Live Apart Together relationships — a growing number of older couples are in them, and women are leading the drive. The couple pictured on the episode page? Here’s the story they shared with me:

“My partner and I call my place the Summer Palace  because it’s light and airy. We call his place, 10 minutes away, the Winter Palace because it’s masculine and cozy. He had a career as a chef and indulges me with delectable meals. It’s like being on vacation. When he visits me, I enjoy nurturing him with food and attention. In my younger years, I would have been itching to get married, waiting for a proposal. Or, I would have been eager to move in together. Instead, I find myself content with the deep bond we have forged.”

 

LAURA STASSI

This is Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships. I’m Laura Stassi. And I remember back when living with a romantic partner before marriage was considered sinful — and in many places, illegal. Now of course, shacking up is widely accepted and practiced even as more and more older couples are choosing to live alone, married or not.

“One Love, Two Homes.” That’s coming up next.

Among those who don’t share space 24/7 with their romantic partner is this woman.

HELEN FISHER

I’m Dr. Helen Fisher. I’m a biological anthropologist who studies love.

LAURA STASSI

00:52

Helen is considered the expert on the biology of love and attraction, and I was thrilled to talk with her a few years ago, for an episode we called “The Older Brain on Love.” At one point, we detoured into Helen’s relationship with journalist John Tierney. But we ended up snipping that out of the episode. Here’s what Helen told me about tying the knot in 2020, when she was 75 and John was 67.

HELEN FISHER

I said sweetheart, I’m gonna leave you whatever I’ve got. You don’t have to marry me, I’m dedicated to you for the rest of my life. I’m done with sleeping around. That’s all over for me. I mean, I’m crazy about him in every way. But I didn’t see the merit of actually marrying him. But I now see the merit of it.

What’s interesting is we are doing what they call LAT — living apart together. He lives up in the Bronx, and I live in Manhattan. Five nights a week, we spend together. And I’ve got my own office in his apartment, and most of my clothes now and my computer and everything. But I still have my own little place here. It’s small, but it’s, it’s lovely. And a couple of nights a week, I come into town, and I’m — and I like to go out with my girlfriends, and I love walking the city streets.

I love the little theaters in New York. I love the sights, I love the sounds, even the smells – of the park, etc.,etc. And he loves to read at night and eat pizza, I don’t really like pizza. And so we have, you know, we have some nights off and, and everybody’s very happy with it. I come home from whatever I’ll go out and he’ll be at home, I get home whenever and we’ll probably talk for an hour.

So you can only do LAT, living apart together, if you really trust each other. You’ve got to trust each other, you got to know where the other person is. But for us, it just works absolutely perfectly.

LAURA STASSI

02:50

I checked: There’s about 10 miles between the Bronx and Manhattan. But the traffic! Now, I don’t know yet if I’ll be marrying my future romantic partner or if we’ll be committed without the paperwork. But I can definitely see the appeal of living fairly close, but not with, the one you love.

VICKI LARSON

Well, that would be my preference, too. So right now I’m in a kind of new relationship. And he lives in San Francisco, and I live north of San Francisco. And that’s close enough.

LAURA STASSI

03:28

That’s journalist and author Vicki Larson. She’s been on the show before too, when she talked about her book “Not Too Old for That.” Vicki has a new book coming out this summer. It’s called “LATitudeA How to Make a Living Apart Together Relationship Work.”

VICKI LARSON

There hasn’t been a lot of research, and a lot of the research that was happening was overseas. And now, social scientists and sociologists in the United States are really starting to pay attention to it, because they’re actually seeing it as a new family form. And specifically, they’re actually calling it LLAT, a term for those living together in later life. And what they’re saying is that this LLAT — and I don’t know how to pronounce that …

LAURA STASSI

La-LAT.

VICKI LARSON

… allows them to quote, unquote, redo gender in a way that they could not achieve in their previous marriages or relationships. And so that’s really exciting.

LAURA STASSI

You said something about gender. Gender roles, correct?

VICKI LARSON

Yes, because the big drivers are women at this age living apart together. Especially, you know, if they’ve been divorced or widowed. Some of them, according to a study by law professor Cynthia Grant Bowman, aged 50 and older women in the U.S. and England actually had hostile feelings towards the institution of marriage.

And they either chose to live that way from their partner from, from the beginning, or they tried it for a while and said, yeah, no, we’re staying this way. And what also is interesting is that, from the study, men who are in live apart together relationships are, tend to be a little bit less satisfied in them and, the study said, because they might be missing out on the woman’s unpaid labor and caregiving. Yeah.

