Why Living With Your Ex Is A Bad Idea?

Living with your ex is a bad idea because you and your ex constantly remind each other that you failed as partners and that you don’t feel good around each other. Your presences alone evoke unpleasant feelings and make you go through the dumpee and the dumper stages.

The dumper feels a strong need to disassociate from the dumpee whereas the dumpee feels anxious and wants to reconnect as quickly as possible. Due to their conflicting needs, wants, and expectations the dumpee usually unintentionally pressures the dumper and brings a negative reaction out of him or her.

Pressure and negative reactions then further increase the emotional distance between the ex-couple and trigger the dumpee’s fears and insecurities. It makes the dumpee feel strongly compelled to fix the relationship before the dumper moves on and forgets about him or her.

The dumper, on the other hand, may not be anxious and afraid of being forgotten, but he or she does crave a lot of space and detests conversations or even reminders about getting back together.

The dumper just wants to self-prioritize and pretend like the relationship never happened.

Because some couples live together after the breakup, they have a very hard time focusing on themselves. They constantly feel forced to interact with each other and feel dragged back into the past. The past makes them feel trapped and stressed and prevents them from moving on and living joyful post-breakup lives.

Therefore, living with your ex is a bad idea whether you’re a dumpee or a dumper. If you’re a dumper, you probably feel smothered, guilty, and unhappy. Seeing that your ex is struggling emotionally hurts you and makes you want to avoid (not help) your ex.

This is especially true if your ex keeps mentioning how angry, sad, regretful, depressed, and disappointed he or she is.

However, if you’re a dumpee, then you have slightly different problems. You watch everything your ex says and does and wait for your ex to apologize and ask to get back together. By getting back together, you hope to immediately stop feeling rejected and start feeling validated and needed.

That’s why your biggest motivator and your most pretentious friend at the same time is none other than hope. Hope works day and night under the pretense that it’s trying to help you find joy and happiness in life.

But in reality, it’s merely showing you the quickest (not the best) solutions that temporarily make you feel better and stop you from accepting the breakup.

Instead of helping you accept the painful situation and make you self-reliant, it tells you to forget about healing the long way by detaching and learning to love yourself and to instead imagine yourself getting back together with your ex.

This sadly looks much more appealing than having no goals and plans. But it’s also true that it makes you even more attached and dependent on your ex in the long run. It’s a double-edged sword that makes you feel better in the moment and causes more problems later when reality catches up with you.

Hope works the same way as drugs. It feels good when you let it in, but it also causes immense damage over time.

If you live with your ex, moving out probably scares you because you know you’ll lose control over your ex. You won’t know where your ex is and what your ex is doing, so the thought of being left in the dark all alone frightens you.

You’d rather keep an eye on your ex and feel hopeful than feel hopeless. Hope empowers you whereas hopelessness forces you to exclude your ex from your life.

Since reconciliation is out of the question, the only viable solution is to stop thinking of your ex as your savior. You don’t have any other option right now because you need to prioritize your healing and well-being. To prioritize these things, find a way to stop living with your ex immediately.

Living in the same place as your ex will continue to delay your healing and complicate your and your ex’s future relationships.

No new person wants to see that you still live with your ex and that you act like the breakup never happened. Exes shouldn’t have a sibling-like relationship with each other.

One of the reasons for this is that it makes new people feel on edge and weird, to say the least. It constantly tells them that their partner is too close to their ex and that they could get burned if they’re not careful.

This isn’t an insecurity or a trust issue as some people who live with their ex say in their defense, but rather a disrespectful/unempathetic act on their part. It’s their lack of understanding and care that hurts their partner and causes their partner to question his or her place in the relationship.

Guys are especially guilty of this as they look at things rationally (from their perspective mainly) and fail to understand why their partner feels uncomfortable with their living situation. They like to justify their behavior by saying that women are too sensitive, jealous, and controlling.

So regardless of whether you got dumped or did the dumping yourself, know that you shouldn’t live with your ex after the breakup. Even if you’ve signed a lease together, you should quickly discuss who’s going to move out and when.

It should be one of the first things you discuss during the closure conversation as ignoring this topic and delaying it will prolong healing for the dumpee, smother the dumper, and cause both parties unnecessary problems in their next relationships.

Most people you date won’t understand why you still live with your ex.

The first thing they’ll assume is that you’re still open to working on the relationship or that someone has feelings and hasn’t given up yet.

This article will explain why living with your ex is a bad idea and what you should do about it.

Why is living with your ex a bad idea?

Assuming you’re a dumpee, living with your ex is a bad idea not just because you constantly see your ex and crave his or her recognition but also because you want the best but assume the worst.

When you see your ex, you feel hopeful that your ex would notice your worth and when your ex is out, you fear that your ex is talking to other people and getting to know them on a personal level.

The thought that your ex could find someone else and get serious with him or her hurts you badly as you’re not ready to see your ex move on. You’d rather have your ex stay single, work on relationship problems, and behave as before.

That’s why you analyze your ex’s post-breakup behavior and try to make sense of what is happening. You want your ex to grow as a person and come back when the time is right. But all your hopes and dreams do is make you develop an ex-obsession and put your ex in charge of your emotions and actions.

This makes you extremely vulnerable to your ex’s mood swings, harsh words, knee-jerk reactions, and interests that don’t involve you. Every unwanted response from your ex makes you prone to anxiety and pain.

