Source: The Guardian

Friday 24 January 2025

The older couples living apart, together

by Vicki Milliken

People over 60 are increasingly opting to throw out the relationships roadmap and live separately from their partners. Can you have your own space and your relationship too?

Most evenings Andrea* will settle down to watch TV. Leigh, an hour’s drive away, will do the same. Throughout the show, they’ll text, “Hey, what do you think about that? Wasn’t that funny?” Discussing the same TV program from different lounge rooms in different suburbs is a regular activity for the couple. “It’s a way of staying in touch,” Leigh says.

Andrea – or Andy, 66, and Leigh, 68, met online in 2010 and have been in a committed relationship for 14 years. They typically spend Monday to Thursday apart and Friday to Sunday together.

This kind of relationship, known as living apart, together – or LAT – is becoming more popular among over-60s, says Elisabeth Shaw, a clinical and counselling psychologist and the chief executive of Relationships Australia New South Wales.

“For people who have had a lot of relationship experience or life experience, it’s about saying, ‘I can really love this person … but I no longer am driven by the need to do the conventional relationship and all the implications that come from that, such as being a carer, giving up property, sharing finances.’”

Shaw has observed for decades, since the introduction of no-fault divorce in Australia in 1975, a greater acceptance that relationships can break down. “The commentary now is that it’s quite expected that people may have two or more really significant relationships across the lifespan.”

For Andy and Leigh, maintaining separate homes is a conscious decision, though they sometimes discuss the idea of cohabiting.

“We can afford to live separately and still enjoy our lifestyles [and] we don’t have to deal with a lot of the domestic argy-bargy that some couples have to deal with by living together,” Andy says. Never married, she has lived in the same suburb for 38 years and has friends and activities she enjoys close by.

Outside their regular Friday to Sunday at Andy’s, the couple holiday together and have cared for one another after surgery, for weeks at a time. But Leigh, like Andy, enjoys his independence and own company. “When I got divorced, I wanted my own space,” he says. A keen fisher, he appreciates the freedom to pack up on a whim and go away, without negotiation or compromise. “We’ve never begrudged each other the chance to do those things that we like to do solely.”

Click on this link to continue reading: The older couples living apart, together: ‘We don’t have to deal with the domestic argy-bargy’ | Relationships | The Guardian