Thank you Michelle,

This is a very thoughtful and helpful reply that is helping me put things into a bit of perspective – i have been reading through other posts on here and come to the realization that i deeply respect my girlfriend for the decision she has made and i realised just how difficult it must have been for her – I am starting to take this time to improve myself and i have been looking into a lot of mindfulness stuff including meditation to try and get a grip of my emotions as i tend to chop and change all the time leaving my girlfriend confused and exhausted we both know what we need to work on and are making steps in that direction.

I think your right i think we moved in due to finances and people telling us it ‘made sense’ to move in and we are both struggling financially so it was a way to pool resources – i think it all happened very quickly and we didnt have time to sit down and set our expectations out on what we wanted from living together.

I think I became more lazy because i fell back into old habits that i picked up at the end of my marriage for the last couple of years living in that house things were not great and i sort of withdrew from everything and didnt do much around the house etc… and i just think being back in a dyamic of living with a partner i slipped which is why i think me spending more time living on my own is a good thing and i can get behind this – i do also think we had a slightly different approach to things i was a bit more laid back with cleaning as in i wouldnt mind leaving something on the side until i was going into the kitchen and then i would take it with me whereas my girlfriend tends to be in her words a bit more uptight about things – she has also said that she is starting to realize that she is quite a selfish person and that is something she wants to work on as well – it was her house that she had only just recently bought and thats how she saw it and felt like i was invading her space which i do understand. I think i did have an expectation of her helping with the kids but that was because at first she did and she didnt mind it but as i started to slip i think she became more frustrated by that.

i have spent a lot of my time thinking about this and trying to take positive lessons from it on how i can improve myself etc…

I will keep you updated on how things progress but as it stands things are looking positive for the relationship i think i just need to get past these emotions and start the process of making myself a stronger person