Have you and your spouse decided to get a divorce but are still living in the same house? There may be compelling reasons to do so — you can’t afford separate places, you want to maintain a stable family situation for your children, proximity to your place of employment, etc.
Your date of separation has legal implications in many states. It can be tricky proving that you are really separated if, for family or economic reasons, you are still living together in the same house.
Here is a checklist of what you should do if you and your spouse are still living together but are separated.
- Establish and maintain the intent to separate permanently or indefinitely.
- Use separate bedrooms.
- Do not engage in romantic or sexual intimacy.
- Stop wearing wedding rings.
- Don’t shop for your spouse’s food, prepare his meals, or shop for his clothing and other necessities.
- Don’t let your spouse shop for you, and don’t use his food or other purchases.
- Do not eat meals together, except for special occasions such as holidays or children’s birthdays.
- Make each spouse responsible for caring for their own space within the home, such as a bedroom.
- Make each spouse responsible for doing their own laundry.
- Use a separate and secure computer.
- Use a separate and secure telephone/cell phone for personal and business calls.
- Establish separate checking accounts.
- Cease socializing together, e.g., do not attend parties, movies, theater, etc. together.
- Do not attend church together.
- Where there are minor children, interact as parents only where strictly necessary from the children’s perspective and their well-being, e.g., meeting with school officials. If you both attend your child’s game, don’t sit together.
- Don’t give gifts to your spouse for birthdays, Christmas, anniversary, Valentine’s Day, etc.
- Let close associates and relatives know that you are not living as man and wife, but are separated within the residence.
- Have a third party come to the home from time to time to personally observe the two spouses’ separate and distinct living quarters (bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.).
- Utilize separate entrances to residence if feasible.
- Be prepared to explain why you are living separately under the same roof, e.g., financial considerations; unavailability of separate residence; easing children’s transition to parental separation, etc.
We have been married for 44 years. I’ve had it with her hoarding and junk piles. Recently her bedroom was infested with fleas and bugs and I could hardly get rid of the fleas. She has ruined any nice homes we’ve had. She cares more about herself and what others think of her….NOT us and what others may think of US. No kids. Retired. Her junk creeps into all house spaces and she does not care what I’d like. She is ‘sick’ I know. I love her but more like a ‘pal’. Yes….we have been room mates for years….never in the same bedroom. Rarely eat together…but I cook, do the house shores, shopping, etc. She is morbidly obese (so am I). Her only ‘life’ is the church…and those folks are very into their OWN lives and can’t ‘adopt her’ as such. So no real social life. Anyway, I am thinking of dividing the house, walling off 2 bedrooms and the main bath. She would have the rest….kitchen, her custom bathroom, laudry room, foyer (entry). I would have a sliding door entrance into one of the bedrooms and live as though in ‘apartment B’.
Mine is also similar to the above, I found out that my husband was flirting with another woman( not sure anything happened, he denies it but texts from other woman suggested they did), he stated that he found the phone and was just messing around bcse he was feeling lonely, he apparently did not know the woman. I also found out that he cheated on me when we first got together( 2 months in the relationship), we have been together for 6 years, married for 3. he explained that he had decided to leave me then but changed his mind when he found out I was pregnant. I decided to separate but stay living together for financial reasons and for the kids( we have 3). I have made that decision but I know that he is hoping to reconcile. He is on the sofa for the past 5 months, he doesn’t want to go in other room ( proposed to convert dining room in his bedroom as we don’t have enough rooms)with hope that I will feel guilty and let him back in my bed.I don’t intend on getting back with him, doesn’t love him anymore, however I can feel myself wanting to be physically intimate with him( can’t be bothered to look for someone new when he is here, but that’s purely physical. I’m wondering if that’s a good idea or shall I restrain from going there completely?
I’m considering a legal separation, but want to remain living in the same house. We have lived in separate bedrooms for about a decade – been married for 16.
I don’t work, and we have a son. We live out of state, so there’s no family to stay with.
I don’t mind doing his laundry or doing the grocery shopping.
I don’t buy anything for myself, except food. So keeping separate accounts doesn’t seem necessary.
But I do need to stay on his health insurance, as I have medical issues and need the insurance.
I am hoping that the separation will ease my unhappiness and anxiety., making me not feel like I’m living as a caged animal.
As we are now, I don’t think it would be any different than our current situation – just attaching a name to what we’ve become – separated.
