Me and my ex live together to save money… we get asked the same question every

Break ups are often upsetting and in some cases they can be incredibly expensive. 

Soaring property prices, the rising cost of living and difficult family situations have left many exes unable to move out of their shared home once their relationship ends.

Nine million Brits have had to continue living with an ex-partner following a breakup, at least once, research shows.

But how can you move on when you can’t even move out? MailOnline spoke to a woman living with her ex and the challenges it brings.

Natasha, 49, from Toronto, was with her partner for 10 years and they share two children together.

Their relationship ‘deteriorated’ in the last couple of years so they made the hard decision to call it quits – however, to avoid their lifestyle and finances suffering, they opted to continue living under the same roof.

She told MailOnline: ‘He could move out but then everybody would suffer, our lifestyle would suffer. 

‘Our kids are still pretty young. They’re nine and six years old and we are still able to maintain a really good household together this way. 

‘We’ve been doing this now for over a year. It’s definitely got its tough moments but in some ways I’m working harder at this than I think I did the actual relationship’.

Natasha now describes their relationship as being ‘partners in terms of logistics and collaboration to take care of the kids rather than romantic’.

The pair have been ‘picky’ about who they share this information with, with their children and some family members still unaware that they’re no longer together.

She admitted: ‘The biggest challenge is just maintaining kindness and respect. We do disagree, we still have arguments, we’re still co-parenting so things still come up. 

‘The challenge of making it work as a whole has been the harder part because I want to model good things for my children.

‘Trying to keep this respectful and healthy is always a challenge but we work at it, we work at communicating better’.

The 49-year-old wants to normalise this complex and sensitive situation for those who are forced to go through something similar, especially those who share children.

She explained: ‘He still likes to make sure we we talk and we check in and that’s actually helped quite a bit.

‘We’ve been facing some challenges with our our kids school and we’re such a strong united front in that. There are parents at the school that know that we’re not together and there are parents that that don’t know. 

‘No matter what people are blown away that we still have each other’s backs and our relationship is so healthy. It is a lot easier than it was at the beginning, for sure’.

The mother-of-two adds: ‘At the end of the day it isn’t really about us, it’s about the children that we have, which makes it a lot easier to stay focussed on what we’re trying to do which is modelling kindness’.

She confessed that her friends and family asks her ‘all the time’ how long she and her ex-partner plan to carry on living together, and she doesn’t have a clear answer.

Natasha said: ‘For the foreseeable future, it works right. It’s not painful, it’s not horrible. We don’t have an end game plan at this point.

‘I think as long as it still continues to work for both of us, and obviously the kids then we’ll keep it this way, because we have a very good division of labour – we both have our things that we do well.

‘As long as we can maintain this I don’t see an end at this point. Obviously, if one of us started dating and got serious about somebody then that would be a different conversation’.

She recalled: ‘We put a bunch of post-it notes on the table and sorted out our finances and figured out how that was going to look.

‘He wasn’t going to come after my house  and I wasn’t gonna go after his assets so that made it a lot easier. 

‘Once we sorted out how we wanted it to look financially, it was easy to maintain, because he had already been sleeping outside of the bedroom for a long time, so it wasn’t much of a transition when it happened’.

She acknowledged that this kind of arrangement is unique and doesn’t work for everyone – for those who find themselves trapped living with an ex, she advises to ‘not let your ego take over’ and that…