Living Apart Together

Living Apart Together (abbreviation: LAT) is a term for couples who, while committed to each other, decide to have separate homes rather than one shared residence.

Okay, I am in a very unusual situation. My husband and I are living apart...

Let me just start by saying that I love my husband. It was a financial crisis that forced our living situation. I own a house and it has gone into foreclosure. The only way that I can negotiate with the mortgage company is to live in my house.

When I first married my husband, a little over a year ago, I never would have pictured us living apart, at the time I couldn't even picture a night apart. I couldn't picture that almost from day one of our relationship. We jumped right in with both feet and after about a week, we didn't ever spend another night any further apart than the couch.

Then, I got served with foreclosure papers! My husband and I sat down and talked. I made the very difficult decision to move back into the house. My husband decided to stay where he was, and I understand why. It's been a month and I think we finally have things almost ironed out, but it hasn't been easy! We have had our fights and arguments. We fight over what goes in which house and especially over not getting to spend as much time together as we used to.

I finally got a moment to sit down and do some research on our unusual situation and....I can't believe how common this situation actually is. I mean, I have one friend who lives separate from her husband but that was forced by a terminally ill father who lived cities away. Surprisingly, my friend and her husband have a very strong relationship. But I thought that their relationship was surely one-of-a-kind. I was wrong.

Not only do I seem to be living the same way, but so do many others.

Demographers have devised a name for our arrangement: living apart together, which refers to married couples living separately.

A recently written article that said that nearly 3.8 million American married couples live apart (this does include those couples who are traditionally separated). Some couples choose to live separately just for their own space, others because their jobs are too far apart. Some of these couples even have kids.

Some of the information that I found was quite selfish. Some of these couples get married and even have children, but they feel that living together is too much of a commitment. Some of the information, even encouraged an "open" marriage! Wow!

Most of the arguments for living separately had to do with independence. "You don't have to answer to your spouse 24/7." "You can curl up in your ratty shorts and pluck your eyebrows any time you want." Etc. Etc. Etc.

Though I do agree that it is easier to live apart from my spouse, I get that time to myself and I can do what I want, when I want, but it also makes my marriage seem worthless. It was encouraging, however, to read success stories. To read about couples who live separately, but still maintain a loving, passionate, and committed marriages. My husband and I don't plan to continue living separately, but it is nice to know that our separation period does not doom our marriage, either.

Separate dwellings will not work for every couple, it requires two unambivalent people -- people who don't need that merging to feel secure.

I wish that I could find tips on how to make it work or how to decide that or if this were right for you, but that information I could not find. A key ingredient is definitely communication! Don't lose the communication.

For me, while I sometimes enjoy the "me" time, I hope that one day soon my husband and I will both be living under the same roof again. I do, however, have a newfound respect for "me" time!