Living Together Apart in France and the United States

Union formation involves a number of stages, as does union dissolution, and new couples often spend an initial period in a non-cohabiting intimate relationship. Yet while certain couples never share the same dwelling, "living apart together" has not developed widely as a long-term lifestyle option. Claude Martin in France, and Andrew Cherlin and Caitlin Cross-Barnet in the United States have studied a symmetrical phenomenon, that of couples who continue to live together while considering themselves to be separated. In this article, they draw together their analyses to describe an arrangement which, while marginal, reveals situations where residential separation is not possible, either because of the need to keep up appearances, often for the children's sake, or because total separation is too frightening or living in separate homes is unaffordable. Beyond the differences between the two countries and the two survey fields, the authors analyse the ways in which persons who "live together apart" describe their loveless relationship that has led to explicit conjugal separation within a shared home.