He’s Not My Boyfriend, He’s My Cost of Living Crisis

We only kiss between direct debits.

It’s very cute telling women to leave. Pack up your dignity, throw his therapy-resistant man-child energy in the bin, light a candle, cut a fringe, move into your divine feminine and start a jewellery business. Except you’re not just leaving a man. You’re leaving free heating, shared council tax, and someone who knows how to bleed a radiator. You’re leaving a half-paid internet bill and a cupboard with spices you didn’t buy but emotionally depend on. Love doesn’t pay the gas bill. He does. Badly. But still.

Leaving means wondering if you can afford toilet paper this month, or if you’ll have to start rinsing off in the sink like a chimney ghost. No one puts “financial collapse” on their list of breakup symptoms, but maybe they should. It’s not that you’re codependent. It’s that you’re doing emotional labour for someone who thinks “doing his share” means hovering near the washing machine like it's a wild animal. You’ve emotionally carried him through three career pivots and a podcast launch, and he still doesn’t know what temperature to wash towels on. But sure, tell me more about “empowered choice.”

We don’t talk enough about the people who don’t stay for love. They stay because rent is £1,400 a month and they only earn £1,450. They stay because solo living is a luxury now, like hot chocolates or having a therapist who replies on time. They stay because even the heartbreak novels assume you have somewhere else to go. A family. A best friend with a spare room. A financially stable Plan B. But for a lot of us, there is no Plan B. There’s just a Plan: Please Don’t Let The Direct Debit Bounce. You don’t need a man. You need a landlord who doesn’t believe in annual rent increases and an economy that doesn’t punish you for having a uterus. Until then, love isn’t a choice. It’s an accommodation strategy.

Globally, one in three women say they’ve stayed in a relationship because they couldn’t afford to leave. In the UK, 42% of women in straight relationships say they literally can’t afford to live alone. The average cost of raising a child is £160,000. Childcare costs more than cocaine. Housing benefits don’t cover rent. Women still earn less than men, get promoted less than men, and carry more debt than men, all while doing the majority of care work, housework, and emotional triage. And let’s not even start on women who are Black, brown, disabled, queer, immigrants, or estranged, because the data gets darker and the options get fewer. The system says “be empowered,” then quietly prices you out of independence. Sometimes survival isn’t weakness. It’s maths.

It’s not just a breakup. It’s an exit strategy from a life you built out of necessity, not romance. You’re not just leaving someone who doesn’t listen. You’re leaving your food security. Your internet bill. The man who, yes, is emotionally flatlining, but also owns the Netflix login and has a better credit score than you. You’re weighing the cost of peace against the cost of rent.

And for some of us, that cost is too high. We stay. Not because we’re weak. But because the lease is in his name and our name isn’t on anything except the Amazon account and his emotional support roster. It’s not about comfort. It’s about access. You can’t walk away when there’s nowhere else to walk. And the person telling you to “just leave” probably still has their childhood bedroom set up like a safe house.

Meanwhile, he’s doing half a chore and expecting a parade. You’re cooking dinner and silently Googling “cheap studio flat with windows and no mould in zone 3” while he’s telling you he might start a podcast. You’re folding his laundry and doing his emotional admin, managing his trauma like a part-time therapist with no pension plan. You’re not just holding the relationship together. You’re subsidising it. And somehow, you’re still the one asking if you can use the joint account to buy tampons. He gets to live like a man. You live like a warning sign. And every time someone says, “You should just leave,” your soul packs a bag and screams, “With what money?”

Leaving takes courage. But it also takes childcare, credit, housing, legal safety, a spare bed, and sometimes a car you don’t have to share with a man who still thinks “emotional maturity” is knowing how to cry when someone dies. Not every woman can leave. Not every woman should be told to. What we need isn’t more girlboss affirmations on Instagram. We need childcare we can afford. We need rent we can manage. We need safe housing, better pay, and fewer men who think feminism means occasionally washing a dish and not slapping your ass when you’re cooking.

So if you’re still there, still surviving, still working out your exit in Google Sheets, that’s not weakness. That’s genius. Some women don’t stay because they’re scared. They stay because they’ve done the maths. And the maths says: not yet.