Is Living Apart Together Just Loneliness With Better PR?
Commitment and cohabitation are not the same thing. But it's worth asking what sits behind the decision not to share a roof.
I wrote about LAT relationships recently and argued that commitment and cohabitation are not the same thing. But there’s a question I dodged. How do you tell the apartness the partners chose from the apartness that’s a hangover from previous relationships? What sits behind that decision not to live in the same physical space?
When the shared Google calendar is set up, that really cements the LAT relationship. Each person on the calendar claims a weekend, a date night, or other social activities, with or without the other person. Visits are planned - because you don’t live together, time becomes all the more precious. On occasion, there’s a calendar conference, marking out territory, ensuring time in each home is distributed to each other’s comfort. For some, this might mean juggling other relationships, or times when the kids will be home. These are committed partnerships, in separate households - Living Apart Together.
The UK sociologist Simon Duncan surveyed LAT couples across Britain and interviewed fifty of them in depth, and what he found in the older “preference” group (my group, the ones supposedly choosing separate homes as a better way to live) was awkward. The choice often wasn’t really the point. As he writes:
“people can end up living apart because they feel anxious, vulnerable, even fearful about living with a partner.”
Sadly, the motivation can be fear; many of his interviewees had come out of long cohabiting relationships that ended badly, financially and otherwise, and some had survived violence or coercive control. One woman, Michelle, explained her thinking to the researchers:
“I don’t want to lose everything in my house, I don’t want to be possessed, I don’t, and I don’t want to be beaten up, by someone who’s meant to love me.”
For someone carrying that history, it’s completely understandable that having their own, separate front door is safety, plain and simple, and nobody should be embarrassed by needing it. It makes sense for those people, but that front door can serve multiple purposes - physical protection but also act as a breathing space, a symbol of a content individual who values their own space as well as the relationship with their partner. The LAT label happily covers both without ever asking which is which.
Couples who choose to live at a distance end up talking about everything, because nothing can be assumed. When will we see each other this month? Who does the driving? What is this relationship, actually? I half-joked in the last piece that a shared Google Calendar becomes essential, and I meant it; it’s where you can see each other’s choices.
For those who are non-monogamous and may have multiple partners, a shared calendar needs to be navigated even more sensitively when it’s used across the group. Transparency is key in true ENM relationships, but jealousy and resentment can surface when emotions are not carefully monitored and voiced.
The challenge is staying the course and not drifting, because it also allows the distance to quietly grow, perhaps by avoiding certain conversations. Checking in becomes super important, taking the time to sit together, be open and transparent, and work through the niggles. This has to be deliberate; standing together at the kitchen bench generally doesn’t provide the right venue or time to bring up the hard subjects. You have chosen a structure for life and living, and like all relationships, it must be worked on.
I’d like to think mine is the chosen kind. I can’t be completely sure. I live alone, and I like living alone, but plenty of Duncan’s interviewees liked their arrangements too, and they all believed they’d chosen them. I spent years under a shared roof, twice, so I’m not defending separate homes - I’ve seen both models. The test I come back to is this. When something hard needed saying, did having two houses make it easier to say or just easier to put off? I don’t think any couple can promise they’d pass that test every time.
So, is living apart together lonely? It can be. So can a marriage under one roof be lonely in exactly the same way. Everyone might be physically present, but that’s not the same as turning up authentically and honestly.