you’ll probably feel bad for breaking your ex’s heart. You’ll wonder if you’re doing the right thing and if your ex will handle the breakup well.

Guilt shouldn’t stop you from leaving, but it should remind you that your partner is a human being who deserves an in-person breakup (if possible) and an explanation for why you’re breaking up. Your partner needs to hear it from you directly rather than from your friends and family.

By talking about the breakup, he or she will feel cared for, understand the reasons for breaking up, and have an easier time accepting the breakup and moving on. Your ex may not express much or any gratitude for your kindness and patience, but your ex will appreciate it nonetheless.

As a person who values the relationship and wants to stay with you, he or she deserves to be broken up with empathetically. Your ex deserves it whether he or she was a good or a bad partner. Your ex will be in a vulnerable state, so you should be open to communication and questions.

Besides, your behavior shows who you are and how you deal with difficult situations. It has nothing to do with your ex’s pre-breakup behavior and post-breakup expectations.

So if you want to break up with whom you live, pick a good location and time to deliver the news. The best time is when your partner is free of any obligations such as work, and the most suitable location would be your home.

Make sure your partner has enough time and privacy to process the separation and get the help he or she needs.

Before breaking up with your live-in partner, cancel your plans for the day. Give your partner at least a few hours to ask questions and talk about his or her feelings. You want to remember that your partner will experience an emotional shock and feel anxious for months.

Provided he or she loves you, it could take a year or longer to fully let go. It depends on your partner’s self-esteem and his or her way of coping with difficulties.

No matter how good your partner is at processing things, you need to put your partner’s pain before your desire for freedom. You need to leave in such a way that you don’t appear uncaring and scar your partner for years.

If you’ve been broken up with before, you know that breakups affect dumpees deeply and that it’s their and their dumper’s responsibility to minimize pain. Both parties are responsible for helping the wounded party feel important and reassured.

When you understand this, you can approach your partner and say, “I want to talk to you about something. As you probably know, the last few (weeks) have been very difficult for us (or me). I’ve tried very hard to express this to you and fix the things that bothered me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t, so I’ve decided to end the relationship.”

Your partner will get hurt by the breakup whether you blame him or her or take all the blame. I encourage you to be honest even if find your partner entirely responsible for the breakup.

Say that you didn’t notice any improvements in communication or his/her behavior and that it’s too late to fix things now. Now, you should both spend some time away from each other.

It won’t be easy to go full no contact because you live together, so you’ll have to make some rules on how to coexist while you look for a new place to stay. You’ll basically have to stop sharing the same bed, showering together, and being intimate.

As exes, you mustn’t act like you’re still together or you’ll confuse your ex, give your ex false hope, and delay his or her recovery. You’ll make the breakup difficult for both of you.

My advice is to treat the breakup as a permanent separation and let your ex slowly come to terms with it.

So if you’re breaking up after living together, be respectful, yet direct and honest. Express how you feel or don’t feel and support your ex for a while. Support doesn’t mean that you ask for friendship and check up on your ex every day.

It means that you leave your ex alone and communicate only when your ex wants to communicate. That’s how you can help your ex recover as quickly as possible.

How to survive a breakup when you live together?

If your ex broke up with you while you lived together, your ex demonstrated that his or her feelings and relationship goals have changed. Your ex developed non-relationship goals and ambitions that didn’t involve you anymore.

For that reason, you’ll have to avoid trying to change your ex’s mind. If reasoning could change the dumper’s feelings and decisions, most dumpers would get their ex back simply by saying how they feel.

They’d reattract their ex and live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, most dumpees don’t reconcile with their ex through communication. They can’t convince their ex to give them another chance because their words don’t bring back lost feelings.

All they do is guilt-trip, frustrate dumpers, and make them stay away from dumpees.

You must make it your goal to recover as quickly as you can. Instead of chasing your ex and doing your best to impress your ex, do no contact. Show your ex that you respect his or her decision and that you have the strength to accept the breakup and back off.

Your ex needs to see that you won’t display unattractive traits and make his or her post-breakup life difficult.

If you respect your ex’s boundaries, your ex will respect you as a person and perhaps even doubt or regret leaving you. The future is hard to predict, but if you want what’s best for you and your ex, make plans to move out.

A physical separation will allow you to disconnect emotionally and help you rebuild your love for yourself.

Are you breaking up after living together? How long did or will you live with your (ex)partner? Share your breakup story and questions below the post. We’ll reply shortly.

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Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.