Companionship, trust, love, support, even great sex; just not under the same roof!
There’s a newly emerging kind of relationship in Australia and many of the couples at the vanguard are people over 50; indeed people over 65!
It’s a relationship where a couple form a committed, loving partnership – and they might even marry – but they don’t live together under the same roof. And that’s how they want it; that’s how they like it.
To say it is ‘newly emerging’ is not to say it is brand new. There have been some very high profile couples who have openly chosen to live this way during the last century: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey; Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, for instance.
But sociologists and demographers who study such things have noted a dramatic upturn in numbers among us regular folk in the last decade and an increased interest in the community and from the media in the phenomenon. They have a (not very good) name for it too – LAT relationships. Which is the abbreviation of ‘Living Apart Together’.
Living apart together
According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), it is difficult to estimate how common LAT relationships are, but they believe a ‘substantial minority of the total adult population’ is involved in one.
International survey evidence, from a range of countries, suggests that a substantial percentage of the population that would typically be classified as single, is in fact in a LAT (non-cohabiting or non-residential) relationship.
In Australia, using 2006 Census data in conjunction with data from the long running HILDA* study, the AIFS estimated that around 24 per cent of the ‘single’ population was in fact in a relationship, just not living with their partner.
“This translates to over 1.1 million Australians in living-apart-together relationships,” they reported. And that was 2011.
They said nationally representative surveys in Australia indicated that between 7 per cent and 9 per cent of the adult population has a partner who does not live with them.
The reasons why people are choosing this kind of relationship and the meaning attached to them seems to vary across the life course but among the more mature age groups, it seems it is frequently a case of ‘because we can’.
It’s an especially popular option for many women who are really happy to have someone to share meals, films, holidays and their bed with – but are quite happy not to share a wardrobe and laundry basket.
Keeping it fresh
By age 60 or 65, while many happily married or cohabitating couples might be planning their next 30 years together, many others find themselves alone – through relationship breakdown, divorce, death of a partner or still being single. Increasingly active in the ‘dating world’, many in the older age groups no longer feel the need to be married again. Especially the women.
Sure they are keen to have a relationship, even to have a very serious permanent one, but not necessarily under the same roof, or even in the same location. Instead, if they are fortunate to be secure financially, they can choose to maintain their own space.
It’s an especially popular option for many women who are really happy to have someone to share meals, films, holidays and their bed with – but are quite happy not to share a wardrobe and laundry basket. Been there, done that, they often say.
For both people, if there are adult children, it can save a whole lot of family issues around late life marriage and fear of lost inheritance or precious family memories and objects being dispersed into the possession of someone new.
Another frequently cited benefit of the LAT relationship is the quality of the sex! Living apart – not living in shared domesticity 24/7 – somehow keeps it fresh and interesting!
New possibilities for loving couples
Linda Breault is co-editor of a collection of stories entitled ‘Living apart together – New possibilities for loving couples.’ I heard her interviewed on ABC radio this week and it prompted me to look into this more.
Breault is a Canadian first wave baby boomer who has decided that the LAT relationship is her ideal.
“I have become a “voyeur” of relationships,” she writes on her website.
“I’ve become fascinated with the ways couples have found ways to keep their relationships dynamic and alive.
“I’ve observed the not-quite-unhappy conventional marriage, the marriage where couples say, “We are a little bit unhappy in our marriages— but not unhappy enough to get divorced.” I’ve observed the upstairs-downstairs marriage where couples for a variety of reasons, often economic, live in the same house but lead totally separate lives.
“I’ve noted relationships where the “neediness level” of one of the partners encroaches and smothers the autonomy of the other. I’ve wanted to take a temperature check on the boredom level of some.
“Amongst my friendships, I’ve celebrated couples who have grown in their love over decades and have carved out a comfortable and loving way of being together. I’ve listened to and read stories of dozens of women and men who have found ways to share their lives with the person they love but, at the same time, not live together.
“Now in my sixties, I am, like many divorced and widowed women in my age group, changing the way I think about aging, retirement and relationships.”
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And sometimes, it seems that getting the best outcome in a relationship requires some LATeral thinking!
I think this is a really interesting social phenomenon and I wonder if anyone would like to comment here or share their story here. Or you can share your story with me – no names, no pack drill if you prefer – by emailing me at keryn@frankandearnest.net.au
* Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey – an annual household-based panel study conducted by University of Melbourne which began in 2001
