Gleesome threesome, or menage a misery?: We've split up but still share a bed
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Your support makes all the difference.Sarah, 28, and Steve, 31, lived and worked together for 10 years, sharing a bedroom and then a flat while seeing other people.
AFTER Steve and I split up there didn't seem much point in our living in separate places or separate bedrooms. We got on so well and lived together so easily, always laughing.
It wasn't a problem for other partners and a lot of people say I am so lucky to have met a soul mate with whom I will probably have a relationship all my life. But it will never be sexual again. It would be like incest. Steve gives me security and the knowledge that I am loved.
When I starting seeing Robert, Steve and I were living together, but Robert didn't know that we were still sleeping in the same bed. Steve being there wasn't a problem for men; they knew he wasn't a threat.
Six months later Steve met somebody. I saw her leave one morning and felt a huge pang of jealousy, which I had never felt before. He went out with her for a year and a half and we had the most dreadful time. She was madly jealous and so was I - we used to scream at each other. She would say that he spent much more time with me than he did with her because we were working together. We all had the same friends so she would see me every night socially as well. In the end she left and went back to Australia.
I have stayed with Steve at least once or twice a week since I moved out two years ago, and always in his bed. I am sensitive to others, though, and will sleep in the spare bed when I go out with someone. But even if boyfriends discover that I have slept in Steve's bed, they would be fairly confident that nothing has happened.
We were friends long before and long after any relationship was going on, so we always will be, even if we are married with children. A lot of people must see it as strange because we are terribly attached, like an umbilical cord. It is as though we are twins.
It is, however, a positive relationship now and an accepted part of my life.
I can imagine us living with each other's partners in the future; there is no reason why not, so long as my boyfriend didn't mind.
(Photograph omitted)
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