The thing about cohabitation is that it isn’t always easy. A friend of mine recently had to dissolve hers in order to not scratch her guy’s eyeballs out but also, to see if they could salvage the relationship. Impossible you say? You are seeing the inevitable shame: Having to tell your families that the cohabitation is over and one of you is crawling, tail between the legs out the door. You are espousing the: “Too broke to fix if you can’t fix it while living together!” mantra. But I’m going to disagree and not just to be subversive. I am going to disagree on the grounds of “getting thrown into water sucks, but getting out after getting thrown in and then getting back in again often feels good—great even. Like suddenly the water is warmer than the air!” theory.

We live in a time when cohabitation ain’t no big thing. So why should dissolving it be an automatic, “fool me once” type disaster? In my opinion, move in together and if it begins doing some serious damage on your relationship, step back, move out and then try again later. Reasons cohabitations don’t work right the first time are many and include:

1. I hate that you leave beard shavings on my sink so much that I feel compulsively uncomfortable about it and you must leave right now.

2. You like too much air conditioning and I want to save mother Earth so this cannot work.

3. You’ve never operated a vacuum cleaner and that makes me think you are the world's most incompetant idiot.

4. You got pissed off because I accidentally dyed your favorite white shirt pink and when you yelled I thought your head was going to explode which is scary.

or

5.  I had no idea you could make things smell like that. Please go.

However, once the person goes see if you don’t miss the Sunday evening cuddle or the rainy Saturday Monopoly marathon. Once the person goes people get to thinking, “Maybe I can just wipe up his offensive nail clippings off of the coffee table if they bug me.” Once you are back to your corners you might remember why you couldn’t wait to see each other at the end of busy work weeks. If you both can see your relationship getting dog eared from your cohabitation, give yourselves a break from it. It isn’t 100% easy and might take some time—after all, someone has to find a new place to live. Money issues might get complicated. You might find yourself thinking, “Why can’t he just change so we don’t have to go through this?” But the truth of the matter is, not everything can be easy all the time. If you know that dissolving your cohabitation is the best thing in the short run for your relationship, think of it as donating marrow to a dying cancer patient. Think of it as a life saving procedure—for the life of your relationship.
    
Once you both agree that moving out is the best course of action, take your time. Allow the process to happen slowly. No one needs to freak out. And NO ONE needs to start dating other people or destroying record collections. If you decide to look at the move as a method for relationship revival you might even find the change soothing. Just knowing one of you will be moving out might make it easier for you to vacuum on his behalf or get over it when he expresses that he doesn't understand how one girl can leave so many different pairs of shoes scattered around one small living room. In the meantime, make things peaceful. Change is coming. And maybe, while apartment hunting you will realize that things are getting easier and call the called-off cohabitation off! Which is the best possibility of all...