LAURA STASSI

Interesting. So older women are the driving force. And it is because they don’t want to necessarily replicate what they may have had in their traditional marriages the first time around, where they are primarily responsible for the house — or they want to be responsible for the house as long as it’s their house, their stuff.

VICKI LARSON

Yes. And it’s not necessarily just that. One study in Canada of women, hetero couples, 65 and older — and in Canada, about 9 percent of people identify as LATs. The men assumed that they would move in with the women, but the women were unwilling to give up their freedom, too, and as well as the quote, unquote, structural commitments of a cohabiting relationships.

So it isn’t just the gender, it is also their sense of freedom, really, which becomes incredibly important to women of a certain, you know, past a certain age — especially if they’ve had children, and have, you know, raised them and taking care of them, and maybe also while taking care of, you know, parents who are not doing well, or siblings. So they’re trying to avoid some of that caregiving that is often expected of women of all ages.

LAURA STASSI

Sure. Okay, so in your experience talking with older couples who are LAT, did one of them have to kind of talk the other one into it? Or did they ever change back? You know, it just, it feels like it would be kind of a line-in-the-sand kind of a situation.

VICKI LARSON

There have to be good conversations about this. And also remember, at this age, generally, people are already established in some kind of living situation. Maybe they have their own home or condo or an apartment that is rent-controlled. And you know, there are many, many reasons why people might not want to move in together.

Sometimes it’s just the logistics of it, too. This one’s children are close by and they don’t want to move from there. Or their health care providers, maybe they need to stay close to that. Or they’ve built a whole community, you know, that they don’t want to uproot themselves from even if it’s just, you know, another city away.

LAURA STASSI

I think the first thing everyone thinks of is, okay, this costs a lot of money.

VICKI LARSON

Can I just push back, ever so gently on that it costs a lot of money. If you are just meeting a partner and you decide to become a romantic couple, you are both living wherever you’re living. Nothing has to change. And yes indeed, moving in together, or having someone to share the expenses with, is cheaper. There is no doubt about that. It’s cheaper. However, there are other costs besides financial. There are emotional costs, and you have to take those into consideration too. If you have to uproot yourself from your community, your friends, your health care providers, maybe your work, there’s a big cost to be paid for that.

So you have to afford your own life, and you can be really creative. I again, another couple I interviewed not for the book, after. The man had built this beautiful, small, rustic cabin in the central coast of California, in the Redwoods and very happy living there. And his romantic partner of 18 years, she was living in Marin in a co-housing community because she one, couldn’t afford to rent on her own or live on her own. And she also wanted community. So that’s how they made it work. He lived in a very tiny place that he could afford. She lived with other people, because it gave her a way to afford her life, and also gave her the community she wanted. And then they drive in their Teslas to see each other on the weekend. So they don’t have a big ecological impact. So, okay, so that was pushing back a little bit on that it’s expensive. It doesn’t have to be.

LAURA STASSI

And I hear what you’re saying. It’s not that it’s more expensive to live apart, it’s that it can be less expensive to live together. And that’s the way you’re looking at it. If you’re looking just money, but — and maybe I’m being — having a narrow view, but it feels to me there’s a difference between two people who get together after a certain age and decide to live apart, and a longtime couple that then decides to live apart.

VICKI LARSON

Well, yes, there is a difference. And I include in my book, a couple who — and I think this is actually incredibly important to mention. When it seemed like their marriage was really struggling, she got a condo. And she considers it an investment in their marriage. Because divorce is incredibly expensive, or at least it can be. And so if you want to save your relationship, what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to do to keep it? And if renting a place apart, or buying a place or building a place, whatever it is, building an ADU in the back; you know, turning your house into a duplex, what are you willing to spend to salvage your relationship?

LAURA STASSI

What are some other pros for a new couple to not live together?

VICKI LARSON

Well, for one, you don’t have to uproot yourself from your established communities. Especially like maybe if you need to be near children and family, whatever, whatever. That is a big pro. As we already discussed, for a lot of women, to avoid the gendered housekeeping, caregiving. That’s a big pro, obviously, not such a big pro for the men. But that’s okay, they can figure it out.

