I’ve started floating a quiet theory among friends: what if I never live with a partner?
Not in a cynical, sworn-off-love way, but in a deliberate, this-might-actually-work-better way. The response is almost always the same: a long pause, a raised eyebrow, a laugh. Sometimes concern, as if I’ve just proposed opting out of companionship itself.
It’s not that I don’t want a serious relationship, I do. I want the commitment, the intimacy, the long-term building of a life with someone. I just don’t know that I want to share a home to prove it.
I get the skepticism, though. For many couples, living together isn’t just a milestone; it’s the milestone. To opt out of this rite of passage can feel like opting out of adulthood, or of doing love “properly.”
And yet, a growing number of couples are doing exactly that. Known as “living apart together” or LAT, the arrangement describes partners in committed, intimate relationships who maintain separate homes.
While it may sound unconventional, it’s far from rare. In Canada, roughly one in 10 couples are in some form of LAT relationship, according to a 2024 report from the Vanier Institute of the Family, though exact numbers are difficult to pin down, given that it’s rarely captured in official statistics.
Living apart is increasingly common, notes the report, reflecting broader shifts in how people define family, intimacy and independence. And other research shows that having some distance from your romantic partner could actually be beneficial.
For Sharon Hyman, a Montreal-based filmmaker and founder of a global LAT Facebook community, the arrangement was organic. She and her partner David Demetre have been together for nearly three decades, and living separately the entire time.
“It’s a lifetime commitment,” Hyman says. “People have lived apart for centuries. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
In many ways, her relationship looks like any other long-term partnership. Hyman and Demetre have supported each other through illness, the loss of their parents and major life transitions. They are in each other’s wills. While they have briefly lived together during times of illness, they’re also open to live-in caregivers as they age. They’ve never shared a home and they don’t plan to.
“I fail to see how fighting over picking up your socks or squabbling over finances is real intimacy,” she says. “Because of our dynamic, we’re intentional with each other. We never take time for granted, because we have to make space for each other.”
Questioning what intimacy actually requires is at the heart of LAT’s appeal. For many couples, living apart allows them to preserve both individuality and connection without forcing either into compromise.
For example, Hyman says she’s now more involved in her family and community as an affordable housing activist, because she has more time on her own.
“It’s not putting all the eggs in one basket, not expecting everything out of one person, which I feel is a big reason a relationship may not work. No one can be your everything,” she says.
LAT relationships are part of a broader diversification of modern partnerships, says Barbara Mitchell, a Canadian family researcher.
Shifting gender roles, longer life spans, economic pressures and changing social norms have all contributed to their rise, she says. Among adults aged 20 to 34, it’s more common for couples to live apart, and the reasons are often pragmatic: the higher cost of a bigger home, career instability and geographic mobility.
For older adults, LAT is most common due to circumstance such as after divorce or widowhood, or while caring for children from a prior relationship, according to Mitchell.
“LAT relationships are often temporary, transitional decisions and typically short-lived, especially among younger adults,” she says. “Individuals who opt for it as a more permanent lifestyle choice tend to have independent, self-reliant and more open-minded, non-conforming personalities.”
Kathleen Brosemer and Louis St. Pierre, a married couple in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., have spent over a decade living separately. Five years into their relationship, St. Pierre bought the house next door to Brosemer’s.
“We both had our homes the way we liked,” Brosemer says. “It just seemed exhausting to try to make that fit.”
Their arrangement allows for a kind of closeness without friction. They see each other every day and have dinners together, and share gardening, repairing and cooking duties. But like many of these couples, even post-retirement, they have full lives. She’s working on her dissertation and caring for her elderly mother, while he plays music and builds furniture.
“The difference is, when I’m tired, I tell him to go home,” Brosemer says.
Hyman points out that this can be useful when she and Demetre have a fight. They can go their separate ways, cool off, and come together when they’re ready.
For St. Pierre, the benefits are equally clear.
“Some men have a man cave, but I have a man house,” he says. “I’m not the tidiest person, so I can leave my house in more disarray than Sharon would like. I’m also the timpanist and percussionist for our local orchestra, and that is not a quiet affair. It’s a freedom to be myself.”
Many LAT couples cite control over their own routines, spaces and identities as a key advantage. It can also help preserve the romantic spark.
Jeanette Kimball, who lives in Thompson, Man., has been with her partner John Barker for nearly two decades. They see each other regularly, share weekends and vacations, but maintain separate homes and enjoy their alone time.
“We always have so much to catch up on when we do see each other,” says Kimball.
Hyman feels the same: “David and I have been together 27 years, and every time he walks in the door, I still get butterflies,” she says. Other LAT couples have told her it has saved their relationships.
Still, LAT relationships are not without challenges. Distance can complicate caregiving, emotional support and the logistics of daily life. Maintaining two households can be expensive. For many couples, the biggest hurdle isn’t the relationship itself, but how others perceive its legitimacy.
Hyman says members of her 7,500-person Facebook group often describe a sense of “coming out” about their living arrangement. Some are told their relationships aren’t “real,” or that they lack commitment.
However, in many cases, LAT couples demonstrate deep, long-term commitment – just without shared walls.
There are also broader cultural shifts at play. As fewer people marry young (or at all), and as more women achieve financial freedom, the traditional script of partnership is loosening.
In my own life, the idea feels radical. The idea of maintaining my own space, of choosing when to be together and when to be alone, feels less like compromise and more like clarity.
The more I hear from couples who have built full, committed, even decades-long relationships without ever moving in together, the harder it is to see cohabitation as the only or best marker of success.
So, maybe the question isn’t why someone would choose to live apart. Maybe it’s why have we been so certain that love requires us to live the same way at all?
