Living Apart Together is a term to describe couples who have an intimate relationship but live at separate addresses. LAT couples account for around 10% of adults in Britain, a figure which equates to over a quarter of all those not married or cohabiting. Similar figures are recorded for other countries in northern Europe, including Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Research suggests similar or even higher rates in southern Europe, although here LAT couples often remain in parental households. In Australia, Canada and the US representative surveys indicate that between 6% and 9% of the adult population has a partner who lives elsewhere. LAT is also increasingly understood and accepted publically, is seen by most as good enough for partnering, and subject to the same expectations about commitment and fidelity as marriage or cohabitation.

Research

Some researchers have seen living apart together as a historically new family form. From this perspective LAT couples can pursue both the intimacy of being in a couple and at the same time preserve autonomy. Some LAT couples may even de-prioritize couple relationships and place more importance on friendship. Alternatively, others see LAT as just a ‘stage’ on the way to possible cohabitation and marriage. In this view LATs are not radical pioneers moving beyond the family, rather they are cautious and conservative, and simply show a lack of commitment. In addition many may simply be modern versions of ‘steady’ or long term boy/girlfriends. Research using more comprehensive data suggests LAT couples are a heterogeneous social category with varying motivations for living apart. About a third see their relationship as too early for cohabitation, while others are prevented from living together, although they wish to do so, because of constraints like housing costs or (more rarely) job location. Many, however, prefer not to live together even though they have a long term relationship and could do so if they wanted. In practice motivations are often complex, for example one partner might wish to preserve the family home for existing children while the other might welcome autonomous time and space. Sometimes ‘preference’ can have a defensive motivation, for example the emotional desire to avoid the recurrence of a failed or unpleasant cohabiting relationship. Overall, LAT couples may be ‘gladly apart; ‘regretfully apart’ or, for many, undecided and ambivalent where they experience both advantages and disadvantages.

Demographics

People living apart from their partner can be found in all age groups, although they are on average younger than cohabiting and married couples. In Britain almost 50% of LAT couples are in the youngest age group (18-24) although significant proportions are found in the 25-55 age group. Non-parents (those without current dependent children) are significantly more likely than parents to live apart from their partner. LAT couples are also found in all socio-economic groups, and in Britain show little difference to the class profile of the population as a whole.

Attitudes

Living apart as a couple is increasingly understood and accepted. By 2006, in Britain, a majority (54 per cent) agreed that “a couple do not need to live together to have a strong relationship”, with only 25 per cent disagreeing. By 2000 about one fifth of people aged 16-44 in Britain described ‘living together apart’ as their ‘ideal relationship’, compared to over 40 per cent for exclusive marriage and just under 20 per cent for unmarried cohabitation.

Attitudinally, LATs couples themselves resemble cohabitants in a ‘young partners’ group, as opposed to a more conservative ‘older married’ majority. Controlling for age LATs appear to be somewhat more liberal than other relationship categories for issues that directly affect them, for example about the effect of independence in relationships. However, for other controversial ‘family’ issues (like acceptance of same-sex partnership or of single motherhood) being a LAT in itself makes little difference, rather it is the relative traditionality of older married people that stands out compared to generally younger, and more liberal, unmarried cohabitants and LAT couples.

Examples of couples who LAT

Famous and celebrity couples are often named in the media when discussing LAT.
For example, a 2007 Times article names Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 and Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow is an American actress, singer, humanitarian, and fashion model.Farrow first gained wide acclaim for her role as Allison Mackenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place, and for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra...

 (then living either side of Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

), Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd

Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, FRHS, FRSL is an English biographer.-Life:Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater....

 (married 24 years as of 2007, separate homes), Helena Bonham Carter

Helena Bonham Carter

Helena Bonham Carter is an English actress of film, stage, and television. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane...

 and Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

 and their two children (two houses next door to each other in Hampstead

Hampstead

Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

), and Booker prizewinner Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays...

 and husband Pradip Krishen

Pradip Krishen

Pradip Krishen, is an Indian filmmaker and environmentalist. He directed three ground breaking film, namely, Massey Sahib in 1985, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones in 1989 and Electric Moon for Channel 4, UK in 1991...

 (with separate homes in Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

).

Historically, the LAT relationship between philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

 (1905-1980) and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...

(1908-1986) is often cited (although was exceptional in that Sartre apparently made other contemporaneous, if temporary, liaisons). It is important to remember, however, that it is not just the rich and famous who live apart together, LAT is common amongst ordinary people in all social groups.

The documentary Two's a Crowd documents a New York couple that was forced to give up a LAT relationship because of the economic downturn of the late 2000s. The film depicts how the couple tries to set up two separate "apartments" within one, after they are forced to move in with each other.