If you have to work a little bit harder on building trust, and building commitment, on addressing jealousy — the study shows that, yes, people do do that. And they tend to be more satisfied in their relationships because of that, because they have to actually put the work in. Many couples who live together eventually become like roommates. You’re occupying the same space, but you’re not engaging. If you are living apart from each other, and you’re agreeing when to see each other and where and how, you’re being incredibly intentional about getting together, and you’re being intentional about what you’re going to do together. And that is very attractive.

There are a lot of people who just don’t live well with other people, you know. Maybe they were raised as only children or, or they’re neurodiverse or something, or there’s other kinds of issues that just don’t make living with another person easy. So that helps those kinds of couples. And also, I need to say that it keeps the sexual energy alive, you know?

LAURA STASSI

I wanted to ask you about that because you do have something about that in the book, which kind of surprised me a little bit, because you can’t be spontaneous. But then how spontaneous can we actually be after a certain age?

VICKI LARSON

The studies show that women who don’t live with their partners actually keep the desire for them longer. And you know, when you don’t live with someone, you miss them. You think about them, you actually idealize them, which doesn’t sound great. Like, well, what? Are you just seeing the rose-colored glasses? You know, is that what you’re seeing them through? Well, actually, when you look through the rose-colored glasses, you’re just focusing all the things about them that you really like. Not like when you’re living with someone, you’re going like, she’s got bras hanging in the bathroom again, or oh, my God, the toilet paper is on the wrong way.

My former husband hated my piles. I’m a pile maker. And you know, Esther Perel talks about how desire needs space. And it’s really, really hard to have that space when you’re occupying the same space all the time. And, you know, we kind of saw that during the pandemic. I mean, look, I don’t know how many people they say are in a sexless marriage. But we’ve heard a lot about that. Yeah, well, maybe if they lived apart, they wouldn’t be so sexless.

LAURA STASSI

And clearly, I mean, I know you are a journalist, but you are very pro LAT.

VICKI LARSON

I am, but it’s not for everybody, Laura. I, you know, if you are an insecure person, or a jealous person, or the attachment is wrong, or whatever, you probably won’t be happy. And just look, a lot of people really like living with someone, they really do. And I’m not saying that everyone should do this. Actually, no, it shouldn’t be that. For people who are curious about it, I think it’s an option. We have in our head that relationship escalator or the romantic script. Well, you meet, date, you fall in love, you become a monogamous couple, you move in together, kids, house, somehow a minivan shows up. And so that maybe works in your 20s and 30s. But if you’ve already done that, or even if you haven’t but you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and you’ve lived alone, or you’ve lived with romantic partners, and you’re not having kids, you don’t have a script, you can create what you want.

And so my goal is really just for people to go, oh, look, here is an option. You don’t have to live together. And you may decide it sounds great and be fun, but not for me. And that’s okay, but at least you know you explored the idea.

LAURA STASSI

Thanks to Vicki Larson. Her book LATitude is available for pre-sale.

Now, you’d think how a couple arranges their LAT relationship is nobody’s business except the two people involved.

EVELYN

In all of the planning stages of it and working with the, the builder, the whole point was, you have to be able to sell these separately. There must be the ability to do that. So there can’t be any connection between these things.

LAURA STASSI

That’s a woman we’re calling Evelyn. After the break, we’ll hear about the duplex that has sparked a courtroom war with her ex-husband. Stay with us.

BREAK

LAURA STASSI

Welcome back, I’m Laura Stassi. We’re talking about committed couples who don’t live together 24/7. They might be legal spouses, or they might not be. And one reason may be that remarriage could affect a financial settlement from a previous union. That’s the situation with Evelyn. We’re not revealing her real name or where she lives though please note that divorce laws differ from state to state.

We’re also not sharing why Evelyn’s marriage of almost 25 years ended in divorce except to say, she believed she had no other choice. She also felt a huge weight of responsibility. Evelyn has five kids, including two with lifelong special needs.

EVELYN

I battled to make sure that I would be financially comfortable. My ex-husband has a very good job, which I had supported him in having and building. So the way that I see it is that I deserve to be in some sense compensated for my full-time job, which is as a caregiver for his children. I think I am a lot less expensive than what hiring someone to do this would be. And I wish that he could see it that way. I wish he could see it as, he really got a good deal because I’m a very good mom.

LAURA STASSI

Evelyn got what she and her kids needed and deserved. And Evelyn was fully aware of potential repercussions on her romantic future.

EVELYN

And I looked at you know, I mean, gee, the moment I got a divorce, I looked at what are the things I have to do to be financially responsible for my children. I cannot cohabitate. I cannot remarry. Here’s the list of the benefits that I’m going to lose if I do this.

