The Live Apart Together Revolution is Coming

Divorced Gen-X and Boomer moms are leading the way

In their conversation about their divorces on Lyz Lenz’s podcast, This American Ex-Wife, Lenz and poet and author Maggie Smith both imagine what kind of life they want moving forward as divorced mothers.

One thing they don’t want is to follow that old romantic script — meet, fall in love, become a committed monogamous couple, move in together, put a ring on it and have kids–something Lenz writes about in her book of the same name.

Divorce has given them much-desired freedom — finally. And, no surprise, they’re not willing to give that up.

“One of the most freeing parts of being divorced in my 40s is that I’ve already done all of the things that the culture wants me to do. There’s no timeline that I need to live on now. … I already drank the Kool-Aid, I already did all the things … and now I can just kind of make it up as I go without a blueprint that someone’s handed me.”

That said, both may be interested in having a romantic partner one day — just not a husband. Or at least a sexual partner.

As Lenz writes about not having much experience dating or having sex before she married at age 22 (she was a virgin), divorce opened up a whole new world for her:

“I wanted to know what was out there. And, if I am being very honest, I wanted to have sex. Really good sex. …I was curious what it would be like to actually date. So I started swiping and making plans. I was always honest: I didn’t want a new husband; I wanted hook-ups, hang-outs, and fun.”

What might “hook-ups, hang-outs, and fun” look like?

If Lenz and Smith are like an increasing number of heterosexual Gen-X women who have young children from a previous relationship and divorced and widowed Boomer women who have “been there, done that,” it might be a live apart together (LAT) relationship — he has his place, she has hers, and they spend time together and time apart.

And — the best part — they’ll still have their freedom.

Which is why women are taking the lead.

A few years ago I went on a date with a younger man — 52 to my 61.

“You know, there’s something going on with the women in your town,” he told me.

I stopped sipping my margarita and leaned in a little closer. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. My friends and I have gone out on a number of dates with them, and they really just want hookups. They do not want a boyfriend.”

My first thought was, “Go girls in my town!” But it made perfect sense to me. They were Gen X-women, recently out of a marriage and with young kids at home. The last thing they want to do is get back into anything that resembles a marriage. And the men were looking to settle down.

I was that woman, too, newly divorced at age 48 with two boys, 9 and 12, at home. In 2022, 38 percent of divorced women and 18.7 percent of divorced men were living with minor children in the home, according to the U.S. census.

Not to say that some mothers of young children don’t want a romantic partner, maybe even a husband. But for many, it’s exhausting just thinking about melding families under one roof let alone trying to re-create something akin to the popular 1970s TV show The Brady Bunch. Perhaps that’s why 67 percent of second marriages and 73 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

“Trying to fully blend families can be hard,” Mandi Kreitel says. She and her husband have children from previous marriages and live 360 miles apart in Alaska. In addition to having different parenting styles, they each share custody with their former spouses, making moving in together or even closer to each other a real challenge.

Even if custody isn’t shared with a former spouse for whatever reason, or there isn’t a former spouse or co-parent, many parents don’t want to move their children away from their schools, neighborhoods, friends, and perhaps extended family. And the red state–blue state divide may keep some parents from moving to the state where their partner lives.

While there aren’t exact numbers on how many people are in live apart together relationships, it’s estimated that 10 percent of adults in Western Europe, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are in LAT relationships. In Britain, nearly a quarter of those statistically defined as “single” actually have a romantic partner who lives elsewhere.

But no matter how many couples are in LAT relationships, the phenomenon is growing — for good reason. While doing research for my forthcoming book on LATs, I discovered that numerous studies indicate that living apart from a romantic partner can offer the same kind of commitment, love, intimacy, stability, equality, sex and all the other things living under one roof can offer — and sometimes even more — while also giving each partner freedom and independence.

What other romantic arrangement can offer that?

The Gen-X divorce rate is pretty low — 18 divorces per 1,000 people — but just 53 percent of Gen-Xers are married, according to the Pew Research Center. And they’re divorcing at midlife — the median age at first divorce for men was 42.6 and 40.1 for women in 2020, according to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research.

Will those divorcées want to replicate what they had, a live-in romantic partner? Often, they do not.

“Louise” and her boyfriend of nearly four years, both Gen-Xers, live across the street from each other in Northern California — he with his young daughter and she alone. She had a traditional marriage before, but like many divorced women, living under one roof with a boyfriend again, despite the financial hardship of paying for everything on your own when it would be cheaper to live together, is no longer so attractive.

“It’s so nice to have your space, your things. Nobody else is moving stuff, touching things,” she tells me.

While 39 percent of all singles in the United States say that having a long-term committed romantic partner isn’t all that important, it jumps dramatically for women who are divorced — 55 percent of women versus about 30 percent of divorced men, according to a recent study of 598 heterosexual adults with an average age of 50.

Would those percentages change if the divorced men and women considered living apart from a romantic partner? It’s hard to know because it’s unlikely the researchers asked and most expect to live with a long-term committed romantic partner. That’s what people in love do, right?

But if those divorced women were asked if they would be more likely to want a long-term committed romantic partner if they could maintain their freedom by living separately, I’m pretty sure some would say yes.

Women are driving the live-apart-together revolution. In fact, LAT relationships have been called the “gender revolution continuing into old age” — a nod to the fact that Boomer women have been on the forefront of restructuring family life ever since no-fault divorce became law.

It’s no surprise given the exhausting gendered housework and caregiving women do.

That said, many Boomers do want romantic partners. After a gray divorce — divorce at age 50 or older — about 22 percent of women and 37 percent of men re-partnered within 10 years after leaving their marriages, according to a 2019 study. But this time, they didn’t put a ring on it — they cohabited, especially the men.

Sadly, the study didn’t consider LAT relationships because the researchers were only allowed by the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine cohabiting re-partnerships. That said, they note that LAT relationships are on the rise among Boomers and “may be attractive alternatives to cohabitation and remarriage.”

Why is LAT an attractive lifestyle for older people? Because, as law professor Cynthia Grant Bowman says, it allows them to

“keep their own familiar space, preserve their inheritance for their children, and, in the case of women, protect themselves against gendered divisions of domestic labor characteristic of marriage.”

While divorcées like Lenz and Smith may reject marrying again and perhaps even living with a man again, it wouldn’t surprise me if one or the other or both end up in a LAT relationship at some point — especially if there’s still a desire for “really good sex.”

Because all the research indicates that couples who live apart together have more sex and more satisfying sex. Of course, that isn’t the only reason to embrace LAT, but, hey — it’s certainly something to consider.

My book on changing the narrative about aging as a woman, “Not Too Old For That: How Women Are Changing the Story of Aging,” was named a “Best Book of 2022” by Take the Lead, and my forthcoming book, “LATitude: How to Make a Live Apart Together Relationship Work,” will be published July 9. Follow me on Medium, Threads, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you want to support my work and have unlimited access to the writing of all Medium writers, please become a member here.