Why is It Mostly women commenting here?
I am a stay at home dad and recently caught my wife on the phone speaking to a secret lover.
So we decided to separate.
I am in the bedroom downstairs and she is in the main bedroom upstairs.
We have three lovely daughters ages 12 to 14 we decided it would be best if we remained friends and raised the kids under the same roof.
The one thing that bothers me is wanting to see her sleeping at night and holding her.
We have been together for 25 years and I miss her so much.
I gave up my job to raise the kids because she was able to make 350k a year and my job was taking me away from the kids.
Now I have no job and no wife.
Even though we are separated I cannot get myself to date anyone else .
I guess I still love her I’m just hoping her and her new boyfriend don’t decide to through me out on the street.
I am in the same situation. My wife and I just decided to live separately under the same roof. We have two children, 3 and 6. The problem is I still love and want to be close to her, especially at night when I just want to hold her. she also has a boyfriend that I am worried about. I keep hoping that it doesnt work out between them. I’m in a lot of pain.
I am also in a similar situation ,my wife and I got married young,she was 18 I was 21. We both came from dysfunctional Family backgrounds
Our early relationship was drug and alcohol fueled. Her father was a raging alcoholic who beat her mother. She was molested as a child, abused in foster care, raped as a teenager,and very much neglected by both parents.
I was also humiliated by my father as a teenager growing up in the neighborhood in front of my teenage peers. And my mother had many nervous breakdowns, my father was also an alcoholic at the time and we were handed over to relatives when I was young along with my four other brothers. But long story short, needless to say, when my wife and I got married we didn’t have the social tools required to interact properly.
I cheated on her several times early on in the relationship and she repaid in kind with a brief affair. It has since been an emotional roller coaster over the past 30 years, with 10 separations four
Almost ending in divorce
My wife has never had to work outside the home because I make enough money, we have three grown children, only one still lives at home
And he is our youngest at 25.
I have given her everything I possibly can in the way of physical things nice clothes shoes jewelry luxury car vacations and cruises abroad
I have tried to be there for her emotionally also, but with her baggage and my own walls, she feels it was not enough.
Moving forward, most recently this summer she decided to take a large sum of money and move out and get an apartment of her own I just recently finished paying for her to Go through real estate school and bought her all the things she needed to succeed in her career.
Since moving out she has not made any money in the real estate business and has almost Gone through the 30,000 in cash she took four months ago.
She now wants to move back in the house because she is allergic to something in her apartment left behind by the previous tenants,
I have been helping her along, I helped her move into her apartment now I’m helping her move back into the house.
Yeah now that she’s back in the house she claims she is able to get spousal support from Me. Even though I pay for absolutely everything and all the bills. We are separated living in the house in separate bedrooms even though we do eat together and do things for each other. And even occasionally have sex when she initiates it
33 years married and still a mess.
I have been in a relationship for 15 years. We have had some great times together travelling and spending time on our yacht. We also own a house together. He earns about ten times more than me. My income has never increased and I have gradually become more and more financially dependant. I never felt good about this situation as I always wanted to be more autonomous and have my own money and career but for one reason or another I couldn’t make it happen so instead I became the home maker.
The difficulties became more frequent between us ie lots of very intense emotionally painful discussions that never go anywhere. It all ends in tears and then we make up and the cycle starts over. After years of these kind of painful behaviour patterns we both felt unhappy and trapped and begun seeing a counsellor. My partner then decided he no longer wanted to be in the relationship. This was a devastating blow for me particularly because I have no job, no money and no real employment prospects.
The thought of a future in a one bedroom bachelor box trying to scratch together the money to survive is a depressing thought. We have paid off 3/4 of the mortgage but afte the split I would only have enough for mentioned apartment above. Also we co own so much stuf and the thought of dividing it all up is traumatising. I still love him very much and still feel very attracted.
So we decide to stay living together and it feels really weird. We sleep in separate rooms but now we are kind of flirting with each other. We stil com together and and eat together. Nothing has changed except that we have been having intense painful discussions and we aren’t sleeping together or having sex. I can’t bare it becaus o still want him but he says he can’t be with me anymore. Sometimes looks at me and cries. I don’t understand. I think he still loves me but the pain of staying together and acting out painful behaviour patterns is too much for him. So confusing. If we end up separating physically I never want to go through something like this ever again.