If there’s one thing that sounds worse than breaking up, it’s breaking up and then still having to live with the person for any amount of time.

It happens more often than you might think.

OP dumped his long-term girlfriend after she cheated on him. Because they had to give notice on their apartment and OP didn’t want to pay double rent, they lived together for a few weeks afterward.

Some years ago, I was 25M and broke up with my 24F gf. She had cheated on me after 7 years together and where we lived, we had a 1 month notice to leave our apartment.

In order not to pay two rents, I had to wait until the end of the notice before moving out.

In the end, she kept the apartment with a new roommate but we still had to pass the landlord’s inspection to get our security deposit back.

I moved out something like 5 days before the inspection date and living with someone you dumped for almost a month can be hard. She was either trying to convince me to stay with her, either trying to make my life miserable because I dumped her.

It wasn’t pleasant, and when it came to the security deposit, OP knew they would have to spend more time together cleaning and fixing holes, etc, if they wanted to get it back.

As you can guess, when I moved out I wasn’t thrilled to know that I’ll have to come back some days later to refill holes, repair some stuff and clean the apartment with her before the inspection.

But hey, I’ll do it.

When he was leaving one day, his girlfriend told him he had better help her really clean or she would just keep the whole deposit.

So, just before leaving, sitting in my car about to start the engine, she tells me “You’d better really help me for the cleanup. You either clean really good or I keep the security deposit!”

Even though she had meant it as a threat and not a choice, he decided to interpret it as the latter and told her fine.

Maybe a bit of context was lost in translation because this discussion wasn’t in english: the way she worded it could mean either a threat or a choice.

The tone and context sure enough clarified that it wasn’t supposed to be a choice.

Some things to know: I sure don’t love doing chores, but cleaning isn’t an issue for me.

For her, most of it isn’t either but in the 7 years we were together she never cleaned the toilets or the bathtub drain (siphon?) because it disgusted her, so I did it and she did other stuff to compensate.

Money-wise, I was a working IT engineer and she was a student. So the security deposit (~300-400€ each) may be huge for her but I didn’t care that much.

So I simply replied “OK”.

She looked at me a bit confused, not understanding my answer.

I said “OK, keep the deposit and do it all by yourself”.

She got to keep the money, he never had to see her again.

I didn’t wait for an answer, drove off and when I arrived I messaged the landlord (with my ex in cc) telling them to send the full deposit to my ex and none to me and I never set foot in this apartment again.

That’s a win/win if I’ve ever heard one!

It’s the little things in life that really make it great.

After all, money isn’t everything.

Some jokes might not be super funny, but they are true.

And time is money and all of that.

She probably didn’t mean to offer such a sweet deal.

This one is super subtle.

I’m sure it was 100% satisfying at the time, though.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.