LAURA STASSI

Evelyn’s split is finalized, and she starts over. She gets counseling for her kids and herself. She joins a divorce support group, makes new friends, trains for, and runs a marathon. Eventually, kind of on a whim, she checks out a dating site. That’s where Evelyn meets a man we’re calling Scott. He, too, has been through some stuff.

EVELYN

We’re both broken-hearted. And we, I don’t think either one of us was ready to date. So it was — it really started as a conversation. And the conversation just kept deepening until we then decided to meet. And, and then, you know, once we started, we saw each other and everything, sparks were flying. And it was, you know, I’m a woman who’s a full-time caregiver of special needs kids. And I’m coming with a lot of baggage. And he’s a guy whose kids are just getting ready to leave the households, go off to college and, you know, now be able to do his adventures.

We kind of are in a little bit different places in our lives. And so one of the things about our relationship is that while we have this wonderful relationship between the two of us, we also are very independent and very separate.

LAURA STASSI

Yeah. So he was living 45 minutes away. At some point, the relationship deepens to the point where you no longer want to be 45 minutes apart. Can you, can you talk about that?

EVELYN

For me in this process, the priority was, first of all, kids had to graduate from certain schools, programs had to be the right programs for my children. I looked at things, and I assessed things. And actually, the city that this man lived in had better programs for my special needs kids. And so I looked at it was, you know, years in the planning: Okay, when one graduates from college, so he’s gotten all the way through high school. And there’s this change and this change, and this is the exact, appropriate time for me to move if I want to move. And so I got a rental house, and I made the move.

LAURA STASSI

So you are living in a rental house, and you’re very close to Scott, but it’s also good for your kids. It’s good for your personal life, it’s good for your family life.

EVELYN

Mm-hmm. And then I say, okay, I’m happy with this move. And being here, I’m going to buy a house. And so I bought a house. I found a lovely house that again, was absolutely just exactly what my children needed. And it was a duplex. And over the course of time would say to Scott, you know, you could buy the house next door, you could buy the other side of the duplex, and you could live next door to me because I have no intention of getting married. And he would say, that style just doesn’t do it for me. You know, I don’t like that style house. And so years go by and it’s fine. You know, we live a couple miles apart.

LAURA STASSI

Then one day, Scott hears about two lots side by side that are coming on the market. He checks into them and finds out because of zoning restrictions, two houses can be built, but only if they’re configured as a duplex. They go for it. Evelyn and Scott each purchase a lot. They start the building approval processes and begin working with the designer.

EVELYN

You know, we went through COVID and we had delays on everything. But one of the things that happened during the delays was we lost three parents. He lost both his parents, I lost mine. And what we learned from that was how as people are aging, you have to have a home that you can live in and — if you want to have caregivers come in. And so each of us made plans with our homes that one day would be something that you can age in, and looking at your future and saying, what do I need that I can live in for the rest of my life?

So he’s having his thoughts on that. I’m having my thoughts on that. And then we’re coming together, and we’re each building the thing that we want. We’re hiring one builder, so we had to choose a builder. And the builder had to — while we had separate contracts and all this kind of thing, like we were going to use the same roofing. We weren’t going to — the plumbers were the same plumbers but separate contracts with them.

Golly, I mean, I am thinking back on it, how really — how that was stressful, making all those choices and decisions; at the same time, very exciting. But ended up with, you know, two homes that share a firewall in the middle of the garages. So they’re attached at the garages. He has his, and I have mine. The driveway, he’s got his side, I have mine, but they’re also connected so that it’s easier to back out and get around. There is actual division between the two patios. But because we choose to leave that open, it ends up being instead of two separate patios, it’s one large patio.

Each of us got exactly what we wanted, and we get to be close to each other, but not living in the same house. For me, there’s nobody telling me what to do. Nobody who can complain about my housekeeping, or the way I do things, and I have my own space, it belongs to me. The additional thing is by keeping everything separate, like, my children have investment in this house. This is their house.

LAURA STASSI

Finally, in December of 2022, the duplex is ready for occupancy.

EVELYN

What my understanding of the law was, was that cohabitating, living together would be if you shared a domicile, if you shared utilities or other financial accounts. And if you lived together as married.

LAURA STASSI

None of which is happening in a duplex.

