Why More Couples Are Choosing To Live Apart
Simon Duncan / Phys.org / Jan. 3, 2020

. . . Michelle had “built a very solid brick wall” with her current partner. It was living apart that maintained this wall. Another respondent, Graham, had experienced an “incredibly stressful time” after separation from his wife, with “nowhere to live and no real resources or anything.” So living apart was a “sort of self-preservation.”

Current partners could also be a problem. Wendy had lived with her partner, but found that “when he drinks he’s not a nice person … He was abusive both to me and my son.”

Living apart together was the solution. Maggie was repelled by her partner’s “hardcore” green lifestyle: his lack of washing, sporadic toilet flushing, and no central heating (which she needed for medical reasons). She also felt her partner looked down on her as intellectually inferior. So living apart together was “the next best thing” to her ideal of conjugal marriage.

Some men found the very idea of living with women threatening. For Ben, “not a big commitment merchant,” living apart together was at least “safe.” And several men in the study hoped to find more “compliant” partners abroad. Daniel, whose current, much younger, partner lived in Romania, explained how his “whole universe was blown apart” by divorce. And how he felt that “females in England … seem to want everything straight off in my opinion — I just didn’t want to communicate with English women at all.”

Given these fears, worries and aversions, why do these people stay with their partners at all? The answer is a desire for love and intimacy. As Wendy said: “I do love him…[and] I would love to be with him, if he was the person that he is when he’s not drinking.”

Maggie told us how she “really loved” her partner and how they had “set up an agreement” whereby “if I do your cooking and your washing and ironing can you take me out once a month and pay for me.”

(She really should re-phrase that.)