What Singles Share with Couples Who Do Not Want to Marry or Even Live Together
Married people are missing out on something everyone else values more
Have you heard about couples who are committed to each other but live in separate places? These are people who want a place of their own. They are not just living apart because a job or the pursuit of an education or some other external factor has kept them apart. They are called LAT (living apart together) or, less often, dual-dwelling duos.
What are these couples like? Are they different in important ways from cohabiting or married couples? Or are all couples pretty much the same and different from solo single people?
One of the most comprehensive studies of LAT couples and how they differ from married and cohabiting people as well as single people (divorced or always single) was based on a representative national sample of the British adult population from 2006. It included a sub-sample of 320 people who lived apart from their partner. In the article about the study, “People who live apart together (LATs) — how different are they?”, Simon Duncan and Miranda Phillips looked at a variety of attitudes, characteristics, and motivation. What interested me most was the place of friends in the lives of LAT couples.
