When wandering around Ikea arm-in-arm, most newly cohabiting couples are too excited about their new sofa, or Billy bookcase, or the enormous house plant they are about to wrestle into an Uber, to think too deeply about what might happen to those items were their relationship to sour. But at a time when many young couples can’t afford to buy property or have children, furniture can end up being the only thing to fight over at the end of a relationship. And, as the cost of living rises, having to replace furniture after a breakup can have a huge impact on people’s finances.
“It took me a couple of years to recover financially,” says Becca of her 2022 breakup. The 35-year-old, who is based in Leeds, had been in a relationship for about a year when her then-girlfriend invited her to move in to her house. At the time, Becca was renting her own flat, which was “amazing: big garden, really bright and lovely”, she says. But being what she describes as “young, stupid and in love”, she left that behind to move in with her partner. Becca reluctantly agreed to get rid of all the furniture she had bought for her flat, since her girlfriend didn’t want any of it in her place.
“I said: ‘OK, I’m going to put some stuff in storage because I think that is a big risk, or maybe we can have a think about possibly putting some stuff in the attic.” But her partner responded angrily, saying that suggested she wasn’t committed to the relationship and was already “thinking of an exit plan”. The disagreement led to a big row, with Becca eventually coming round to her girlfriend’s point of view. She sold some of her furniture, and what she couldn’t sell she left behind in the property, with the agreement of her landlord.
After moving into her girlfriend’s place, she went on to pay half the cost of furnishing the property’s second bedroom, which they converted into an office for Becca. But when the couple broke up six months later, and Becca moved in with her family, “it didn’t even cross my mind” to take some of that furniture, or ask if she could get back the money she had spent on it.
It was only a year later, when moving out of her family’s home to rent her own place again, that she realised how much she had spent on furniture. “But I also didn’t want to get back in touch,” she says; she had moved on.
Becca thinks she lost approximately £3,000 in total, taking into consideration the money she spent on furniture for her old place and wasn’t able to sell. She was able to cope – “I’m in a lucky position that I earn enough” – and eventually made back the money she lost. But it did mean that when she moved in to her current flat, she was more frugal: “Half the stuff is secondhand.” Looking back, she especially regrets getting rid of a cabinet with glass doors that her mother had bought her as a graduation gift, which she sold for about a third of its original price when she moved in with her ex. “It’s replaceable – I can go and buy it again – but it’s really expensive,” she says. “I’m really sad about it because I’d always wanted it.”
“Furniture is rarely just about the object itself,” says couples and family therapist Kalanit Ben-Ari, who runs a private clinic in London. “People often project other feelings on to furniture. It can reflect power dynamics, resistance to letting go of the relationship or partner, resentment or, in some sad cases, revenge.” When advising clients at the end of a relationship, she tells them: “If something costs you your peace of mind, it is too expensive. Let go, and put your energy into moving forward.”
Which might be true, but “letting go” is easier for some than others: a poll of 3,000 people last year found that one in five people in the UK aged 18-40 have delayed a breakup to make the cost of living more affordable.
Four years on, Becca wishes she hadn’t given up her stuff so readily. In hindsight, it was “a bit of a red flag that I wasn’t allowed to bring any of my own furniture”. But keeping her belongings wouldn’t have been completely straightforward, either. Hiring a storage unit big enough for the contents of her old flat would have cost her approximately £100 a month.
A lack of storage space has also been an issue for Emily, 30, who lives in London. Three years ago, she split up “reasonably mutually” with the boyfriend she had been living with for a year. When they had moved in together, she had brought most of the furniture from her old place with her; her partner had previously lived in furnished accommodation and didn’t have furniture of his own. “I think the only thing that we bought together was a set of dining chairs,” she says.
Because of their tenancy agreement, the couple had to live together for two months after the relationship ended, “which was really awful”, Emily says. When it was finally time to move out, her ex asked her if he could take various bits of furniture with him – which surprised her, since these were items she had owned prior to their relationship. She refused most of his requests, but did allow him to take an “almost impractically big” rug that she had been given by her aunt.
“I really associated it with the flat,” and the relationship, she says. “It just made me feel really heavy and sad.” And its size was an issue: “I wouldn’t have anywhere to put it or store it.” Emily agreed that her ex could take it, on the understanding that should he no longer want it, he would return it to her.
“But then when my aunt came to see my new flat and the rug wasn’t in it, she asked what had happened to it,” Emily says. “She was quite disappointed that I had given it up so readily to someone who I had chosen not to be with.”
