Name: Why some couples are happier living apart
Uploaded: 2026-03-28T16:43:05.000Z
Duration: 7 min 51 s
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Future simple

To-infinitive

For generations, we've been taught that if you want to move a relationship forward, you have to follow a specific set of steps: meet someone, fall in love, and

Because moving in is a signal that the relationship is serious, but

a growing number of couples are opting out of that last step.

They've been together for 23 years, but they've never lived together, and they don't plan to.

The arrangement has a name: Living Apart Together, or LAT.

And it's more common than you might think: between 2000 and 2019, the number of married couples living separately rose by more than 25%.

It is an increasingly popular lifestyle choice for people past a certain age, generally in their 60s, who are retired.

So if sharing a home is the ultimate sign of love and commitment, why are some couples deciding not to do it at all?

And does living together actually improve relationships, or does it turn lovers into roommates?

This is probably when we I was I know I wore this dress when we were first dating, right?

Susan and I met because we worked at the same school.

And he was the school psychologist there.

We were pretty good friends for a long time, and

then found out we got divorced at the same time, so we were like, "Hey, maybe we should hang out together." He asked me out to a street festival.

I said, "I have always thought you were handsome." It just seemed right, right from the start.

In those early days, Mike and Susan decided not to move in together for one main reason: Mike had two teenagers at home.

She loves my kids and always has always been wonderful with them, but

I just wanted them to not feel pressured.

Right from the start, it worked out for us to not live together.

And by the time the kids were getting ready to move out for college— We had been together for five or six years already.

—they realized they didn't need to change anything.

And over time, the arrangement just worked.

Well, you know, if it's not broken, why fix it?

Mike and Susan's arrangement isn't that unusual anymore, especially later in life.

Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor are doing it, so are Cheryl Lee Ralph and her husband, Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes.

When it's time to leave, bye-bye, see you soon.

But that doesn't mean everyone accepts it.

We got a lot of resistance and questions from people we knew, especially in Texas.

For years, Mike and Susan didn't have a name for what they were doing, until Mike found something surprising: a Facebook group with thousands of couples just like them.

So I sent out right away to Susan and said, "Hey, look at this.

There's an actual name for what we're doing, and

it's called A-Partnering." Modern love has changed dramatically over the last century.

In the 1960s, the average American got married in their early 20s.

And people are getting divorced later too.

The divorce rate for adults over 50 has doubled since the 1990s, a trend known as grey divorce.

And so you have a lot more older single people, but

they might not want to live with a romantic partner because a lot of them feel like, "We'll been there, done that." And by the time they're in their 50s and 60s, most people have built lives that already work for them.

Particularly if you're older and you're kind of set in your ways.

They have their healthcare providers close by, maybe their children, their grandchildren.

But there's another reason this trend is growing.

For most of modern history, marriage wasn't about love.

couldn't even open a bank account or get credit without a husband until the 1970s.

Today, women don't need to depend on a partner for financial reasons, and

many don't want to take on the role that used to come with that either.

I don't have to take on all the domestic chores.

If I don't feel like cooking, you know, I don't.

I'm probably not quite as clean as Susan would prefer.

I'll tend to put stuff off and I'm like, "Eh, I'll get around to it sooner or later." That kind of thing would drive her nuts.

And with fewer shared chores and more personal space, each person gets to keep something that a lot of relationships chip away at: their independence.

We had a bunch of questions that we asked people, like, "If you could bring the best of being single into the best of being romantically partnered, what would it be?" And it was freedom.

This is my living room, my main living space, and

then my record collection, which I've got all over the house.

I listen to music pretty much almost nonstop all day.

I've got seven different turntables, I think.

You know, after working so many years, being able to just sit on the couch, put on a record I like to put on, like, YouTube travel videos, spin record after record.

And that, to me, is just that's pure pleasure for me.

I would want to be watching documentaries and have it a little bit more quiet and subdued.

Got my this is my sketchbook where I just try a lot of different things.

I've found out that I can do some art, so I've really gotten interested in that, and

I'm always doing that several days a week.

After a long day of classes, you know, it's just easier to come home and decompress, do your art by yourself, listening to the music, you know, that I'm going to listen to.

Living together means shared space, shared routines, constant access.

But desire requires the opposite: separateness, longing, mystery.

I do think that living apart makes things more exciting when we meet up.

You know, still, after 23 years, when I haven't seen Susan and we're going to get together for a date, just the anticipation of her driving up my street and up my driveway, just I can feel little butterflies in my stomach.

Living apart together isn't for everyone.

It can be harder financially, and as people age, health and caretaking situations change.

But what matters is knowing that it's an option because we're living in an age when we no longer have to follow a script for what love and partnership should look like.

We are lucky that we are in the position that we are in that we can pull this off.

I just think it's the best of both worlds.

We have our togetherness, and we really appreciate that, but we also have our separate lives.

And to be able to have both of those and to fit it together is just I couldn't be happier with the way it's worked out.