I am awoken from a sweaty and fretful sleep by the sound of our front door closing, the cheap glass pane rattling in its frame. I hear his footsteps pace quickly to the living room. My phone says it’s 6am on a Saturday morning.
It’s the first time he’s stayed out all night. He had texted me late, saying he was staying with a friend. It was a lie he didn’t have to tell. I hear a sigh and a creak as he flops onto our battered brown sofa. It was my decision to end things, and this day was bound to happen — but it didn’t stop a fat tear from rolling down my cheek.
At this point, I had been broken up with Patrick*, my boyfriend of five years, for six months. We’d been stuck living together in this strange, suspended state of separation for five. We had just signed a new contract for another year in our small west London flat, and the landlord refused to break the lease. I was a journalist earning a pittance, who couldn’t afford to buy him out. He was a teacher who needed to be close to work. We were stuck, forced to share a space that was increasingly claustrophobic.
Turns out, this nightmarish scenario is only becoming all the more common. A 2022 study by Zoopla found that a third of couples who break up stay living together for a year on average. This poses both emotional and logistical issues, aptly exemplified by the fact that one in eight of these ex couples still share a bed. Meanwhile, 91% say they haven’t been able to remain diplomatic, while 22% describe the situation as “excruciating”. And bad news for other couples in trouble: research published by a collection of UK sociologists in 2024 suggests that the phenomenon is only becoming more prevalent, owing to factors such as austerity, the cost of living, and the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.
For our part, Patrick and I broke up almost by accident. The small, whispered thoughts about being alone became constant, unrelenting screams. Our relationship still had mileage, and no-one committed a dramatic infraction that shattered our partnership into pieces. We were happy enough — but as I became more introspective, I felt like I was short-changing myself. I didn’t want to spend evenings and weekends rotting together on a sofa. I wanted to demand the dizzying heights of more.
When I said we should break up on a summer afternoon, he looked at me as if I’d hit him. The disbelief turned to horror, then tearful pleading. Inside, I felt numb. He stayed home that weekend, curled up on the sofa, watching the Liverpool game and sniffing. I went to see the Barbie movie and got blackout drunk.
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As our repeated pleas to our landlord fell on deaf ears, and it became painfully clear we were stuck in our one-bedroom flat for the long haul, we established strict boundaries. This was still our home and a space that was sacrosanct, so no-one was allowed to bring dates back here. We vowed not to see each other naked or in states of undress. We would sleep top to toe in our one double bed, like teenagers at a depressingly sexless sleepover. The latter proved deeply uncomfortable, and we’d wake up with each other’s toenails in our faces — so we decided to take turns hunched up on our little brown sofa we were both too tall for. The living room, a place we once spent cosying up to Netflix series, dancing around to terrible nu-rave indie, became a sad and haphazard makeshift bedroom, our coffee table now cluttered with both of our bedtime reading.
My friends didn’t understand the arrangement, and watched the unfolding car crash with morbid curiosity. They became divided into two fairly equal camps — those who thought I was crazy, and those who thought we’d rekindle our relationship. It was tempting, particularly during the difficult early days of navigating this awkward break-up purgatory; sometimes when we watched TV together, I would find myself resting my head on his lap, and I would feel him running his fingers through the ends of my hair.
One day, I reached out to an old Tinder match. We politely went through the motions and made boring small talk in the pub. I told him I was living with my ex and he wrinkled his nose. “That must be tough,” he said dispiritedly. I nodded at the obvious understatement, but he seemed uninterested and unbothered by the bombshell. We both knew what I was there for.
I tried to fashion myself as this woman-about-town. This, I would say to friends over wine and small plates, was a time of new beginnings. I was free to go out and do what I wanted. I wanted to embrace single life with aplomb, saying yes to everything — parties, cocktails, dates. I spent most of my evenings quite drunk, slinking back into the flat late to avoid questions. I dismissed Patrick’s concerns about my wellbeing as jealousy that I was getting my life on track without him.
Then I watched my dad die suddenly, and my carefully-curated plan crumbled. The numbness that was deeply rooted in my bones was replaced by a constantly aching void. As I sat in the hospital canteen, scrolling through my contacts, I knew Patrick was the only person I could call. He travelled across London and arrived in the hour, holding me as I sat in stunned silence. That night, we shared a bed and he held me as he fell asleep.
Over the next few weeks, seeing Patrick’s kindness, patience, and generosity made me think I’d made a grave error. But then he stayed out all night that Friday, and that’s when I felt my heart cleanly split in two. Thoughts raced through my head: What did she look like? Did she know what he liked? Does this mean we’re really over for good?
When I finally got out of bed the next day, my thoughts having spiralled into an incoherent frenzy, we screamed at each other for what seemed like hours. The unspoken tension that had hung between us — and these four walls — finally cracked. Insecurities spewed out of my mouth like vomit, and I choked on insults that I couldn’t take back. We both cried. My friends called me a hypocrite, which was true, but I felt caught between two unbearable situations. Living with Patrick was painful, but the thought of not having him in my life at all felt worse.
To try and salvage a friendship, we deliberately untangled from each other, unpicking the knots where our lives had tied together. He spent an increasing amount of time at his dad’s, and the days he was at the flat I tried to come back as late as possible. We formed an uneasy truce where we were icily polite if we were around one another.
The months started to tick down to our July move-out date. He was going to shack up down the road with a friend. I found a room in Brixton, putting plenty of distance between us. I thought the day we officially left would be filled with tears and heartfelt messages. In reality, I handed the keys back on my own because he’d already left.
We agreed to give each other some time to settle into this new groove of life totally apart — but having that distance from Patrick made me realise how much of his essence I’d absorbed into my bloodstream. While I was relieved to no longer share a sofa, or sneak in late after dates, I missed coming back to our small one-bedroom flat and seeing him sitting on the sofa watching football. I missed grabbing the leftovers from his dinner and hearing about his day. He was no longer my boyfriend, but I missed Patrick as my friend. I hated the imperturbable atmosphere that had now settled between us.
I often wanted to tell him things about my day, send memes I knew would make him smile. I resisted, but ached whenever I did — so when I texted him asking if we could meet up before Christmas, my heart soared when he said yes. As I paced the streets of Greenwich, waiting for Patrick to materialise, I felt nervous. When he appeared, carrying two hot chocolates, I found myself sobbing. He looked the same. As we strolled by the nearby park, he caught me up on the last six months; his best friend’s wedding, how his dad was doing now he’d moved down to Cornwall. I told him that I had started to see someone else, and how I had started seeing a therapist. He squeezed my hand and told me he was happy for me.
After an hour, we hugged goodbye again. Living with each other after our break-up was exceedingly difficult, as I juggled grieving for our relationship and my dad’s death with trying to start afresh. But, on that cold December afternoon, I felt pleased knowing that while our relationship may not have worked, the friendship that was the foundation of our love would always be intact.
Kimberley Bond is a Multiplatform Writer for Harper’s Bazaar, focusing on the arts, culture, careers and lifestyle. She previously worked as a Features Writer for Cosmopolitan UK, and has bylines at The Telegraph, The Independent and British Vogue among countless others.
