Living Apart, Still Together: The Rise of LAT Relationships in a Culture of Individualism
Monday, March 24, 2025.
I first became aware of Living Apart Together relationships when I was one of the owners and the blog editor over at Couples Therapy Inc.
Frankly, I’m impressed with what they’ve done to the place since I moved on to do more couple and family work on my own.
I wrote this article about 5 years ago for the CTI blog, and I continue to follow this trend more recently in my relatively new private practice.
Not long ago, the idea of a married couple choosing to live in separate homes might’ve triggered a wellness check—or at least a concerned conversation with your priest, rabbi, or HOA president.
But today, Living Apart Together (LAT) relationships are quietly reshaping the definition of modern love.
These aren’t failed marriages in disguise.
They’re a conscious choice—an evolving model for committed partnerships that value emotional intimacy and personal autonomy. If that sounds like a contradiction, welcome to the 21st century.
Living Apart, Still Together: LAT Relationships, Cultural Narcissism, and the Battle for Intentional Love
There was a time—not that long ago—when the words marriage and cohabitation were virtually synonymous.
To live apart was to be estranged, exiled, or, depending on your denomination, possessed by Satan. But the 21st century has opened a portal to a new relational model: Living Apart Together (LAT).
At first glance, it might seem quirky or impractical. Why would committed couples choose to maintain separate residences, separate refrigerators, and separate Wi-Fi routers?
But dig a little deeper and LAT isn’t just a lifestyle hack. It’s a social experiment—a quiet revolt against unconscious domesticity, and a test case for intentional love in an age of distracted living.
Beyond Proximity: The LAT Relationship Explained
LAT couples are committed, emotionally bonded, and often monogamous—but they live in separate households.For some, it’s a logistical choice. For others, it’s a spiritual one.
What distinguishes LAT from traditional long-distance relationships or commuter marriages is that LAT is not a temporary condition. It's a structural choice.
Not an accident of circumstance but a philosophy of togetherness.
And behind that choice lies a growing desire—especially among Gen X, Millennials, and older Gen Zs—for relationships that preserve autonomy without sacrificing intimacy.
The Intentionality Mandate
In an era where the default mode is distraction, LAT relationships force something radical: focus.
“Without habitual proximity,” writes Holmes (2004), “emotional connection must be actively constructed through shared rituals, language, and time.”
That’s the secret. LAT couples don’t default into togetherness. They choose it, over and over.
There are no passive Tuesday nights watching Succession because you're both too tired to talk. There are no muttered goodnights while brushing your teeth. If you're in a LAT relationship and want intimacy, you have to show up on purpose. You can't rely on geography to do the emotional labor.
In this way, LAT may be one of the few relationship models in which mindfulness isn't optional.
Intentionality is the New Intimacy
Couples who live apart must construct and maintain:
Emotional bridges: through daily check-ins, video calls, and transparent communication.
Shared rituals: that exist in time, not space—like watching a show together while texting commentary in real time.
Psychological attunement: which replaces the passive familiarity of cohabitation with active empathy.
LAT demands that partners not only remain aware of each other’s needs—but plan for them. And plan around them.
Intentionality, in LAT, is the structure itself.
LAT as a Reaction to Cultural Narcissism
But let’s complicate the picture.
Is LAT a symptom of cultural maturity—or cultural narcissism in disguise?
American society, for all its professed values of community and connection, has become deeply allergic to inconvenience. We Uber our groceries, filter our conversations, and outsource emotional labor to TikTok therapists.
In this context, LAT could be read as an elegant solution to the age-old problem of other people being annoying.
You get the love, the sex, the support—without the socks on the floor, the dishes in the sink, or the spiritual exhaustion of hearing someone chew with their mouth open.
Some might call it relational minimalism. Or we might call it narcissism 2.0—intimacy without friction, curated closeness.
Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (1979) described a society in which relationships become performance art: intimate in appearance but transactional in reality. LAT may be a modern update to that model: a love story that avoids the messiness of real life by creating controlled relational environments.
“The contemporary American,” Lasch warned, “is often a narcissist, not because he is in love with himself, but because he has no self with which to fall in love.”
Ouch. And yet, it’s worth asking: Does LAT reflect a more robust self—or an inability to tolerate relational ambiguity and inconvenience?
Living Apart as a Strategy Against Emotional Erosion
Then again, maybe LAT isn’t a failure to commit—it’s a refusal to go numb.
The slow erosion of emotional intimacy in traditional cohabiting couples often happens not through conflict but through accumulation: of routines, resentments, and unspoken disappointments. LAT arrangements, by contrast, disrupt this erosion through:
Spatial Resets: each reunion is a fresh experience, not just another day on the hamster wheel.
Preserved Personal Identity: you remain a full person, not half of a logistical unit.
Clearer Boundaries: there's less enmeshment, and with that comes fewer opportunities for covert resentment.
In some ways, LAT can be seen as a response to hyper-cohabitation culture—where couples work, live, parent, and even gym together, often suffocating under the weight of 24/7 togetherness.
The LAT model asks: What if the path to sustainable intimacy isn't fusion, but well-managed separation?
LAT and the Economics of Autonomy
Let’s not forget the class element.
LAT relationships require either financial privilege (two homes, two heating bills) or extreme creativity (tiny houses, co-ops, or repurposed school buses).
This model appeals most to well-educated urbanites, often child-free or with older, more independent children. It’s aspirational for some, impossible for others.
Still, as housing gets more expensive, and as work-from-home blurs geographic limitations, LAT could become more accessible—especially for neurodiverse couples, blended families, and those who simply thrive in solitude.
In a strange twist, the LAT lifestyle may soon become both a luxury and a necessity.
Is LAT a Model for the Future of Love?
The future of romantic partnership might look less like shared space and more like shared purpose.
LAT couples are experimenting with the architecture of modern commitment. And in doing so, they raise essential questions for all of us:
Can love thrive without convenience?
Can intimacy grow in the absence of domestic entanglement?
Is it better to live with someone—or to live for them, even from across town?
In an age where everything—from careers to identities—is fluid, perhaps living apart together is not a deviation from love, but its evolution.
Perhaps the future isn't about physical proximity. It's about emotional gravitational fields—and the willingness to orbit each other with intention.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Duncan, S., & Phillips, M. (2010). People who live apart together (LATs)–how different are they? The Sociological Review, 58(1), 112–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2009.01874.x
Holmes, B. M. (2004). Communicating affection and closeness in long-distance relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21(6), 731–754. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407504047833
Lasch, C. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Norton.
Levin, I., & Trost, J. (1999). Living Apart Together. Community, Work & Family, 2(3), 279–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668809908413953