Have you heard the term solo agers? It refers to people over 50 who live alone. They don’t have romantic partners, or anyone living close by to help them navigate potential issues. Some solo agers … are doing something about that. They’re looking for rooms to rent from people in a similar situation — or advertising their own places to share. I found a Facebook group of about 31,000 men and women all over the U.S., seeking and offering what they call co-living opportunities.

Other people pair up platonically, with someone they already know. Like best friends Cathy and Debbie. Debbie’s longtime single, Cathy’s a widow. Neither has kids. A random encounter sparked their friendship.

Here’s an excerpt of my conversation with Cathy and Debbie, from the latest DWG/APM radio broadcast special, “The Way We Live.”

Haven’t had the opportunity to listen? Read the transcript — and leave a comment! Have you considered a Golden Girls or Odd Couple type of living arrangement? How’s it working out for you?

DEBBIE We’ve known each other 20 years. We just kind of tried to figure that out recently. We met at the nail salon.

LAURA STASSI No way.

DEBBIE You know, you get to talking to people. She had the appointment before me. I’d been going to this one forever and so had Cathy, and then we discovered that we lived in the same neighborhood. She lived about three blocks from me, so it was like we just became friends. She knew how to quilt. I wanted to learn how to quilt.

CATHY

I was at the nail salon with my sister and I said I want to learn to play canasta before I retire, so that I’ll have something to do in retirement. And she said I know how to play canasta and I have a friend who will play. So we kind of decided okay, next Friday we’ll sit down and I’ll teach you how to play canasta.

LAURA STASSI

Oh, so you just made a plan right then, and there.

CATHY: Right then. Yeah.

 DEBBIE Friendships take a while to get, you know, really up and running. But we did play Canasta once a month and then we did a little retreat. We went out into a friend of ours’ home out in the countryside out in Loudoun County, and we learned to quilt. Cathy was gracious enough to teach both of us how to quilt, and then I mean, we were both still working, so it’s not like we had a lot of daytime to spend together, but we just kind of started doing things. We’d go to quilt shows.

CATHY Kind of like all the things my husband didn’t want to do, kind of, to tell you the truth. I

started going to Florida for the wintertime and then, unfortunately, my husband got dementia and so I put him in assisted living, you know, eventually in Virginia, and then I took off to Florida, so she was my eyes and ears in Virginia and so that was, you know, kind of yeoman duty. You know getting the call at nine o’clock at night on a Friday night saying, oh, he just fell, can you go over to the place and pick him up or go over and help him? So things like that.

 LAURA STASSI And then, sadly, your husband died. So do you each remember a specific incident or event that made you start talking about wanting to live together?

DEBBIE: Covid.

CATHY

Oh well, that’s an interesting thing, you said.

DEBBIE

Because COVID was when I started thinking about okay, what am I going to do to retire? What’s that retirement going to look like? Because I was 65 at that time and so it was like, well, I think I better start thinking about it at some point.

 CATHY: She used to drive down to Florida with me so that I wasn’t driving by myself. She said, when I go down there next time I’m going to look for a place to live because I don’t think I can afford to live in Virginia after I retire. And I said well, if you’re willing to build something this is, in my mind, the trigger if you’re willing to build something, why don’t we just do it together?

LAURA STASSI : Hmmm. So the house that you were going to in Florida before this was this, a house you rented every year?

CATHY

No, it was a house my husband and I had bought.

LAURA STASSI Oh, your husband Okay.

CATHY: Yeah.

LAURA STASSI Was it not set up, in your mind for you and Debbie to share?

CATHY

No, it was only two bedrooms and we knew we needed a craft room.

LAURA STASSI Okay.

CATHY And the bathrooms weren’t fabulous. The important things in life.

LAURA STASSI  I agree.

 LAURA STASSI: Debbie, what was your response when she said this to you?

DEBBIE

It was like what a great idea, because when you look at the prices down here even in 2020, I could have bought a small house. I could have absolutely sold my home and bought a small house and lived down here full time. But you know, it’s really hot down here in the summertime and I don’t really like hot weather.

 CATHY

But initially you said, yeah, and then I’ll live down in Florida, and then you’ll still snowboard. And I said, well, that’s kind of stupid, because if you’re going to live with me in Florida, why don’t you just live with me in Virginia too? And so then you said, well, okay, I guess I could do that.

LAURA STASSI How did it all work itself out, detail wise?

 DEBBIE I would say we kind of started with what do we want? You know? Well, we wanted two master bedrooms. That’s hard to find in Florida. And then we wanted a craft room. We’re both crafters, we both sew, we both do other things in the craft world, and we needed a guest room. So that makes it a four-bedroom house. And then we decided, well, we can’t share our bath no one can share a bathroom with guests so we have to have an extra bathroom. And so once we kind of got all those pieces together, we just started going and looking at custom builders in the area. We spent quite a bit of time doing that. And then, once you start doing that, you have to start looking for land. So that part was all really distressing and took forever.