Now, Emily feels as if she needs to ask him to return the rug, a task she has been putting off. “We’ve seen each other a couple of times since we moved out, but I’m not really in touch with him a lot, so it would be a specific conversation to say: ‘Excuse me, can I have my rug back?’” But, out of a sense of duty to her aunt, she now feels she probably should, sooner rather than later.
Matt, 45, also lost some items of furniture after a breakup two years ago. When his ex-girlfriend moved out of the flat they had shared for 10 years, the couple agreed she would take only the items she had paid for herself. But she ended up taking the living room table as well, and, when he went round to visit the cats he had once shared with her, he noticed she had taken some vases that were technically his, too. But he decided it wasn’t worth fighting her for those items. “The new chapter is so much more important,” he says. He took the stance: “You can keep that along with your bad karma.”
With nowhere to store large items and a desire to move on from her shared home quickly, Jade, 32, felt she had no choice but to take the financial hit for furniture she co-owned with her partner when they broke up last year – a decision that had been primarily hers. She left the Bedfordshire house she had shared with her partner of five years, taking only a desk “because that was mine and only ever used by me”, and left everything else, including a fridge and washing machine, that she had gone halves on. She even left the bed and mattress that she had bought prior to the relationship. “It felt a bit weird to say, ‘I’m leaving you and also taking the bed from underneath you,’” she says.
There had been a little back and forth about random items within the house, she says, but “because I was the one leaving, I just didn’t want to bring all of that up”. But now the dust has settled, she can’t help but wonder: “Why didn’t I just take that? Or why didn’t we actually talk about it?”
She is particularly sad to have lost a handmade whale-shark-shaped candle holder the couple had bought together. “We deliberated over buying that for a while,” she says. “As I was moving out, I was like: ‘Well, who’s going to get the whale shark?’ But we didn’t decide.” So, to avoid further confrontation, she left it behind.
In total, the money she paid towards all the furniture and appliances she left behind comes close to £5,000, she estimates. “I think it is really hard when you’re not legally married. We didn’t own our house. What we had and shared was the possessions within the house, and there is no blueprint on how to be fair about that – you just have to be prepared to take a bit of a hit.”
James Davies, a family lawyer and partner at Blake Morgan, says the law is not designed for unmarried couples. “The legal framework is grossly inadequate and very difficult to navigate,” says Davies. But, he explains, it is probably not worth getting lawyers involved when there isn’t a marriage or property involved and the dispute is purely over furniture, because “when you start paying lawyers to argue over these things, it can very quickly dwarf the value of the asset that you’re talking about”. What he would recommend instead is employing a trained mediator, which he says is less costly and less antagonistic, “because you are both part of it, you can set the agenda, you can come up with esoteric, weird and wonderful solutions that the law might not otherwise provide you with.”
He would always advise couples to enter into a cohabitation agreement – a legally binding document that details how assets and finances will be managed, both during the relationship and in the case of a breakup – before moving in together. “It is not hugely romantic,” he admits. “But it really is worth its weight in gold in preventing problems in the future,” as “it can be enforced in law if you should need to”.
It is not just couples who might benefit from cohabitation agreements. Zoe, 29, who lives in the UK but was formerly based in Berlin, wishes she had signed a pre-rental agreement with her former housemate. The pair had been friends and got on well throughout the tenancy, but when she decided to move out, things became tense.
When Zoe and her former housemate got their place together, they had gone halves on buying furniture. “We furnished the entire flat for about €200 each – this is not big money we’re talking about,” she says. The pair made a verbal agreement that if one of them decided to move out and the other was staying on, they would buy the other out of their share. But when Zoe decided to leave, her housemate said: “I think we should account for a 4.5% per annum depreciation rate.”
“We basically ended up pinging Excel spreadsheets back and forth,” she says. Frustrated by the whole process, Zoe eventually relented and allowed her ex-housemate to set the price. After she moved out, they never spoke again.
Jade thinks she would want clearer allocations of who owns what if she were to move in with someone again. Though she concedes it is “weird to even bring it up when you’re moving in with someone”, she thinks it might be better to say: “I’ll buy this bit, you buy that bit, and if anything happens we just take what we’ve paid for.”
That said, in some ways Jade is glad to be free of the items she chose with her ex. Those pieces of furniture “feel like part of that chapter of life. And I think it will be nice, even if it’s not cost-effective, to have the freedom to do things differently next time,” she says.
Names and some locations have been changed