EVELYN

none of which is happening. So I thought, I’m safe because I’m not doing any of those things. But a few months into living here, I got socked with some pretty aggressive attorney letters, accusing me of cohabiting, you know. And my response was, the lots are separately deeded. We had separate construction contracts with the builder, we each paid for our own homes, we maintain separate utilities and wells, we maintain separate bank accounts and finances, our driver’s licenses, insurance, and all other documents reflect that we live at different addresses.

We’re always careful to represent what is true. We are not married, and we do not live together. So yes, that’s the law. But what you find out is that people can challenge you on that. They can sue you over something like that. They can put you through a prolonged, expensive process of discovery that they can ask for all kinds of things that you would never imagine could be demanded of you.

LAURA STASSI

I was going to say, it’s a very long, intrusive list. And you have to respond to this.

EVELYN

Oh, my gosh, I have to — well, yeah, I have to get an attorney and do it. But I mean, it goes down to, we’ve got credit report, copies of all recordings from your security cameras, copies of the design contract, of your estate plan, of your complete download of your Facebook history, all copies of all communications between you and your partner.

LAURA STASSI

Because your ex-husband is saying, if you’re living together, that means I no longer have to pay you spousal support.

EVELYN

That’s it.

LAURA STASSI

Again, I’m using spousal support because I know that’s what they use in Virginia, and I know you’re not in Virginia. Is your spousal support — is that separate from any child support you receive for the adult children?

EVELYN

I have separate child support. And I have a separate pension. But the way I see the spousal support or alimony, whatever you want to term it, is that’s my paycheck for 24-hour-a-day caregiving and responsibility for a completely incapacitated person.

LAURA STASSI

No, I’m not arguing at all. I’m just trying to figure out what the heck your ex-husband is thinking.

EVELYN

What I don’t understand is why the court allows this.

LAURA STASSI

Yes.

EVELYN

And I will tell you that it probably would have been a lot less expensive for me in the long term to have just said, fine. I, you don’t have to pay me alimony anymore. Okay. But I also think that it’s important for me to stand up for a woman’s right to own her own home, and maintain it, and not be told that that is somehow cohabitating with another person who has nothing to do with my finances or my home.

LAURA STASSI

Yes. It’s almost like, okay, I’m getting all itchy here, and I’m trying to stay calm. It’s almost like, I mean, it’s just punitive. It’s just like he’s jealous or something, your ex-husband.

EVELYN

What my ex-husband’s attorney and he are trying to say, is that this qualifies as cohabiting because there is — I’m going to struggle with this word now. There is mutual interdependence. So that we are dependent on one another socially, financially, sexually. Because we eat dinner together, because we sometimes sleep in the same bed, because my children like him, that we are functioning as a family, and therefore, we are cohabiting.

I have my own opinions on which way this will go legally. But really, it’s up to the judge, and you’re at the mercy of the judge. I am fortunate that at this particular moment in my life, because of selling my prior home, I had enough money to be able to defend myself here.

LAURA STASSI

I’m getting chill bumps because this makes me so angry and yet, I mean, this is almost, it has the potential to be precedent setting, in ways good and bad.

EVELYN

It could set some precedents. And I would hope that the precedent would be that a woman is able to make this choice. That’s what I think, that if I choose to maintain separate finances so that I can take care of my children — because keep in mind, I’m not doing this because oh, I could just go on and live my life and go out and get a job that I would like to have, or go on vacations or whatever. I don’t get to do that. I’m doing it because I have children that I am responsible for, that I have to remain financially responsible for them. But beyond that, I do think any woman should have the choice to live next door to the person that she cares about and not be accused.

LAURA STASSI

Wow, that’s a lot to deal with. I checked in with Evelyn last week after a court date. She says there’s another one coming up in about a month. She hopes it’s an opportunity to propose that her ex-husband drop his lawsuit and reimburse her substantial attorney fees into a financial account earmarked for their two special needs kids.

Evelyn also told me her relationship with LAT partner Scott is stronger than ever because they’re continually reminded that they each have someone they can trust and who tries to see the positive in everything. Great qualities, I say, for a romantic partner and also, a next-door neighbor.

END CREDITS

 Dating While Gray’s audio production and mix is by Steve Lack: Audio. Theme music by D. Peterschmidt. Please like and follow Dating While Gray wherever you get podcasts. That way, you’ll never miss an episode. And, if you’re so inclined, leave a review letting everyone know what you love about us.

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I’m Laura Stassi. Thanks so much for listening.

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