Woman Asks If She's Responsible For Her Ex-Husband's Homelessness After She Won't Let Him Move Back In With Her
"He still thinks we can get back together so I suspect that is part of his motive."
Goncharov_Artem / Shutterstock As much as many people wish they could be done with their ex for good after a divorce, that isn’t always the case.
One woman found herself still connected to her ex-husband long after the end of their marriage, strictly out of guilt.
The woman believed she was to blame for her ex-husband’s homelessness.
“I divorced my husband nearly two years ago,” she explained in her Reddit post. “I attempted to make him move out when I filed for divorce, but he would not.”
“The house was awarded solely to me in the divorce since it was purchased with my pre-marital separate property (assets), but he still refused to move,” she continued.
“I ultimately had to evict him and have a deputy come physically remove him from the property.”
The woman shared that her ex-husband has struggled to find stability since then. “He had found a marginal living situation but did not pay the rent for several months, and so was evicted from there also,” she wrote. “Now he lives in his car, which he also uses to drive for rideshares, his only income.”
Recently, her ex asked for an interesting favor that she isn’t sure she can grant.
“We have maintained contact because I am one of the only people in his life who will help him (helping people who are in great need is ingrained in my psyche), and he has asked me if I will allow him to stay in my guest room during the day so he has a place to sleep that is air conditioned (we live where it is already in the 90s and very humid),” she wrote.
According to the woman, he likely has an ulterior motive for his request — “He still thinks we can get back together."
The man insisted that he would be a help to his ex-wife and not a hindrance. “He says he won’t move any of his things in and that he will both pay me and help me fix some things in the house that are broken (all of which he broke when he lived there),” she said.
“I could use both the money and the assistance, but he has proven unreliable multiple times in the past as far as paying and assisting,” she added. “Based on past experience, he will also eat all my food and keep the house at 65 degrees all day, which will drive my electricity bill sky high.”
Unfortunately, the woman believes her ex-husband may be manipulating her emotions to influence her decision.
“He knows me well enough to know exactly how terrible I feel about his current living situation and is capitalizing on that emotion to make me waffle on the subject,” she concluded.
This woman's situation is not a unique one.
We may not often hear about exes moving back in together after a split, but it’s more common than people realize.
According to the U.K.’s Direct Line Response Group, there are multiple situations where this is becoming more frequent.
“New research from Direct Line Home Insurance reveals nine million Brits have had to continue living with an ex-partner following a breakup,” they stated. “On average, ex-partners must stay living together for four months before they can afford to or are contractually able to, move to a new home. However, one in ten (one million) have continued living with their ex for over ten months.”
While this may be a more common practice than most people realize, that doesn’t mean it’s the right route to take, as the Reddit woman concluded.
"I am definitely 100% not going to let him back in," she wrote in an update to her post. "I am going to cut off contact, and I am going get therapy."
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.