Dear Emily,
My boyfriend of two years still lives with his ex, the mother of his children. When we met, he explained the situation was complicated, and I accepted that it would remain so for some time while he sorted out how to fully extricate himself and truly be with me. Obviously, two years have passed, so I’m losing hope on that front, but I haven’t given up yet (sue me!). However, I’m writing about a specific matter of disagreement between us. He still sleeps in the same bed as his ex. This really upsets me and I think he should sleep in a bed recently left empty by one of his children going to college. He says that this is unnecessary as there is no intimacy between them. One time he said to me during yet another argument on this, “Some might say this is an argument about furniture.” Am I in the wrong here, or am I right to be upset about this?
Sincerely,
Complicated
Dear Complicated,
I don’t have any grounds to sue you in a court of law. But I do have grounds to tell you that you really need to dump this man and move on with your life so that — if you want! — you can eventually find a real, reciprocal relationship.
Hear me out: You aren’t losing hope; you lost it a long time ago. And that has got to be because some aspect of this situation is working well for you. Maybe part of you enjoys having someone else deal with your boyfriend on the domestic front. There might be aspects of your independence that you’re not eager to give up; maybe you like spending evenings doing your own thing and nights sleeping alone. Sleeping alone can feel pretty luxurious! Sharing a bed with a partner wasn’t even the default (for people who could afford multiple bedrooms) until relatively recently in human history. If this is the case, then embrace the aspects of your current lifestyle that you genuinely enjoy! You can do this while being joyously single, dating, or being partnered with someone who loves and respects you. That person is not this guy.
You might be asking, How can you issue such a definitive and ironclad proclamation based on so little information? Well, here’s the information I do have. He still sleeps in the same bed as his ex and claims this is okay because there’s no “intimacy” between them. Intimacy is here supposed to mean “sexual contact,” not “intimacy,” I guess, because there are few things as intimate as sharing a bed. If you went on a business trip with a co-worker, would you be okay sharing a bed with them? A hotel room? Absolutely not! Sharing a bed entails sharing a bedtime, not to mention various sleep-adjacent sights, sounds, sheets, smells — I could go on, but I’ll spare you. In some ways, it would be less intimate if your boyfriend was still having sex with his “ex” but living and sleeping elsewhere.
The second piece of information I have is that when you brought this up, not for the first time, your boyfriend dismissed your concerns as “an argument about furniture.” In a sense, he’s right, but the bed is not the furniture in question. You are — in that you are allowing yourself to be treated as thoughtlessly as one might treat a couch: something that will always be present when you need it, no matter how much or how little you care for it or notice it’s there. Unlike a couch, you have needs and feelings. Belittling your extremely reasonable request that he stop sleeping in the same bed as a woman he’s supposedly no longer in a relationship with is simply unacceptable behavior. It makes me think he’s capable of trivializing almost any reasonable request you might have, or justifying anything he does in a way that makes you feel like you’re the crazy one. You are not the crazy one, and it’s time to stop sharing your one and only life with someone who tries to play that kind of trick on you.
Look, I’m a heterosexual woman and I have been alive 42 years. I’m not coming to you from some perch of holier-than-thou wisdom; I have also allowed myself to be treated like a couch on occasion. I’m just telling you what your friends won’t because they don’t want to alienate you if you choose to stay with him and your therapist can’t because she can only ask how it makes you feel to be told it’s an argument about furniture. Your therapist can’t scream “Cut and run!” at you repeatedly. That’s just not considered best practice, unfortunately.
After you dump him, you will feel like shit for a while, and you’ll have weak moments when you want to text him or call him or run back into his arms. In those moments, I want you to repeat this to yourself: “I am not a couch.” Repeat it till it sticks.
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