Living with your ex can also be difficult because you feel that your ex no longer loves you and/or respects you. You see that your ex no longer cares and that his or her interests, hobbies, friends, or goals have changed. No longer is your ex interested in building a life with you and sharing his or her happiness with you.

Your ex now has plans and goals that don’t involve you. And that you don’t like. Because you see that your ex’s priorities in life as well as his or her attitude toward you have changed, you feel confused and perhaps even mislead.

Your first thoughts are that your ex is happier now that he or she is single and that you were the problem.

You don’t consider the possibility that your ex feels empowered by the breakup due to weeks or months of suffocation, unhappiness, and delaying the breakup.

Even if you understand why your ex acts the way he or she does, that doesn’t fix your problems and take your pain away. You still need months of time to emotionally accept your ex’s new persona and be okay with it. That’s why you keep wanting your ex to come back and thinking that he or she could be happy with you rather than with other people.

You used to get your ex’s affection without asking for it. But now that the breakup happened, this has changed. Your ex isn’t willing to give it to you anymore even if you were to throw tantrums and beg and plead. Your ex is simply okay without giving you any affection and is also okay without receiving it.

This means your ex’s feelings and romantic expectations have changed and that you need to change them too. It won’t happen overnight, but it didn’t happen for your ex that quickly either. The breakup may have come out of the blue, but your ex had pondered about breaking up with you for quite some time.

Just because your ex didn’t express his or her problems with you, it doesn’t mean that everything was fine. Things clearly weren’t otherwise your ex wouldn’t have fallen out of love and left. Your ex would have stayed committed and tried expressing problems first.

So if you’re wondering why living with your ex is a bad idea, it’s because as a dumpee, you don’t need to see your ex acting relieved, strange, or different. You don’t need nor want to think that you had something to do with your ex’s strange and unpredictable post-breakup behavior and that you weren’t a good partner.

Self-blame won’t help you feel better. It will make your self-esteem hit rock bottom and force you to spiral further into depression. If you don’t distance yourself from your ex, you’ll think your ex might still come back around and keep thinking about your ex 24/7.

You’ll put your ex high up on a pedestal and struggle to remember (or take seriously) your ex’s bad traits.

All you’ll remember are the good times and how secure and happy you used to be. Nostalgia will make sure that you put your rose-tinted glasses on and avoid healthy breakup advice.

Healthy breakup advice entails starting no contact or if you still live together, doing limited no contact until you’ve moved out.

As exes, you need to have boundaries otherwise you could continue to act like you’re with your ex and expect the relationship to pick up where it left off.

If anything hurts dumpees, it’s high expectations. When things don’t happen the way they expect them to, dumpees are forced to swallow a dose of reality and suffer immensely. They have to accept and process what they previously refused to acknowledge.

So keep in mind that multiple post-breakup mistakes and exposure to false hope breed denial, obsession, anxiety, depression, and feelings of powerlessness.

If you lack the ability to protect yourself from painful setbacks, you could experience suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, and gut-wrenching physical withdrawal symptoms. You could also develop trust issues and self-esteem problems that will require professional help to address.

You can avoid these issues now and in the future simply by understanding how remaining close to your ex affects your life. My advice is to learn that being physically close to your ex while remaining emotionally distant will starve you for validation and make you feel confused.

This is especially true if you assume that your ex’s hot and cold behavior is a good sign.

All hot and cold behavior indicates is that your ex has moments where your ex cares about you as a person and moments where your ex feels smothered and uncomfortable. This could be because you get too close to your ex and make your ex feel forced to help you.

With that said, here are 6 reasons why living with your ex is a bad idea.

Now that you know that living with your ex is a bad idea, it’s time to do something about your living situation. You need to separate from your ex as quickly as possible and become emotionally independent. Time is especially of the essence if you had an ugly breakup, if your ex resents you, or if your ex is dating someone else.

The longer you continue to reside together, the more you’ll observe your ex and suffer in the process.

Move out as soon as you can!

Since you’re no longer a couple, you need to talk to your ex about moving out right away. This is absolutely necessary for your happiness, well-being, and moving on. Don’t waste any more time. Talk to your ex today or tomorrow and arrange a date and time to move out.

You can also discuss how the breakup is going to work.

Technically, you should have already discussed such matters during the breakup. But if you haven’t, it’s better now than never. Start the conversation with your ex when your ex appears free and receptive. That way, you’ll maximize the chances of having a civil conversation with your ex and reaching a compromise.

Also, if you own a house together, the dumper should probably be the one to move out. He or she gave up, so it’s only fair that the dumper moves out until you decide what to do with the house.

If that’s not financially possible for the dumper (or the person moving out), then you should consider helping each other financially or moving to parents or friends’ place for a while.

Whatever you decide, make sure that you reach the conclusion peacefully. You don’t want to end up arguing over who moves out and who keeps what. As exes, it’s best to talk respectfully and only when it’s about unfinished business.

If it’s about random things such as the news and politics, it may be best to keep it to yourselves.

Overall, living with an ex-partner can be a challenging and emotionally draining experience. It’s in your best interest to try to establish separate living arrangements as soon as possible. Doing so will allow you and your ex to move on and start fresh as soon as possible.

Are you currently living with your ex? Does it seem like a good idea? Let us know in the comment below.

And if you’re looking for breakup advice, visit our coaching page to sign up for a session.