A Woman's Guide To Everything: Separate Residences

Lately, there's been talk of married, or committed (to each other) couples, cohabiting in separate residences. The movie 'Sex In The City' incorporated this theme, when one of the couples decided to keep her apartment from when she was single. She would go off and use it for two days a week to write and think, without being compelled to nag him into 'doing something tonight', and he could use it when he just wanted to chill in front of the television, and didn't want to be compelled into 'doing something tonight'.

Couples appear to have been doing this in other cities for awhile, now. There are several sources reporting this, one of the of them the Daily Mail online, a news source from the UK. The couple they write about has kept next door residences for the last thirty-odd years. They had separated, and had planned to divorce, but instead came up with this solution to their wedded unbliss. There is even a Wikipedia post about the LATs; Living Apart Togethers. Some of them see each other just once a month! Goodness, I didn't know I was part of a popular new social phenomenon! Will surprises never cease!

My situation was really just a serendipitous happenstance. My man owns a triplex, and just before I moved to Las Vegas, his renters moved out. His bachelor pad is attached to the main house, where I house my furniture, clothing, dog, and son. In essence, we have two full baths, two full kitchens, an extra bedroom and living room, and a cooling off zone. This arrangement usually garners the same reactions from strangers I used to get when I put an extra large dog collar around my two-year old son's waist, clipped a fifty foot length of clothesline to it, and then went shopping at the mall. Either people would look at me with disapprobation and disbelief, or they would regard me with the same expression people gave the man who invented sliced bread. My son was faster than a speeding bullet when he was a baby. He thought it was fun to 'hide' from Mommy in the clothes racks, or on a different floor of a building. I ran until just a few years ago, but I was no match for the Speeding Diaper.

One of the attributes listed for a LAT, is having the 'ideal environment to bring up children'. Why don't we just drop them off at a compound? Haven't you noticed the best children seem to be the ones who have no parents? Parents seem to hold children back, rather than help them advance to the next playing space, which is productive, responsible citizen. Orphans are the achievers, and the ones overcoming obstacles. The last obstacle my son saw was when the internet went out, and he had ten minutes to kill. LATs anticipate their time together with great joy, because they don't see each other all the time. LATs have their own space; their partner is compelled to behave with the circumspection of a guest, because this isn't 'their' space. LATs have the freedom to do as they wish in their own abodes, and without consultation. Well, that's still a matter of debate in our homes, but it generally holds true. I can move the sugar bowl without too much fuss.

All in all, it works for us, and it actually keeps our relationship more like a date that hasn't ended, yet. And, like Tony Orlando, I get to 'knock three times' on the wall when I want him.