Two’s a crowd, apparently.
A woman who finally decided to move in with her husband after 20 years doomed their marriage.
Claire Burke, 55, and her husband David, 49, even shared a child together but lived apart in separate houses, touting it as a secret to the spark in their marriage.
But buying a house together — and living under the same roof after two decades — might have been the nail in the coffin of their relationship.
“I went from running my own home and keeping it tidy, to all of a sudden feeling like nothing but a cleaner,” Claire from Wetherby, West Yorks, told Cater News. “I got so stressed about leaving dirty clothes laying wherever he’d taken them off, leaving stuff on the dining room table, black rings around the bath, toothpaste in the sink and leaving his gym equipment around the garden.”
More a house cleaner than a partner, Claire grew tired of constantly picking up after her husband.
Their solution to the tension? Splitting the house in half.
Now, they sleep in separate bedrooms and even watch TV separately since they can never agree on what to turn on.
“It caused lots of tension and we had stern words about it on several occasions, but after a while, I have decided to accept this is just the way he is,” Claire said, noting that even sharing a bed just “didn’t work.” “We also tried sitting in the lounge every evening and watching TV together, but it wasn’t comfortable and we could never agree on what to watch on TV.”
Claire, an avid rom-com and soap opera lover, said the disagreements created a rift with her Marvel-obsessed hubby.
“Before deciding we would just spend our evenings apart, we made a rule that if we’d decided to watch something, we had to give it ten minutes and one of us wasn’t enjoying it, then we had to let the other know,” she said. “We just discovered we didn’t have anything in common when it came to that and found it was spent if we just had different places in the house where we could unwind and watch TV.”
But even sharing closet space divided the pair, as Claire struggled to not have a wardrobe all to herself.
“It was very hard trying to reduce the number of clothes I had to be able to share the wardrobe with David,” she admitted. “When we did attempt it, he probably only had about one-eighth of the space. He hardly had room to look through his shirts.”
Now, they each have their own wardrobe spaces and sets of drawers, allowing them to spread out more comfortably.
While David isn’t “bothered” about what his space looks like, Claire makes a habit of tidying up, even going into her husband’s room to make his bed and “fluff his pillows,” describing his old way of living as a “proper bachelor pad.”
“We have found a way of making living together as a family work for us,” she said of their unconventional living arrangement, which includes their 13-year-old son Jay.
Finding a way to make the marriage work — which requires some non-traditional means of living — has allowed the couple to stay together and keep their “family time.”
“It’s like we have the best of both worlds now,” she added. “We can have all the family time we like, especially at dinner times, as we can sit down and enjoy a meal together.”
While Claire was “scared stiff” that the two would lose the “spark” they meticulously maintained while living apart — like her stomach doing “flips” when he arrived at her old home to see her — the pair is still as “in love” as ever.
“But we are still very much in love and even decided to renew our vows last year as we had been together for 21 years,” she said.
“Our living arrangements may not be conventional but they were for us and we have been so happy since adapting how to live under the same roof,” she added.
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