The term ‘living apart together’

A living apart together (LAT) relationship describes a couple, of the same or different gender, who live together but do not share the same home. That is, the term refers to couples, heterosexual or homosexual, married or not, who have an ongoing self-defined couple relationship without cohabiting (Trost, 1998). Partners living in LAT relationships have one household each.

Levin (2004) has suggested that the dual-residence aspect of LAT couples distinguishes them from a commuting (or commuter) marriage, where there is one main household and a second residence that is used when one partner is away. Distance also demarcates LATs from commuting marriages. LAT couples may either live near each other or far apart, while commuting couples typically spend time apart in order for both partners to pursue professional careers and have residences where each member of the couple works. Finally, LAT arrangements now encompass cohabiting gay, lesbian, transsexual and transgender partners, not just heterosexual married couples, and for that reason, Holmes (2007) uses the term ‘distance relationship’. These relationships are also sometimes referred to as ‘non-residential partnerships’ (Castro-Martín et al, 2008).

The LAT relationship is not a new family form. In the past, however, they were far less common and almost invisible (Levin, 2004). Historically, for example, couples had to endure separation mostly when the husbands’ work regularly took them away from home (notably, when men worked as railroad builders, seamen or in the mines). In those cases, due to long-term separation, women were literally left to take their migrant husbands’ place as managers of the household.

Not surprisingly, many LAT couples maintain separate households for very different reasons. For example, if, historically, it was the man who left the family for a period of time, corporate businesses today offer a growing proportion of job transfers to women (see, eg, Anderson and Spruill, 1993). Hence, there is now an increasing likelihood of women needing to live separately from their family for work-related reasons. The already-discussed cultural move towards more individualised decision-making processes, a shift from normative actions towards individual choice behaviours, may also be a factor in the increasing number of such couples (Giddens, 1991; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001; Cliquet, 2003).