- A new study found that older couples who live apart can experience some mental health benefits.
- A dating expert said older people tend to be more independent and set in their ways.
- Being open to living apart also widens the dating pool, particularly for older women.
Moving in together is one of the biggest relationship milestones. How well you can blend into one unit often precludes other big changes, like getting married or raising kids.
But for older couples, there’s another appealing relationship setup: living apart, together — also known as “LAT.”
A new study found that couples living apart experienced more mental health benefits than single people. The research, on 15,000 British people aged 60 to 85, found that LAT had fewer mental health benefits than getting married, but the break-ups were less severe than those going through a divorce or moving out of a shared home.
Logan Ury, the director of relationship science at Hinge and an on-air expert in Netflix’s “The Later Daters,” told Business Insider she has seen this trend thriving, particularly among older couples.
“They’re like, ‘I have my house set up the way I want. You have your house set up the way you want,'” Ury said. “‘Why don’t we be in a long-term relationship, but we don’t need to live together?'”
It’s not just logistical. Ury said living apart, together has a ton of perks — particularly for older daters.
It widens your dating pool
If you’re comfortable living in separate homes, it can broaden the types of people you can date. You can manage differences in social lives or hobbies more easily by living independently than by trying to find someone who matches your lifestyle.
Ury said this is appealing to older daters. When you’re younger and looking to start a family, “you want someone maybe with the same religion, the same lifestyle, the same education,” she said.
But for older daters who aren’t looking to raise kids together, ticking off all those boxes is often less important. Living apart allows each person to live in their own world — and that can be a boon for a relationship.
You don’t have to compromise as much
LAT gives couples the opportunity to keep living how they want, with the benefit of romantic companionship.
According to the study authors at Lancaster University and University College London, older women seem to benefit the most from the arrangement. Women often take on more domestic labor in marriage or cohabitation, so they “may have more to gain than older men from LAT” by having more autonomy.
Ury said it makes sense that older women are drawn to LAT. Her research shows older daters typically have a “stronger sense of self” than younger people. For example, Ury said older people report having more satisfying sex because they know their bodies better and are more capable of asking for what they want.
Knowing yourself also makes it harder to compromise, whether it comes to sharing a bedroom or eating the same meals. “People are stuck in their ways; they’re less flexible and they have their ways of doing things,” Ury said.
Ury said younger couples are like startups who grow together. But older people moving in together are more like mergers. “Mergers are notoriously hard because each one has their own HR department, their own CEO,” she said. “It can be hard to blend those things.”