 LAURA STASSI Were there any pressure points, like maybe you liked a certain cabinet and she didn’t like the cabinet, or the color scheme?

DEBBIE I’m going to let Cathy answer that question.

CATHY I was married over 30 some years, and so I always contend I had learned a long time ago how to, when to cave in and when not to cave in and um, and I think I hate to even say this because I think both of us are pretty darn stubborn.

LAURA STASSI: Oh, (laughter).

CATHY However, both of us can be easygoing when on things that don’t matter to us, so I think that’s that kind of made it easier. Things that Debbie really cared about, I didn’t give two cares at all about, and things that I really cared about, she either masked it or she kind of just whatever, and it was OK’d.

 CATHY  So you just kind of figure out where you’re going to fight your battles. But part of it could be because we’re old and we’ve been around the block a few times and we’ve owned houses before. And in many ways we have the same taste. Mine’s more traditional than Debbie’s. Debbie’s is kind of really off the wall, kind of like …

LAURA STASSI: Ooooh.

CATHY: It is, it is.

DEBBIE:  It’s much more modern.

 LAURA STASSI I will say on behalf of all modern lovers, off the wall is not a synonym for modern. (Laughter)

 DEBBIE: Exactly, Laura. Thank you.

We both had a house full of furniture I mean, Cathy’s house here in Florida had furniture and we kept some of that and we ditched some of it, I mean, and I had to make really hard choices. I had a four-bedroom house that I’d lived in for 20 years and so when I sold my house in the summer of 21,. I, oh my gosh, I probably got rid of three quarters of what I had because I knew it wasn’t going to fit here and there was no place for it in Cathy’s Virginia house.

That was the biggest transition figuring out what I was going to get rid of, figuring out what Cathy was going to get rid of, and then loading it all up and bringing it down here and waiting for two years for the house to be built.

LAURA STASSI Wow.

CATHY Yeah.

 LAURA STASSI Did you all negotiate any type like how much time you were going to spend together? I mean, there’s it’s one thing to be friends, best friends, and it’s another thing to live together 24-7.

 CATHY There are times, you know, being quite frank, that I’m sure I get on her last nerve, and there are times that she gets on my last nerve and there are times that sometimes we just need away, time from each other. But, you know, I think part of it is because we’re not 35 and we’re not. You know, unfortunately, maybe we just lead dull, boring lives. But we’re not going out partying, we’re not doing things like you know, heaven forbid like washing the dishes at one o’clock in the morning. That was the issue the other day. As a matter of fact, I’m a bit of a night owl and even though she’s retired, she still goes to bed at 10 o’clock at night. So there’s a little bit of an issue there that probably it’s going to continue, obviously because she’s not going to change and I’m not going to change either. So…

DEBBIE

And that’s a good thing too, I have to say, Laura, because that gives each of us our own, our own private time. I get up earlier than she does. I go to bed and read, she stays up later, so we each have a couple of hours of just total off, you know, and we do spend a lot of time together.

 LAURA STASSI Is there interest in romantic companionship or is there room in your life, figuratively and literally, if one of you has romantic companionship?

 DEBBIE

No.

CATHY

I don’t really care I know, not, really not.

DEBBIE

I think I’m at the point where it’s like no, been there, done that.

I also am in a situation here too, where a very good friend of mine from Virginia, who moved down here, has dementia and is in assisted living now and I’m his power of attorney, so I am dealing with taking care of him and his finances. So that’s a huge undertaking at the moment.

LAURA STASSI So I want to ask each of you the best part and the worst part of a house share.

CATHY The best part is having someone to do things with. You know, the worst part is probably having someone to do things with in many ways, because you go along with things you wouldn’t normally do, like buying a bike. I mean, give me a break. I had said to her a long time ago I’m too old to ride a bike. I could fall, I could hurt myself. I’m just not doing it anymore. And there I am buying a bike.

 LAURA STASSI I think it sounds like Debbie, for, whether you like it or not, it sounds like she might be actually very good for your health.

CATHY

Well, yeah, she probably is way better than I’d be by myself. I know that.

 DEBBIE

Yeah, I would have to agree. I think that companionship is probably the best part of it is that you have somebody to talk to. Especially during these times when we’re going to rant and rave about what’s going on in the world, we have someone who is a like-minded person that we can talk to and just to talk about things. You know we talk about all kinds of things. We’re still learning about each other. I mean, we were old when we met. We were older. So there’s still things we’re learning about each other’s past and about family relationships and things like that, and so we do have a lot to talk about. And when you live by yourself, you don’t necessarily have that, unless you reach out and find that.

And I know from living by myself that you have to be the one who calls and you have to be the one who says, hey, let’s go do this. And I was always the planner and the organizer and the get together person, and now I don’t have to do that because I have Cathy.

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